Retro Re-release Roundup, week of October 29, 2026
Ellipsoids, the ultimate horror.
Reminder: friends don't encourage friends to give their money to Jez San.
ARCADE ARCHIVES / ARCADE ARCHIVES 2
Prehistoric Isle
- 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 / SNK
What's this? A side-view scrolling shooting game with a prehistoric land-of-the-lost theme, originally developed and distributed in arcades by SNK in 1999 and reissued as part of various pre-Neogeo SNK compilations, including 2018's SNK 40th Anniversary Collection for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch; one or two players blast their way across a forgotten island full of prehistoric beasts, with only their shot and a crucial floating option, which can be manually rotated and whose supplementary shots differ depending on the option's orientation, standing between them and death.
Why should I care? You want to try one of SNK's more visually accomplished pre-Neogeo titles, and you're someone who's willing to tolerate some absolutely execrable game balance in order to experience it. (Suckers for a clasically grim ending might also want to give it a look...)
Useless fact: The "Greenhell Isle" seen in this game was later referenced as the home of Samurai Shodown's Tam-Tam and Cham-Cham.
Swimmer
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC via Xbox Play Anywhere (worldwide, ACA2)
- Price: $9.99 / €8.99 / £7.39 (ACA2), $2.99 / €2.99 / £2.49 (ACA-to-ACA2 upgrade)
- Publisher: Hamster / Tecmo
What's this? A vertically-oriented and primarily auto-scrolling action game, developed by Tecmo and distributed in arcade by Tecmo and Centuri in 1982 and reissued as part of the 2005 Xbox compilation Tecmo Classic Arcade, and more recently via the original Arcade Archives run in 2021; the player is tasked with dodging, avoiding and diving under various enemies and obstacles while swimming up-current, collecting Pac-Man-esque offensive invincibility powerups and specific configurations of bonus fruits all the while.
Why should I care? For a game of its vintage, Swimmer's relatively easy and clear and easy to control, and the graphics strike an uncanny balance between crude and advanced.
Useless fact: This game was among the earliest, if not the earliest, works of several notable developers including Solomon's Key creator Michitaka Tsuruta and Wonder Boy/Monster World and Westone co-founders Ryuichi Nishizawa and Michishito Ishizuka.
CONSOLE ARCHIVES
Marl Jong (PlayStation)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 (worldwide)
- Price: $11.99 / €10.99 / £9.89
- Publisher: Hamster / Nippon Ichi Software
What's this? A mahjong game set in the universe of Nippon Ichi Software's Marl Kingdom series, originally developed and published for Sony PlayStation exclusively in Japan in 2003 and reissued via PS Classics for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable in the 2010s; players can take on a CPU opponent, a friend (via local, all-tiles-uncovered multiplayer) or progress through the Kururu-centric story mode in a simple mahjong variant reminiscent of donjara, albeit with character-specific special moves and massively overpowered "fraudulent" moves. (As always, Hamster's delivering this game in its original, untranslated state.)
Why should I care? You've resigned yourself to your position on the one-way escalator that delivers all oldheads to mahjong, or you're a Nippon Ichi fan who wants to indulge in fan content that extends beyond the Marl universe...
Useless fact: This game received a limited-edition release in Japan that included a drama CD and other supplemental media, and those extras seem to have been more in-demand than the game itself ever was.
G-MODE ARCHIVES+
- Platform: PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $7.99
- Publisher: G-MODE / Bandai-Namco
What's this? A turn-based fantasy RPG, originally distributed on Japanese feature phones in 2010 by Bandai-Namco as a successor to the original 2008 game Lost Chronicle, which was reissued via G-MODE Archives a few months back; this game presents as a conventional but significantly more voluminous follow-up to the original, with slightly improved audiovisuals and a massive increase in story, main and post-game quests, enemies, job classes and skills and items to acquire and/or synthesize, as well as character designs and digitized illustrations by Anji Majima, primary designer for Square-Enix's Lords of Vermillion/Arcana.
Why should I care? While I cannot confirm that any of the content is necessarily any more thoughtfully designed than this era's usual assortment of overly-grindy time-wastery, this game made waves in its day for simply giving players so much more to do than comparable mobile RPGs, so anyone who picks this up should at least receive bang for their yen, if nothing else.
