Retro Re-release Roundup, week of March 5, 2026
A fresh visit with your favorite video game vampire, Oda Nobunaga.
It should be business as usual from this week onward, touch wood, so let me return with a customary not-retro-but-let's-talk-about-it mention: the just-released Scott Pilgrim EX, a new retro brawler from many of the folk behind the original cult-favorite Scott Pilgrim brawler of the XBLA days of yore (including returning composers Anamanaguchi), and one I'm specifically mentioning because I've notice that many people seem to have missed the very important fact that this is a brand-new game and not a rework of the original.
ARCADE ARCHIVES / ARCADE ARCHIVES 2
Plump Pop
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X (worldwide, ACA2) / Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (worldwide, ACA)
- Price: $9.99 / €8.99 / £7.39 (ACA2), $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29 (ACA), $2.99 / €2.99 / £2.49 (ACA-to-ACA2 upgrade)
- Publisher: Hamster / Taito
What's this? A cutesy trampoline-based brick breaker-style game for one or two players, originally developed and distributed in Japanese arcades by Taito in 1987, with emulated reissues via various PlayStation 2-era Taito arcade compilations and, more recently, the paddle/trackbal expansion pack for the Egret II Mini; players control a pair of parents holding a trampoline who must bounce and catch their child in order to destroy the many enemies approaching from the sky, while also attempting to grab falling fruit and combat the occasional boss. (The game originally used a paddle controller, and this reissue allows for a few different control inputs including USB and Joycon 2 mouse support.)
Why should I care? You've given up waiting for Exidy's Circus to hit ACA, or you're a sucker for any and alll games in the "brutal game, cutesy skin" category.
Useless fact: One of the roughly eight million alternate titles for this game, as divulged by Taito on Hamster's weekly stream, was "PLUMP TRAMP", for which I will leave you to come up with your own witticism.
CONSOLE ARCHIVES
Nobunaga's Ambition (Famicom)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 (worldwide)
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29 (ACA2)
- Publisher: Hamster / Koei-Tecmo
What's this? The second game in Koei's prestigious, genre-leading historical Japanese grand-strategy series Nobunaga's Ambition, originally released for PC-8801 and other Japanese computers in late 1986 and slowly and regularly ported and remade elsewhere in the intervening decades, including this first-ever console port which released in Japan in 1988 and in North America in 1999; after selecting one of a handful of scenarios based on famous periods and conflicts in Japanese history, players engage in a turn-based campaign that sees them juggling military expansion and conquest, resource/economic management and maintaining the loyalty of peasants and gentry in order to defeat, defend or outlast opposing forces.
Why should I care? I don't know that the same can be said globally, where this particular port was dwarfed in impact by both the Amiga and Macintosh ports and the slightly-later SNES and Genesis versions, but in Japan, this particular Famicom game version was the entry that turned the series into a generation-spanning juggernaut (and, anecdotally, might the be the one and only version that a lot of oldheads ever played and continue to play to this day), so its value as an early Console Archives game cannot be overstated. It should also be said that, limited interface aside, the foundation for what would become many, many lines of Koei grand strategy games was surprisingly robust at this early stage, so one shouldn't necessarily think of this game as just a museum piece, either.
Helpful tip: The game of the same title that appeared in the NSO SNES app a year or so ago is an expanded version of this very game, should you require something with a little more fidelity (as well as USB mouse support, if memory serves).
EGG CONSOLE
Toudou Ryunosuke Tantei Nikki: Kohakuiro no Yuigon (PC-8801)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $6.49 / ¥770
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Althi
What's this? The first entry in Riverhillsoft's series of detective mystery games set in 1920's Japan, originally developed and distributed for various Japanese microcomputers in 1988 and variously remade for platforms including the PC Engine CD, Windows PC, mobile phones and Nintendo DS; the fledgling detective Ryonosuke finds themselves investigating the death of a wealthy pharmacist who is purported to have died after consuming one of their own drugs, but the many peculiarities surrounding their discovery suggest something more...
