Retro Re-release Roundup, week of June 25, 2026
Just like old times, huh Fox?
Alternate title: AAaAAAAaAAaAA~
ARCADE ARCHIVES 2
Tekken
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X (worldwide)
- Price: $17.99 / €14.99 / £11.99
- Publisher: Hamster / Bandai-Namco
What's this? The original arcade version of the first entry in Namco's long-running 3D fighting game series Tekken, originally distributed in arcades in 1994 via the PlayStation-based System 11 arcade board and made famous by its 1995PlayStation port; players select from one of eight combatants and fight against various opponents, including non-playable sub-bosses and the now-legendary series antagonist Heihachi Mishima, using a four-button attack scheme that — conceptually, at least — maps a button to the movement of each limb. (As per usual, you're limited to local multiplayer, but Hamster has at least added a basic training mode.)
Why should I care? You want to experience the very inauspicious start to a series that eventually came to lead a genre — not only did this series require multiple entries before it was able to credibly stand beside the likes of Virtua Fighter but even the rather modest home conversions made significant unstated improvements to the little-played arcade originals, so those trying original arcade Tekken for the first time might be taken aback by just how different it feels and how little content it has to offer even relative to the PS port, let alone later entries. (You might also be a Nintendo devotee who's never played a Tekken game, on account of Namco never releasing a single mainline entry on a Nintendo platform.)
Helpful tip: Just to reiterate, this release is exclusive to Arcade Archives 2, which is to say that it's not releasing on PS4 or original Switch, and I would hazard a guess and say this'll be the first ACA2-exclusive release of many.
Moon Shuttle
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, PC via Play Anywhere (worldwide)
- Price: $9.99 / €8.99 / £7.39 (ACA2), $2.99 / €2.99 / £2.49 (ACA-to-ACA2 upgrade)
- Publisher: Hamster / Nichibutsu
What's this? A horizontally-scrolling sci-fi shooting game, originally developed and distributed in Japanese arcades by Nichibutsu, with an international release handled by Taito; the game alternates between an auto-scrolling phase that tasks the player with quickly defeating spawning enemy waves and a fixed-screen phase in which the player must clear a path through an impeding asteroid belt as their ship slowly (or quickly, if you push right) advances towards the right side of the screen.
Why should I care? You've made it a point of buying every Nichibutsu game with "Moon" in the title.
Helpful tip: Again, this is an ACA2 upgrade for a game that hit ACA1 quite a while ago, and it seems Hamster's going to be periodically updating older games from here on out, with a particular focus on the games they own, which are derived from the catalogs of the former studios Nichibutsu, UPL, NMK, Allumer, Athena, Video System and Warashi.
CONSOLE ARCHIVES
Bokosuka Wars (Famicom)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 (worldwide)
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster / Rashou / Kadokawa
What's this? The the 1985 Famicom conversion of the influential RPG-esque real-time war game Bokosuka Wars, originally produced as the winning entry of first ASCII Software Contest by independent developer Kouji Sumi (now active under the handle Rashou) and commercially released for Sharp X1 and successive Japanese microcomputers. Players control King Suren on a right-to-left quest to liberate their kingdom by destroying the boss, and ultimately the tyrannical Ogoreth, at the end of each map, distinct soldier units can be discovered hiding in objects in the field and will move and act semi-autonomously with some guidance from the player, with each unit having its own power values that increase after successive victories, as well as more general type advantages over other specific enemy units.
Why should I care? You can accept that, while this version of Bokosuka Wars might be the most-played and most well-known version, is it a severely compromised conversion that compounds all the quirks of the original games that were charming in their original context but, when presented within the framework of a game that has not been retuned for the much tinier character count allowed by the Famicom, snowball into obnoxiousness — in other words, there is more to this game than the oft-memed WOW! YOU LOSE screen, but you won't necessarily get it from this particular conversion.
Useless fact: Rashou resumed independent development in earnest a little over ten years ago, and their output has included a great many Bokosuka-adjacent video games, analog games and/or art installations, including a full-fat Bokosuka Wars II available on modern digital storefronts around the world.
Doraemon (Famicom)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (Japan)
- Price: ¥6980
- Publisher: Hamster / Shogakukan
What's this? A physical set commemorating the 40th anniversary of Hudson's million-selling Doraemon Famicom game, reissued for the first time here; players proceed across three large stages, each themed after one of three Doraemon movies and offering a distinct game format, be it exploratory side-scrolling action, auto-scrolling shooting or underwater flip-screen exploration. This box contains a download code for the game inside a replica cartridge shell, a replica box, reprinted manual and an expanded reprint of the original strategy guide with additional content, information and historical material pertaining to the game.
