Retro Re-release Roundup, week of November 21, 2024
EA’s Nintendo-centric Sims companion series makes an unexpected return.
One quick bit of catchup for something that dropped after last week’s roundup that bears highlighting: a 20th-anniversary update for Half-Life 2 that integrates the two additional episodes, adds hours of developer content, Steam Workshop support and a multitude of technical and graphical tweaks… all completely out of nowhere, as is Valve’s wont.
ARCADE ARCHIVES
Final Blow
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster / Taito
What’s this? A side-view boxing game for one or two players, originally developed and distributed in arcades by Taito in 1989, with home versions produced for various European microcomputers, the FM Towns and Sega’s Genesis and Master System, with the Sega versions rebranded as James ‘Buster’ Douglas Knockout Boxing outside of Japan; players select one of five characters and take on the rest of the roster in order to prove themselves champion, with combat consisting of weak and strong punches at different elevations, as well as manual dodging.
Why should I care? You want to experience graphics and sound that were considered cutting-edge for Taito at the turn of the ’90s, and you’re just as easily swayed by big sprites as you mght have been back then.
Useless fact: Not only was Final Blow a rushed production for Taito’s fledgling F2 System hardware, it was also selected by port-house Ving as a showcase title for the FM Towns’ ability to accomodate arcade-accurate ports of games with giant sprites.
EGG CONSOLE
Guardic (MSX)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $6.49 / ¥880
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Compile
What’s this? A fixed-screen shooting game with adventure game elements, originally developed by Compile alum “PAC” Fujishima and published by Compile for the MSX in Japan in 1986, with various reissues on PC and elsewhere courtesy of Project EGG from the mid-’00s onwards. The player can redistribute their power before beginning each stage in order to equip themselves with the specific weapons and powerups required to negotiate the puzzle-esque stage and enemy formations; upon clearing a stage, the player can manually select the direction they wish to travel in order to reach another stage, with the game’s stages ultimately forming a large maze that the player must navigate in order to finally reach the end.
Why should I care? This game’s historically been treated as nothing more than a footnote in the history of its in-name-only Famicom/NES sequel Guardic Gaiden/The Guardian Legend, but I’d posit that the (admittedly quite rote) mix of snappy action, puzzle-esque stage design and broader progression is tighter and less slapdash than the later game that borrowed its name, and you won’t find many action games built to base MSX spec that acquit themselves as admirably as this one.
Language barrier? What little text is present in the game is written in plain, legible English.
PLAYSTATION PREMIUM
November ’24 update: Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (PlayStation), Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain (PlayStation 2)
What’re these? The first and fourth games in Silicon Knights and Crystal Dynamics’ grimdark vampire-themed action-adventure series Legacy of Kain, originally released for the PlayStation and PC in 1996 and the PlayStation 2. Xbox, Nintendo Gamecube and PC in 2002. respectively; players guide the vampiric antihero Kain on what starts as a simple quest of vengeance but quickly expands into an intricate web of shifting factions, manipulation and time paradoxes which, to my recollection, are primarily negotiated via interminable amounts of block-pushin’. (These PS Classics reissues are an appetizer to the Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1&2 remasters that are queued up for next months. Those are games #2 and #3, for the uninitiated; besides all these games, there’s also a fifth game, which may or may not stay in the vault.)
Why should I care? This series was essentially conceived as “Zelda for Grown Ups” and while neither Silicon Knights nor Crystal Dynamics really executed on the Zelda front, the character writing and voice performances (by a fairly prestigious cast of actors, some of whome have since passed away) found an immediate, rabid fanbase and are sure to present the same level of intrigue nowadays, presuming one is willing to tolerate a lot of perfunctory nonsense in order to see them through.
Post-post addendum: Sony’s also added the first two Resistance games to PS Premium and I have completely forgotten to mention them in this roundup, multiple times, because my brain refuses to retain a single thing about them, and I don’t think that’s just a me issue.
OTHER
InFlux Redux
- Platform: PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $19.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Impromptu Games
What’s this? A remake of Impromptu Games’ exploratory marble-rolling game InFlux, originally released on PC in 2013; this version has been recreated in Unreal Engine 5 with higher-poly assets.high-resolution textures, new lighting and all manner of modern rendering/post-processing effects, as well as assorted undocumented design and quality-of-life tweaks, including new hidden collectibles that unlock concept art.
Why should I care? You’re looking for a 3D marble-rolling game that blends the challenge stages of a Marble Blast Ultra with a variety of relaxed, low-key hub worlds that’ll let you just roll a ball around if you wanna, and you want to try a version that performs much better for the sole reason that it’s not on UE3.