Why should I care? You're interested in tracking the history of both a foundational Japanese adventure game publisher and one of its chief creatives, veteran adventure game writer Rika Suzuki, and you didn't already play the G-MODE Archives reissue of the feature phone version that comes bundled with an exclusive original sister title.
Language barrier? Absolutely: the text is relatively dense and not something you'll be able to bluff your way through, nor would it be fun to even try.
OTHER
Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered
- Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $24.99 or equivalent, $29.99 or equivalent (deluxe edition), $44.99 or equivalent ("Heart of Darkness Collection")
- Publisher: Crystal Dynamics
What's this? A remaster of the final mainline entry in the melodramatic dark-fantasy action-adventure series Legacy of Kain, originally developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Eidos for PlayStation 2, original Xbox and PC in 2003; this new version allows players to switch between the original and new high-definition visuals with a button press, unlockable and/or DLC skins based on different characters and motifs from series and developer history, implements a free camera as an optional substitute for the original game's fixed-angle camera and offers a wealth of developmental and historical documents including (for purchasers of the deluxe version), a playable build of Dark Prophecy, the aborted would-be sequel to Defiance that entered pre-production under developer Ritual Entertainment.
Why should I care? The vibe around the original release of Defiance was that it was a blatantly unfinished game carried wholly by whatever desire one might have to experience the conclusion of Raziel and Kain's stories, and from what I've seen of this remaster, they haven't and couldn't do a lot to fix or finish the game, and so one may still want to approach this remaster with the understanding that it can funnel you to the interest points a little quicker but not a whole lot beyond that.
Helpful tips: One, the Switch version's received a last-minute delay; and two, the aforementioned "Heart of Darkness" bundle includes Legacy of Kain: Ascendance — in case you missed it, that's a brand-new 2D sidescrolling Legacy of Kain game starring as many of the original voice actors as possible, and it'll be out April 1 (including a standalone release, of course).
Poker Night at The Inventory Remastered
- Platform: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam (woldwide)
- Price: $9.99 / €9.99 / £8.99
- Publisher: Skunkape Games
What's this? A remaster of the all-star poker-themed adventure game Poker Night at the Inventory, oiriginally developed and published for PC by Telltale Games in 2010 and delisted in 2019; developed by Sam & Max remaster series devs Skunkape Games, this new version sees Max, Strong Bad, TF2 Heavy and Tycho from Penny Arcade returning with new higher-fidelity character models, retuned poker AI, the abilty to freely raise the starting buy-in, post-processing effects, controller configurations and more.
Why should I care? One might want to revisit this game now that they've allegedly rewritten to the poker logic to function something like poker and less like poker as deconstructed and reassembled via adventure game logic, or perhaps you just want to put this game in front of someone younger than you to see if they recgonise any of these characters from anything outside of maybe GMod.
Helpful tip: Yes, the winnable TF2 items have made a comeback as well.
- Platform: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $14.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Limited Run Games / Mighty Rabbit Studios
What's this? A crowdfunded collection of games from the Commodore 64-era library of acclaimed British indie studio System 3 Software, focused primarily around their popular Last Ninja series, released on PC earlier this year; this assortment of games and ports is configured for gamepad and is presented in basic emulated form, with a feature set that begins and ends with a save state and some basic screen options. (The specific holdup on the Switch version was due to issues concerning the Rising Sun iconography, but I'm not sure how those issues were resolved in the end.)
Which games are included? This collection includes The Last Ninja (C64), Last Ninja 2 (C64, ZX Spectrum and Amiga), Last Ninja 3 (C64 and Amiga), Ninja Remix (C64 and Amiga), International Karate (aka World Championship Karate; C64 and ZX Spectrum), IK+ (C64, ZX Spectrum and Amiga) and Bangkok Knights (C64 and Amiga).
Why should I care? You're looking for a sample platter of games that not only defined the upper echelons of the C64 library in particular but were genuine global successes that history ought to acknowledge more than it does, and you can tolerate the rather spartan nature of this package.
Helpful tip: There are PS5 and PS4 versions of this collection coming at some point, too.
