Retro Re-release Roundup, week of November 12, 2026
Dolls and donkeys.
...y'know, if I'm going to cave to the expectation of writing silly lead-ins referencing the looming shadow of GTA6, I should probably look up when the friggin' thing's coming out, huh?
ARCADE ARCHIVES / ARCADE ARCHIVES 2
Shot Rider
- 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 / Seibu Kaihatsu
What's this? An aggressive overhead motorcycle game, originally developed by Seibu Kaihatsu in 1985; players are challenged to race from goal to goal across branching-route courses without running out of fuel; driving slowly will drain more fuel and crashing into traffic or other obstacles will incur a fuel penalty, but fuel can be recovered by bumping rival motorcyclists off the track or into traffic, by collecting fuel pickups or by timing a stop at the occasional fuel station, and maxing out the fuel gauge will power up the player for a brief while.
Why should I care? You're willing to accept that there's more to this game that just off-brand traverse USA/ZIppy Race — not a ton more, necessarily, but they tried.
Useless fact: I got nothin' on this one, sorry.
Rezon
- 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 / Allumer
What's this? A horizontally-scrolling sci-fi shooting game, originally developed by Allumer iand distributed on arcades n 1991 and reissued for the first time via Arcade Archives in 2023; ; players fly an R-Type-esque spacecraft through R-Type-esque stages on a mission to destroy a bunch of R-Type-esque biomechanical monstrosities, with the aid of a pair of arm-shaped appendages attached to the top and bottom of the ship that undulate with the movement of the ship and can fire angled aim shots and block enemy bullets (unlike R-Type, but not entirely unlike sister game X-Multiply.)
Why should I care? This game may not feel like R-Type, offer design nearly as graceful as R-Type or sound like R-Type (or any other game you'd want to listen to) but, to Allumer's small credit, it does a reasonably good job of looking like R-Type, and it's not so awful that shooting fanatics won't enjoy a brief stroll through the corridors of shameless imitation.
Useless fact: The legendary shooting game composer Manabu Namiki got their start at Allumer and contributed to this game: not via audio, unfortunately, but by drawing a very small amount of supplemental pixel art.
CONSOLE ARCHIVES
Nobunaga Oda den (PlayStation)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 (worldwide)
- Price: $11.99 / €10.99 / £9.89
- Publisher: Hamster / Koei
What's this? The PlayStation version of one of Koei's many, many games themed around the life of historic warlord Oda Nobunaga, originally released in Japan in 1998; this particular game belongs to the"Eiketsuden" sub-series and takes the form of a very console-coded tactics RPG which allows players to relive the key events of Nobunaga's life, including the ability to defy the course of history and steer Nobunaga's fate into what-if territory. (As per usual, Hamster's serving up a raw, untranslated game with no English option.)
Why should I care? You've bounced off any or all of the other Koei historical war sims you've played but think you could probably stick with one that's very conscpicuously modeled after Fire Emblem.
Useless fact: The theme music used for Nobunaga's cameo in the original Dynasty Warriors (the fighting game!) was derived from this game's BGM.
EGG CONSOLE
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $6.49 / ¥880
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Masaya
What's this? A pseudo-3D ball-rolling game, originally developed and distributed by NCS (Masaya) in 1986; player-character Mr.Bump is housed inside a "Survival Ball" which must be guided with precision across the game's 12 stages, which are littered with energy-draining obstacles and pits that spell instant death.
Why should I care? You want to play NCS' debut title, and you're willing to forgive their bald-faced lies about the game taking no inspiration from Marble Madness.
Language barrier? Not at all.
OTHER
- Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintento Switch, Xbox, PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $29.99 or equivalent
- Publisher:Atari / Digital Eclipse
What's this? An emulated compilation of console and handheld games based on Mattel's enduring Barbie doll series; developed by Digital Eclipse, this collection presents its large handful of games with basic save states, rewind, screen settings and cheat-style enhancements, as well as digital manuals, basic history galleries and, most substantially, an all-new Dreamhouse mode that let players style their own digital digs using recreations of hundreds of classic accessories, many of which are unlocked by playing the included classic games.
Which games are included? Barbie Rewind includes 16 games, spanning 1991 to 2007 and even unreleased games: the NES Barbie game, the Game Boy game Barbie: Game Girl, the Game Boy Color games Adventures with Barbie: Ocean Discovery, Barbie Fashion Pack Games and Barbie: Pet Rescue, the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis versions of Barbie: Super Model, the PlayStation games Barbie: Race & Ride, Barbie Super Sports, Detective Barbie: The Mystery Cruise and Barbie: Gotta Have Games, the Game Boy Advance games Secret Agent Barbie: Royal Jewels Mission, Barbie Groovy Games, Barbie Horse Adventures: Blue Ribbon Race, The Barbie Diaries: High School Mystery, Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses and Barbie as the Island Princess and, for the very first time, the unreleased Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis versions of Barbie: Vacation Adventure.