Helpful tip: I haven't been able to put any real time into this game, so I got nothin'. Better luck next game, I guess.
NINTENDO SWITCH ONLINE
October '26 update: Avenging Spirit, Mole Mania and Revenge of the Gator (Game Boy)
What're these? The Game Boy adaptation of Jaleco's body-hopping arcade action game, an original top-down block-pushing game from the Nintendo-led team that brought the world Donkey Kong '94 and an alligator-themed digital pinball game that added to what was already a grand tradition of HAL Laboratory digital pinball games.
Why should I care? Aside from any general reassurance that Nintendo hasn't forgotten they have an existing avenue via which Game Boy games can be reissued, they've served up two proven B-tier Game Boy workhorses and one of a very small handful of first-party Nintendo software that one could credibly describe as unsung (and one with an especially under-played multiplayer game that one would think will now be played by exponentially more people than were ever able to experience it during the link cable era).
Helpful tip: Avenging Spirit features a more challenging "Expert" mode hidden behind a button combination, Kirby's Dream Land-style, but for whatever reason, the non-Japanese versions of the game omit the screen that tells you of the existence of the command and how to perform it, so here ya go: press A+B+Up on the title screen.
OTHER
- Platform: PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $14.99 or equivalent (each) / $19.99 or equivalent (bundle)
- Publisher:Andrew Spencer Studios / SNEG
What're these? Remasters of the surreal fixed-angle 3D survival-horror adventure duology Ecstatica and Ecstatica II, originally developed near-solely by Andrew Spencer for MS-DOS and Windows and published by Psygnosis in 1994 and 1997, respectively; these new versions adapt Spencer's peculiar and distinctive ellipsoid-based engine to modern hardware and offer on-the-fly switching between contemporary and classic rendering mode, modern control options, the choice of multiple soundtracks and more. (There are demos for both games, too.)
Why should I care? You've heard tell of these peculiar games that sit somewhere between Alone in the Dark, Twinsen's Adventure, Ocarina of Time and a traumatic brain injury but have been dissuaded from trying them due to technical complications that have now been completely eliminated. (More to-the-point: c'mon, just look at 'em!)
Helpful tip: Also available for Ecstatica as free DLC: an optional pack of 8K-resolution renders of every background in the game, for those who want to play at the highest possible resolution but want to reduce the CPU strain that comes with rendering these (static) backgrounds in real time.
- Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, Xbox (worldwide)
- Price: $59.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: 5pb./MAGES / Spike-Chunsoft
What's this? A second remake of 5pb. and Nitroplus' hit sci-fi visual novel Steins;Gate, which was originally released for Xbox 360 and PC in Japan in 2009 and eventually released worldwide via PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita and Steam released that were localized from 2014 to 2015; the game also spawned several mixed-media projects including a successful TV anime, from which the 2019 remake Steins;Gate Elite derived most of its source visuals. For this remake, MAGES turned to emulation company M2's "E-mote" portrait animation tool to recreate the game with 3D visuals, updated character designs, re-recorded Japanese voice performances and music and an additional route that may or may not be new to fans of the broader Steins;gate media world.
Why should I care? There seems to be an understanding among fans that MAGES is on their last legs and is returning to the well with yet another Steins;Gate remake out of desperation, so one may choose to put aside their distate with the new visuals, lack of new compelling content and alleged significant truncation of the script in order to prop up the company for long enough to make a genuine successor game.. or maybe you just like how it looks, iunno.
...didn't this already come out? On PC, yes! On consoles, no: certain English versions were meant to be day-and-date with the PC release but just... weren't, so here we are. Incidentally, the conditions of the early-purchase bonus (a localization of a Japanese PC-style adventure side game ) seem to have shifted slightly, too: what was originally advertised as exclusive to first-print physical Sony/Nintendo copies or pre-November 1 PC/Xbox copies is now available digitally on Sony/Nintendo platforms as a pre-order and/or digital-deluxe add-on, and their site no longer mentions Xbox as being eligible for the promo...
