Retro Re-release Roundup, week of July 16, 2026
Faux Nagai. That's the post.
This week's not-quite-retro-but-close-enough shoutout: Culdcept Begins (Switch 1+2), the first entry in Omiya Soft's cult Monopoly-meets-Magci the Gathering digital board game series in a decade, the first to receive a simultaneous worldwide release and one specifically designed to accommodate those who haven't been playing since the Sega Saturn days... and, speaking of which, the original Sega Saturn game will be reissued in a couple of weeks, too, so keep that in mind.
ARCADE ARCHIVES / ARCADE ARCHIVES 2
Syvalion
- 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 multi-directional, free-scrolling sci-fi shooting game, originally developed and distributed in arcades by Taito in 1988 and given conversions for the Sharp X68000 and Super Famicom/SNES, as well as emulated reissues via the PlayStation 2 Taito Legends 2/Taito Memories vol.1 collections, the recent Taito Milestones 4 compilation for Nintendo Switch and as a peripheral-attached expansion pack for the Egret II Mini. Players control a serpentine mecha-dragon whose aiming and movement is controlled via trackball (approximated here via several different input options, including Switch 2 joycon mouse functionality via Arcade Archives 2 and/or USB trackball/mouse support across all versions) and whose flame-breath attack is governed by a gauge that depletes as the fire button is held and can be replenished by rapidly moving the ship, among other methods; upon beginning the game, the player can select to play either a "basic" course with fixed stage design, or a "real" course that boasts procedurally-assembled stages and a massive assortment of possible story threads and endings, including many that tie into the lore of other Taito games.
Why should I care? You're looking to experience a game that strove for originality in all aspects, from the unique movement and input method to the extreme randomisation to the "anti-pattern" scoring system that attempted to prioritize systemic understanding, dexterity and reactivity over rote memorization to the greatest possible extent, and even to the abundance of (very silly) story that put it at odds with the average arcade game that might barely deign an entire screen of expository text, and you accept that you're not going to have the intended experience without a trackball (and no, the Egret II Mini trackball pad isn't natively supported). You might also be interested to know that this game was the brainchild of Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands designer Fukio "MTJ" Mitsuji, and that its extremely catchy music was the compositional debut of one Yasuhisa "Yack." Watanabe.
Useless fact: As far as anyone's aware, Syvalion was never officially released outside of Japan, and the English version first seen via the PS2 collections seems to have been derived from an English script that was present in the ROM but never implemented... and yet, this release include the English version as well, suggesting some level of officiality that has yet to be detailed by Taito.
CONSOLE ARCHIVES
.Heracles no Eikou II: Titan no Metsubou
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 (worldwide)
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster / Data East / Paon-DP
What's this? The second game in Data East's Greek mythology-themed RPG series Heracles no Eikou, originally developed and published for Famicom in 1988 and reissued for PC in Japan via the Project EGG subscription service in 2020; set in a time after the exploits of Hercules have become legend, a boy from a small town is one of many warriors summoned by the queen to investigate and defend against the monsters that have spread across the world... (As per usual, this reissue's coming without any sort of localization.)
Why should I care? Every time this series has or will come up, I'm sure I will again recount the series' pedigree — the participation of future Final Fantasy writer Kazushige Nojima, the wide array of beloved music by many accomplished composers including future Mother 3 and Smash Bros. series composer Shogo Sakai, and so on — and its significance as a lower-status series that nonetheless maintained a fanbase and a certain amount of respect via its pursuit of novel mechanical or narrative ideas. In this case, however, I can't offer the same degree of praise, as the second game isn't nearly as nonchalantly weird as the first, nor as ambitious or forward-thinking as its sequels: at the risk of sounding reductive, they made a point of copying Dragon Quest's homework for this one, for good and for ill.
Helpful tip: One little detail that's tripped me up every time I've revisited this game: if you don't make a point of finding and talking to the NPC in each area that'll tell you where you are, you won't be able to warp back to that area via the item and/or spell equivalent to DQ's "Zoom".
EGG CONSOLE
Harry Fox (PC88)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $6.49 / ¥990
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Microcabin
What's this? A charming command-input adventure game set in a woodland, originally sourced from a scenario-writing contest and produced by Microcabin or a variety of computer formats including PC88 from 1984; the player adopts the role of a mother fox who, in the wake of their child contracting a fatal illness, is suddenly reminded of a story told by their grandmother that urged them to seek out the fried tofu hidden in a particular secluded shrine in times of crisis...
Why should I care? You want to experience what might be described as the progenitor of Microcabin's adventure game house style — that is, heartwarming visuals and tone, inspired by broad-market manga and anime of the day — while also understanding that this particular game's from before they decided that their mass-market games would also benefit from a more all-audience-friendly level of difficulty.
