Retro Re-release Roundup, week of November 6, 2025
Namco arcade multiplayer mayhem comes home for the first time.
Arcade Archives enters yet another frontier today: split-screen multiplayer! Now, The Outfoxies only ever required one screen, so this seems like overkill for future developments, but milestones are milestones.
ARCADE ARCHIVES / ARCADE ARCHIVES 2
Tokyo Wars
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X (worldwide, ACA2) / Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (worldwide, ACA)
- Price: $17.99 / €14.99 / £11.99 (ACA2), $14.99 / €14.99 / £11.99 (ACA), $2.99 / €2.99 / £2.49 (ACA-to-ACA2 upgrade)
- Publisher: Hamster / Bandai-Namco
What's this? A team-based tank deathmatch game set in a near-future Tokyo, originally developed by Namco for the System Super 22 arcade board and distributed in arcades via various single- and multi-panel, wheel-and-pedals cabinet configurations in 1996, with the ability to network up to eight cabinets for multiplayer; players join one of two 20-tank teams and battle across one of two maps to eliminate the opponents' team within the time limit, with the ability to wrest control of a CPU-controlled allied tank if and when your tank is destroyed. (Do note that multiplayer support is exclusive to the Arcade Archives 2 versions, which offer split-screen local multiplayer for up to 4 players; the standard Arcade Archives versions are single-player-only.)
Why should I care? You have friends and family to play with — Hamster has tried to up the single-player value by essentially creating a new scoring mode via the hi-score mode, but having those extra people around really keeps the game on the right side of the simplicity/primitivity divide.
Useless fact: Tokyo Wars not only established a foundation for the later Tank!Tank!Tank! but also Namco's successful, decade-running Gundam: Bonds of the Battlefield arcade game. One could say that Sega liberally "borrowed" from it when making their own Alien Front, too, but let's not be petty.
EGG CONSOLE
Mugen no Shinzou II (PC-88)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $6.49 / ¥880
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Xtalsoft
What's this? The second entry in Xtalsoft's signature RPG series, Mugen no Shinzou, which originally hit PC-99 in 1985 and migrated to various Japanese computer formats soon thereafter. Following the hero's trek to escape purgatory in the previous game, they now find themselves in an unusual living world not their own; the journey to escape this new world is broadly similar to the first, consisting of top-down 2D map exploration and first-person menu-based battles, but offers many new systems including a wide variety of recruitable party members of different races and classes, visible encounters, a food/hunger system and a visibility system of sorts that obscures areas of the map that the party shouldn't logically be able to see, like areas behind closed doors.
Why should I care? This game's legacy has been near-entirely reduced to its influence on Dragon Quest II, to the extent that EGG deliberately timed this reissue around the new DQII 2DHD remake, but it really does deserve to be acknowledged as one of the very first games not not just precede but legitimately nail the format now recognized worldwide as the "JRPG" (and, if one feels like being cheeks, the similarities that it itself shares to Ultima III).
Language barrier? While quite a lot of the important verbs and display words are rendered in English, most of the dialog and descriptive text, including a lot of crucial commands, are written in hiragana — this is one you might be able to bluff your way through to an extent, but as always, I can't imagine it'd be much fun.
G-MODE ARCHIVES
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (Japan)
- Price: ¥600
- Publisher: G-MODE
What's this? An arcade-style match-four chaining puzzle game, originally developed and distributed on Japanese feature phones by G-MODE in 2004; players are tasked with swapping and placing colored blocks within a cascading playfield in order to match groups of four or more same-coloured blocks and actively maintain a chain of successive matches, with game modes that include score attack, time attack and a mode that sees you completing certain challenges given by characters themed after zodiac constellations.
Why should I care? Believe it or not, the character designs are by Atsuko Nishida, designer of Pikachu, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, the entire classic Charmander line, most of the Eevees and many more of your favourite Pokemon, so it might intrigue you for that detail alone. The game itself hits a sweet spot of "active, but not quite so active that an early-'00s phone player might get annoyed by the low framerate", but of course, today's standards might be just a little higher than those of twenty years ago, so take heed.
Helpful tip: You can sample a higher-res Flash demo of the score-attack mode on this archive of the GungHo Games web portal.
UPDATES & DLC
Top Racer Collection (PS5/PS4/Xbox/Switch/PC) "Top Racer Customs" expansion ($3.99 or equivalent)
I've noticed that many people seem completely unaware of the fact that the classic Super Nintendo Top Gear racing games have been available for purchase on PC and consoles for a minute, and given that the games have been rebranded as "Top Racer", I can understand how it might've slipped peoples' radars. Whatever the case, this new update should appeal to newcomers and existing owners alike: it adds 4 new cars to the original Top GearRacer and allows players to not only customize the visuals and specs of their vehicles but share their custom vehicles online (to what I can only assume will be an audience of near-exclusively South American players, such is this series' particular clientele.)
UNRELEASED GAME DUMP
Splatter World (Famicom), now online for the world to try
Early last year, game fanatics and Famicom collectors alike were shocked by the upload of a Japanese retail-promo VHS that prominently featured a game called Splatter World, an RPG successor to Namco's cutesy Japan-only Splatterhouse adaptation Wanpaku Graffiti that was not only not released but not even announced, yet seemed to be very close to completion. Somehow, that discovery has been one-upped: this game that was virtually unknown until very recently was anonymously dumped online, and is playable to all who are willing to find an emulator compatible with the somewhat-uncommon Namco mapper for which the game was designed. (FCEUGX should have you covered.) Naturally, work on the fan translation has already begun, too.