Why should I care? You're a sucker for Famicom games that were specifically designed to be reliant on strategy guides, and you respect the chutzpah of the publisher for printing a deluxe recreation of a game, package and guide that can easily be found second-hand for pennies.
Helpful tip: This game will be getting a proper Console Archives release at the end of July, but the version present in this box is the only version that will be available for original Switch, and it won't be sold digitally; it's also missing some of the Console Archive enhancements, like rewind.
EGG CONSOLE
First Queen IV(PC-98)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $7.19 / ¥990
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Kure Software Koubou
What's this? The fourth and most widely-played of Kure Software Koubou's series of chaotic real-time army-vs-army strategy-RPGs, originally produced for PC-98 and DOS-V in 1994 and adapted for Sony PlayStation in 1996, with a Windows version produced in the mid-'00s. Set in a world vaguely congruent with Arthurian legend, players explore wide maps with a large number of individually-named and -equipped recruitable units in tow, who follow the currently-selected character and attack semi-autonomously upon contact with individual behavioral routines determined by class, stats and other attributes like fatigue; in addition to large-scale combat, players will also defend and fortify their own towns and capture settlements from the enemy, wield magic, engage in basic diplomacy, advance the story and more.
Why should I care? If the primeval sorta-musou, sorta-RTS, sorta-action-RPG mishmash presented here sounds familiar, you might recall a very similar EGG release from a year or so ago called Silver Ghost: that game was the originator of Kure's signature "gocha-chara" format, and First Queen IV presents the most fully-fleshed game in that lineage, discounting later remakes and 3D sojourns, and exemplifies a very deft method for simulation the frenzy and pandemonium of a battlefield via platforms that were not optimally equipped, processor- or input-wise, to approximate large-scale real-time battles. Incidentally, this particular entry found surprising success on PC in both South Korea and Taiwan, so those among us who've been crate-diving the '00s Asian PC scene might jog a memory or two with this one, either directly or indirectly via independent games constructed in its image.
Language barrier? Most of the broader actions and paramaters are displayed in the UI via icons or English abbreviations, but both the story and the finer details on particular sub-systems and other mechanical info is written in Japanese.
OTHER
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2 (worldwide)
- Price: $49.99 or equivalent
- Publisher:Nintendo
What's this? A second fully-fledge remake of Nintendo's 1997 sci-fi 3D shooting game Star Fox, originally developed and published for the Nintendo 64 and remade for the first time for the Nintendo 3DS in 2011; developed by Vicarious Visions successor Velan Studios, this version faithfully recreates all the stages and set-pieces of the original game with brand-new 60FPS visuals and a more photorealistic art style, a rewritten and more serious script with new voice actors and performances, an optional mouse-aiming control scheme, individual per-stage challenges and score attack, a completely redone versus mode with online multiplayer and the ability to face-rig your pilot using a USB camera, among other little extras. (There's a demo on the eShop, should you require it.)
Why should I care? If you've never played any version of Star Fox 64, then know that it remains the most mechanically confident game in its series, and indeed across the rather small pool of other guided vehicular 3D shooting games, offering a deft balance between depth of controls, stage design and replayability, cinematic spectacle, campiness and character moments, and one will quickly understand why the rest of the series continues to exist in its shadow. If you're familiar with the original, then know that they really haven't messed with it all that much (save for the new, more professional and more dour script, which I'm sure will be more divisive than anything else): if the original game's burned into your muscle memory, you may or may not be disappointed by how little adjustment you'll have to make to ace this one.
Useless fact: This aspect of all versions of the game tends to get treated as a footnote or otherwise neglected, but it should be emphasised that the multiplayer modes present in the N64 original, the 3DS remake and this new remake are all completely different from each other; if you've played more than five minuts of any of them, I suspect you are part of an extreme minority.
UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES
Raiden Fighters Remix Collection (PlayStation 5, Switch, PC) major update #2
This second patch for the much-troubled Raiden Fighters Remix Collection adds quick-restart functionality, a new optional pixel-smoothing filter, fixes to the button config and various other bug tweaks, as well as support for PS4 arcade controllers on PS5; it's being promoted as the final major patch, and while the game could certainly use more updates to address issues like input lag, one might at least find these releases to now be adequately playable.
Rose & Camelia Collection (Switch) online multiplayer update
Just in time for EVO!