Language barrier? Virtually all of the text is rendered in katakana, and the required noun/verb commands must also be input via katakana.
QUBYTE CLASSICS
- Platform: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $9.99 or equivalent
What's this? A run-and-gun action game with a surreal toybox theme, originally developed by Zeus Software and distributed in arcades by Gaelco in 1995; players control a Steven Seagal lookalike on a mission to save their world by retrieving the magic pendulum that gives life to the toys therein, a feat achieved by running, jumping and shooting everything that moves and optionally collecting the eleven billion scoring items hidden on each screen. (Qubyte's emulation suite has seen something of an upgrade recently, but the core features remains similar: save states, rewind, screen settings, etc.)
Why should I care? This is the first Gaelco reissue from Qubyte, and it's something of an outlier: Gaelco's catalog can broadly be divided into either "perfectly cromulent racing game" or "awful, trashy clone of other, more beloved arcade action games", but this one stands alone in not being completely derivative and not entirely repellent to the touch — no, the constant comparisons to Metal Slug in all the promotional media are not valid, and what you're getting in actuality is something more akin to an Amiga knockoff of Gunstar Heroes, but there are plenty of less pleasant asset tours out there that are less deserving of a playthrough.
Useless fact: The parties involved seem to have employed a variant of their usual attempt at working around this game's plethora of copyrighted audio: they've simply pitched up all the sound, so as to present it as legally distinct.
OTHER
- Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $39.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Bliss Brain / Implicit Conversions
What's this? A horizontally-scrolling shooting game and homage to Japanese boys' TV of the 1970s, originally developed and published by Aroma as a four-disc Sony PlayStation game in 1999 and never reissued until now; underpinned by the emulation suite of now-Atari studio Implicit Conversions, this version not only offers save states, rewind, achievements and various screen options but also boasts two major additions: firstly, a brand-new, multi-language localization; and secondly, a thorough and genuine high-definition remaster of the game's many hand-drawn animations, with the 8,000+ hand-drawn frames presented at their intended 24FS and restored from secret betacam backups unearthed by the original director.
Why should I care? You want to marvel at a piece of software whose every inch is a reference or affectionate sendup of some '70s giant robo, tokusatsu or kaiju property, or some other adjacent pop-culture ephemera that virtually no internationally-borne non-boomer is going to pick up on, and you don't at all mind that the game itself does only the barest minimum in engaging you beyond the pastiche. Moreover, the countless moving parts required to recommercialize a game so full of not-inexpensive content licenses must be both commended and recognized as a sign that certain parties are willing and able to do the legwork to revive even the most complex of products, so if you'd like to simply file this away as a sign that more is on the way, go ahead and do that too.
Useless fact: Years before its ultimate release, this game was publicly revealed and subsequently shelved under the title Geppy Robo; apparently, the developers had presented their game to animation studio Dynamic Pro in order to make sure their many parodies and homages of their properties were on the up-and-up, and when they were presented with a list of no-gos from Dynamic Pro, Aroma's president seems to have interpreted that feedback as a warning not to release the game, and not the "hey, just change xyz and you're good to go" that it actually was.
Star Ocean: The Second Story R
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2 (worldwide)
- Price: $49.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Square-Enix
What's this? A Switch 2 port of 2023's remake of tri-Ace and Square-Enix's 1999 PlayStation RPG Star Ocean: The Second Story, itself based on a PlayStation Portable remaster produced in 2008; this remake reconstructs the world in full polygonal 3D while retaining the 2D pixel art of the original game in a manner not dissimilar to the "2DHD" stylings of other recent Square-Enix RPGs like Octopath Traveler and offers full English and Japanese voice acting, arranged and original music from veteran composer Motoi Sakuraba, the choice of new, classic or PSP character portraits, broadened options and accessibility settings and a revised battle system that uses symbol encounters rather than random battles and integrates new tag/summon mechanics, including a plethora of cameo summons.
Why should I care? When this remake initially dropped on other consoles a few years back, I reckoned that it was a make-or-break for the series and that they were banking on this remake of Star Ocean's critical zenith to kickstart whatever latent interest still existed for a series that had been circling the drain for years... and all these years later, they have nothing to show but a port of the same remake, which I suppose is as good an indicator as any of the health of this series. Whatever the case, you're getting an even-denser version of game that already felt target at minmaxing 2D combo sickos at the turn of the millennium, and I'd like to think I'm not alone in appreciating the hyper-aggressive 2D/3D asset mishmash on display here, in comparison to Square's other, more "tasteful" offerings.
Upgrade path? No upgrade path, no discount, no cross-save, nothin'.
