Retro Re-Release Roundup, week of September 24, 2026
A late-stage NES gem gets its first official re-release.
I've received a few recent questions asking why I haven't or don't mention certain fan translations, hacks, recomps etc in these roundups, so I figured I ought to reply here rather than elsewhere: these scenes are so polluted by AI and machine-translation abuse that I don't personally care to follow them any longer, and while I fully recognize that monitoring and highlighting the more credible and conscionable contributions from this space would be a useful and worthwhile endeavor, I cannot be the one to provide such a service on account of I don't wanna.
ARCADE ARCHIVES 2
Xevious 3D/G
- 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? A polygonal revival title in Namco's classic and highly influential vertically-scrolling sci-fi shooting game series Xevious, originally developed and distributed in arcades by Namco in 1996 and ported to PlayStation alongside earlier arcade Xevious games as Xevious 3D/G+ in 1997; players take their fight to the Gamp one last(?) time, with the tried-and-true air-shot/ground-bomb system augmented with a new weapon power-up system, hard stage cuts rather than one contiguous run, a new, involved rank system and, obviously, a new depiction of the classic Xevious aesthetic with polygonal 3D visuals (and the occasional FMV).
Why should I care? This game was originally released during a relatively competitive era of arcade shooting games, both design-wise and with regards to new graphical and visual frontiers, and was dismissed fairly quickly as inferior to other comparable games of its day and for failing to advance or even maintain much of the charm of the original Xevious, but revisiting it now — and specifically, this reissue, which offers on-screen readouts for some useful hidden info and explains some of the under-the-hood systems in the manual, complete with helpful screenshots for hidden items — might allow one to wring a little more fun out of it, and to understand that the graphics are less primitive and more stylized in an attempt to recreate the intended aesthetic of the original game (and that this arcade version didn't look quite as coarse as the home port).
Helpful tip: While many sources claim the unlockable Tekken character-ships were an addition for the PS port, they are in fact present in the original arcade version and are selectable via button command: to play as Heihachi, player 1 has move the cursor to the P1 side and hold left+bomb+shot+start until the first stage loads, or to play as Paul Phoenix, player 2 has to move the cursor to the P2 side and hold right+bomb+shot+start until the stage loads. (Do note that they kinda suck.)
Karate Champ (NES)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 (worldwide)
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster / Data East
What's this? The NES conversion of Data East's popular 1v1 martial arts arcade series, originally published in 1986 and succeeding popular Apple II and Commodore 64 conversions from a year prior; in addition to maintaining the competitive two-player mode from the Vs. Karate Champ revision, this port offers a similar single-player martial art bout format, with the most notable difference being the reinterpretation of the arcade version's dual-joystick controls into something one might consider reasonable on a d-pad-and-two-face-buttons controller.
Why should I care? Look, if it wasn't for this game, Capcom would've won their plagiarism lawsuit against Data East and irrevocably altered the history of the fighting game genre for the worse, so give it a pass, okay?
Useless fact: The original NES box had a picture of the ox fight on it, but it's not in the game. It's not in the game!
JALECOLLE FAMICOM VER.
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, (worldwide)
- Price: $9.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: City Connection
What's this? An emulated reissue of a side-scrolling action game starring a cyber-armed hero, originally developed by Natsume and published by Jaleco for NES in North America and Europe across 1991 and 1992, in tandem with a Famicom reskin that loosely ties it to the tokusatsu series Super Rescue Solbrain; alongside JALECOlle's usual enhancements (save states, rewind, border options, speedrun mode, art/manual galleries, a "Subtitle Guide" that offers overlaid Japanese translations of the in-game text and more), this release also includes a hefty collection of raw and translated design documents and two optional enhanced modes: a mode that allows the player to heal their satellite robot by punching projectiles, and a mode that rewards the player with a power-up for assembling the specific satellite robot combination listed in the screen borders.
Why should I care? The JALECOlle series has, by City Connection's own admission, been a project intended to rehabilitate the "b-games" in Jaleco's library, but Shatterhand represents something else entirely: it's not really a Jaleco game, for one, but more crucially, it's the first-ever reissue of a late-era NES showpiece and a staple of every tiny-dude-action-game recommendation list and one that absolutely did not need any of the touch-ups it has received in order to stand among the pantheon of NES action game greats. (Ideally, it's also the first domino in getting a Shatterhand revival from the original devs at Tengo Project, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.)
Useless fact: Not only does the old cheat code work but this reissue also displays a timer to let you know how long it took to input the code.
OTHER
- Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $29.99 or equivalent
- Publisher:Night Dive Studios / Atari
What's this? A second remaster of Ritual Entertainment's anime-inspired 1998 PC first-person shooter SiN, following the 2020 refactor/compilation SiN Gold; this new Kex Engine-powered overhaul offers significant changes and embellishments to weapon behavior, stage design and set dressing and seeks to integrate features from the Wages of SiN expansion into the base game, in addition to fixes and re-implementations of unused content, redone cinematics, a new lighting renderer, selective updates to textures and character models, HD-compliant UI, newly-devised controller support and more, with support of up to 4K resolution and 120FPS depending on platform.
Why should I care? Of all the post-Quake FPS, SiN represents the most accomplished (or perhaps, least significantly compromised) attempt to realize the quasi-realistic interactive toybox design of Duke Nukem 3D in true 3D, with a more sophisticated and character-driven focus that remains firmly in the pre-Half Life era and a cyberpunk OVA vibe executed with surprising competency — it's both an evolution and endcap to a very short-lived evolutionary strain of FPS that even modern boomer-shooters aren't really exploring, and this long-in-the-making remaster might finally jumpstart any of the many implied attempts to resurrect the series. (Do bear in mind that Night Dive's once again presented a fairly liberal reproduction of the original stage design that is not at all 1:1 with the originals.)
Upgrade path? There doesn't look to be any particular upgrade or discount from Sin Gold, but the Switch-to-Switch 2 upgrade is free, at least.