Why should I care? You fully understand that this compilation does not put forth any substantial cultural or historical examination of these games nor any degree of critical appraisal, nor does it offer a comprehensive anthology of the many Barbie games produced during this era — or, put another way, you're not expecting this collection to convince you that these games have anything to offer beyond what is immediately apparent.
Helpful tip: There is a special deluxe physical Switch version that comes bundled with a Barbie doll in an Atari shirt
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $4.50 or equivalent
- Publisher: AM Factory
What's this? A port of the overhead run-and-gun CHO-JIN, originally developed by AM Factory for the Sharp X68000 computer and published via the Takeru vending machine service in 1992; armed with a flamethrower and a recharging energy shield, players are challenged to blast their way through 50 stages of mayhem. (This port adds online leaderboards and is missing the various MIDI sound module music options but is otherwise near-identical to the original computer version.)
Why should I care? You want to play one of the more celebrated hardcore action games from the deeper bowels of the X68000 library, and one that drew a surprising amount (that is, more than zero) of influence from the specific playfulness of the Amiga demoscene, and you don't mind that this port does absolutely nothing to alleviate the game's difficulty.
Word of warning: This game's developer (whose other work includes commercial arcade and console games including Air Buster) has a long history of maintaining and porting forward their older independent works, publicly and privately, but they've also taken to cranking out all sorts of ports, conversions and original games using AI, and I cannot guarantee this port wasn't also vomited out by a chatbot, in full or in part.
- Platform: PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $9.99 each (Anniversary Editions), $4.99 each (others)
- Publisher: Electronic Arts
What're these? 25 classic PC games from Electronic Arts' vaults, spanning the late '80s to the late '90s; while quite a few of these games are being reissued more-or-less as-is, a half-dozen Wing Commander titles, as well as Road Rash (1994), have been given "Anniversary Editions" that included newly-sourced and/or upscaled video footage, the integration and expansion of popular community mods and, in the case of Road Rash, the retention of all licensed music..
Which games are included? You can find a full list here, but in short: the mainline Ultimas and the Ultima Underworld games, the two Crusader games, Theme Hospital, Road Rash, a bunch of Wing Commander games and a couple other odds and ends.
Why should I care? You can appreciate the genuine love and care that's gone into the Anniversary Edition restorations, and that love and care is enough to make you want to toss your money into the coffers of EA's delightful new owners.
Useless fact: Road Rash Anniversary Edition's option to play the licensed music over the races, and not just in the menus, is a feature adopted from the Sega CD version — you'd presume they all let you do it, but nope!
- Platform: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $9.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: H2 Interactive
What's this? A fresh console port of Acclaim's 3D RC-car racing game Re-Volt, originally published for Nintendo 64, PlayStation and PC in 1999 and ported to Sega Dreamcast in 2000, and reissued multiple times via Steam, most recently in 2022; this new home version is based on the most recent PC version and adds four-player split-screen multiplayer, assist features including a minimap and the expansion of item slots from 1 to 3.
Why should I care? You're looking to revisit or newly experience one of the last genuine bangers from Acclaim's original run, and a game whose unique controls set it apart from the many alternative "wacky" racing game contemporaries and amassed a a dedicated global cadre of players who continue to mod and compete in this game to this very day.
Useless fact: Re-Volt is a game that found an outsized following in South Korea, both officially and unofficially due to the PC version's ubiquity as an easily-pirated multiplayer game; the IP was sold separately from the bulk of Acclaim's former catalogue some fifteen years ago and has continued to pass between Korean companies in the interim, not only for the purposes of porting and reissuing the original but in order to facilitate the release of new(ish) mobile games, including one that had very little to do with Re-Volt and a whole lot to do with Gameloft's dull Need for Speed clones.
- Platform: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $29.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Aspyr
What's this? A remaster of the 2004 co-op action-adventure title produced in tandem with the second Shrek movie, originally developed by Luxoflux and published by Activision for PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Xbox and PC; this new version lets players mix and match between 4-player online and couch co-op multiplayer and boasts ubscaled graphics, cutscenes and UI, higher display resolution, new cheats and a photo mode.
Why should I care? I've not played the game nor watched the movie, but I certainly remember the pre-Lego era where any broad and moderately competent co-op action game experience of this kind was able to find success, and I can imagine this is formative game for many of the millions of people who apparently owned it back in the day and are perhaps looking for an excuse to foist it onto their Shrek-agnostic children. That said, all the feedback I'm seeing is the feedback that typically follows every Aspyr port — that is, "they ruined the graphics and broke the game eighteen different ways" — so, as always, you may want to wait several months in the hopes that they eventually get around to fixing it.
Helpful tip: An Epic Games Store sign-in is apparently required for online play, which is just... no.
