Retro Re-release Roundup, week of March 2, 2023

Helpful tip: Uncharacteristically for Arcade Archives, this release has launched with a lot of very hard-to-avoid crash bugs on both platforms, so you may want to hold out for a few weeks until Hamster’s patched all the issues.

OTHER

Pocky & Rocky Reshrined

• Platform: PC via Steam (worldwide)
• Price: $29.99 or equivalent
• Publisher: Natsume-Atari

What’s this? A Sonic Mania-esque remix-cum-sequen of the Japanese folklore-themed overhead run-and-gun action game Pocky & Rocky, originally developed by Natsume (now Natsume-Atari) for Super Famicom/SNES in 1992 under license from Taito and now remade by a small team of core developers from Natsume’s heyday; this new version boasts completely redrawn pixel art and remastered audio on top of multiple additional playable characters, new mechanics and new levels and bosses that very quickly diverge from the source material.

Why should I care? This is the third revival project from Natsume’s “Tengo Project”, following Wild Guns Reloaded and The Ninja Warriors Once Again, and they’re batting three for three: the original game was a cult favorite on SNES and a genre highlight even today, and this new version is as authentic and reverent a comeback of any classic 16-game you might care to name, and one that reflects the self-assuredness of a handful of old action game artistans who haven’t lost a step.

Helpful tip: The one failing of Tengo Project’s games is that they tend to be weirdly hostile to casual couch co-op, and Reshrined is no exception: the game is divided into a story mode, which is single-player-only and requires multiple clears to unlock all the characters, and a free mode that allows for co-op but requires all the stages and characters be unlocked via story mode… but, if you want to jump into a co-op session from the rip, enter ←(x4)→(×4) ←→←→←→←→ on the mode select screen to unlock the free mode.

VALIS: The Fantasm Soldier Collection II

• Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide outside of Japan)
• Price: $44.99 or equivalent
• Publisher: Edia

What’s this? A second collection of games from Nihon Telenet’s seminal anime-girl action game series, Valis, which was crowdfunded by the current Telenet catalog owner Edia last year; this collection offers emulated versions of the fourth and final mainline title, the 1991 PC Engine CD game Valis IV, alongside the super-deformed Mega Drive game SD Valis (a remix of sorts of Valis II) and the MSX and Mega Drive versions of the original Valis, presented here with basic save/load, button config and screen settings, as well as a music player, cutscene viewer, translated manuals and new subtitle options where relevant. (The original collection was also available piecemeal, but as of right now, this one’s all-or-nothing with no option to buy any of the games individually.)

Why should I care? If you didn’t play and really enjoy the first collection, you probably shouldn’t: this is a series whose historical importance is undercut by its extremely uneven quality, and we’re now talking about a collection of games that didn’t make the cut the first time around, so… y’know. (The Mega Drive emulation’s not great, either, but when is it ever?)

Useless fact: SD Valis is labeled as Syd of Valis, the title given to the Genesis version by somebody who couldn’t make sense of the “SD” part of the original title, but the versions of the game presented here is the original Japanese version with overlaid subtitles, rather than the genuine Genesis version. How do they differ, you might ask? The Genesis version had a different title screen and referred to Yuko as “Syd”, and that’s pretty much it — it didn’t even translate all of the text.