Retro Re-release Roundup, week of April 26, 2018
Star Hordes.
After last week's onslaught, today's update is a relatively sedate affair: a mere dozen games, including an atypical lone title from our buddies at Hamster, as well as a modest selection of approximately 750 discounted games. Jeez, turn it up a little.
ARCADE ARCHIVES NEO GEO
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One (worldwide)
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster
What's this? An orthodox vertically-scrolling military plane shooter in the vein of Capcom's 1942 or Toaplan's Sky Shark, developed and published in arcades by SNK in 1991 and reissued for the first time today by our ol' pals Hamster.
Why should I care? You'recurious to play a vertically-scrolling game with an obscene amount of horizontal scrolling.
Useless fact: The original arcade release allowed players to save their progress to memory card, presumably due to the game's unusually long length for a shooting game, with a full clear taking well over an hour.
XBOX ORIGINALS ON XBOX ONE
Xbox One Backwards Compatibility Update, April 2018 (wave two)
- Platform: Xbox One
- Price: starting from $9.99 / £6.75 / €9,49, or free if you own the original game disc or X360 Xbox Original digital version
- Publisher: various
What's this? The second wave of backwards-compatible Xbox Original titles for Xbox One — or, to be precise, the remainder of the titles that began trickling out last week — replete with the standard enhancements including native rendering at 4x the standard resolution (16x on Xbox One X, so very close to 4K) and local System Link support across XB1, X360 and OG XBOX.
Which titles are available? Almost a dozen titles are dropping today, including seven former LucasArts games — Star Wars Battlefront & Star Wars Battlefront II (the originals, not the recent DICE games, of course), Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Star Wars Jedi Starfighter, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords and Star Wars Republic Commando, plus the original Mercenaries game — and four lesser cuts from the inexhaustible vaults of THQ Nordic: Destroy All Humans!, Full Spectrum Warrior, MX Unleashed and Panzer Elite Action: Fields of Glory.
Why should I care? Destroy All Humans and MX Unleashed are among the few noteworthy titles in THQ's Xbox-era catalogue that never left consoles and, while they're mostly superseded by superior PC ports, it's nice to see Microsoft pony up for so many Star Wars games from the jump.
Helpful tip: Destroy All Monsters is one of the many old THQ games scheduled for a fully-fledged remaster by THQ Nordic, so the ultra-high-def experience won't be exclusive to XB1 for long.
SALES & MISCELLANEA
- Platform: PC via Humble Store (worldwide, includes Steam key)
- Discount: up to 80% off various Degica-published games until April 30
Degica Games, publisher of all things niche and Japanese, is running deep discounts of most of their catalogue in celebration of Golden Week: in addition to a continuation of last week's CAVE sales, they're also offering deals on legacy titles as disparate as A-Train, RPG Maker and Umihara Kawase, as well as newer titles including Dariusburst Chronicle Saviours and the little-played Shining series fighting game, Blade Arcus.
Humble Capcom x Sega Playstation Bundle
- Platform: Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, Playstation 3 (North America)
- Price: pay-what-you-want until May 8 (max tier $15USD)
Capcom and Sega are back together once again to bring you a bargain grab-bag of games: any amount will get you a handful of games including the PS4 Dead Rising port and the indomitable Crazy Taxi, beating the average (currently just shy of $12) will net you a half-dozen games including HD PS4 versions of REmake, Resident Evil Code Veronica and Mega Man Legacy Collection, with the $15 tier adding the PS4 versions of Dead Rising 2 and Valkyria Chronicles. (Also up for grams: discount vouchers for newer titles including Resident Evil 7 and Yakuza 0.)
Playstation Europe's "Big in Japan" sale
- Platform: Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, Playstation 3 (Europe)
- Price: up to 70% off hundreds of titles until May 9
Playstation Europe's also getting in on the Golden Week celebrations with a huge sale that includes over 700 made-in-Japan titles across PS4, Vita and PS3: for the sake of brevity, I'll limit my recommendations to some of the more recent legacy releases that are currently discounted: Shadow of the Colossus PS4, Okami HD, Devil May Cry HD Collection (with or without Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition), Wild Guns Reloaded, The Disney Afternoon Collection, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, Romancing SaGa 2 and, and the Parappa The Rapper / Patapon / Locoroco HD bundle.
Sega 3D Classics Collection sale
- Platform: Nintendo 3DS (North America)
- Price: $14.99 until May 7
Sega of America's modestly-printed compilation of Sega 3D Classics titles is starting to disappear from shelves, so view this sale as a convenient opportunity to secure a digital copy of the compilation which, aside from excellent stereoscopic 3D conversions of Sonic the Hedgehog, Altered Beast, Galaxy Force II and Thunder Blade, includes several additional titles that are not available individually, including Puyo Puyo 2, Power Drift and M2's arcade-authentic remake of Fantasy Zone II.