Useless fact: This remaster very nearly wasn’t approved for release on Steam because someone at Valve initially determined it wasn’t sufficiently different from the original game, which remains available for purchase. Why they drew the line at this remaster, of all the redundant remasters out there, is anyone’s guess.
Irem Collection Volume 2
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox (worldwide)
- Price: $24.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: ININ / Ratalaika
What’s this? The second volume of a long-announced, long-behind-schedule series of compilations of games from the classic Irem catalogue, this one containing the arcade and Super Nintendo versions of their run-and-gun Gunforce, its arcade-exclusive sequel Gunforce II and the vertically-scrolling shooter Air Duel; these games are presented with Ratalaika’s tried-and-tested feature suite, which include save states, rewind, various screen settings and button configs, cheat options and more. (This actually came out last week, a week ahead of the final Japanese release date and approximately nine hundred years after it was intially slated to release, hence why I missed it.)
Why should I care? The two series present in this volume just happen to be the precursors to a pair of far more popular Neogeo games —Mitsuo Kodama and SNK’s Last Resort and AKIO and Nazca’s Metal Slug — and while it’s a little dismissive to view them purely through that lens, it’s certainly true that the roots of those games’ aesthetics are very evident, and that there’s a basic play feel shared between these games and their unofficial successors. (I can’t offer first-hand impressions of the emulation, but I will say that the first volume had a lot of severe and immediate issues that were not fully fixed for a long time.)
Useless fact: Volume 3 of this series has been announced to include Mr.Heli, Mystic Riders and Dragon Breed, but the contents of the other two volumes still haven’t been announced, and one has to wonder if they’ll ever come out…
MySims Cozy Bundle
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $39.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: Electronic Arts
What’s this? A remastered two-pack of the first two games in Electronic Arts’s MySims series, a Nintendo-centric spinoff of Maxis’ social simulator The Sims with a focus on a cuter and less realistic aesthetic, distinct crafted characters and a more guided narrative and game loop; this collection presents the Wii versions of 2007’s MySims and 2008’s MySims Kingdom in widescreen with up-res’d UI elements and textures and touched-up character models, as well as the integrations of exclusive content from the first game’s PC port and reconfigured controls that map the originally motion-and-pointer-heavy inputs to alternative control methods.
Why should I care? While I cannot tell you whether these remasters do justice to the original games — almost all of the discussion I’ve found is centered on people bickering about the fact that they didn’t port the DS versions, and whether it was reasonable to expect anything different — I can say that the original games were an open attempt to bridge the passive character role-playing of The Sims with the game loop and heavy building/decorating focus of Animal Crossing, and I have to imagine these games will feel especially fresh to players used to more modern farming or social sims that are designed with insidious mobile or pseudo-mobile player retention toxin. It’s also a small miracle to see one of these Nintendo-specific side-series given any sort of attention in the modern day, let alone treated with any degree of reverence.
Helpful tip: None of the online functionality present in the PC version of MySims was retained for these ports; they’re strictly single-player affairs.
iOS & ANDROID
Arcade Amusement Toaplan (iOS / Android)
- Price: free to download; $5.99 or equivalent for each game
- Publisher:Tatsujin Co.ltd
What’s this? A digital hub offering access to the arcade catalog of the venerable Japanese developer Toaplan, active from the mid-’80s to the mid-’90s and particularly famous for their shooting game output; in addition to offering emulated versions of 25 games with region variants, various control and display settings (including vertical display support and support for external wired and/or wireless controllers) and more, it also includes a customizable virtual arcade frontend with 3D models of arcade cabinets and other accessories that can be arranged at will.
Which games are included? The base download includes Truxton/Tatsujin for free, as well as trial versions of Tiger Heli, Sky Shark/Flying Shark, Pyros/Wardner, Brainwashing Game Teki Paki, and Snow Bros; other games available for purchase include Get Star/Guardian, Slap Fight/Alcom, Kyuukyoku Tiger/Twin Cobra, Rally Bike/Dash Yarou, Hellfire, Twin Hawk/Daisenpuu, Demon’s World/Horror Story, Zero Wing, Fire Shark/Same!Same!Same!, Out Zone, Vimana, Ghox, Truxton II/Tatsujin Ou, Fixeight, Dogyuun!!, Grind Stormer/V-V, Knuckle Bash, Batsugun and Snow Bros. 2.
Why should I care? While the world is hardly hurting for Toaplan reissues at this very moment — we’re just coming off a string of shooting game reissues on PC, alongside M2’s higher-end console reissues, various remakes, cartridge reissues and whatever else — but if you want a low-investment way to mess with these games on the go, I hear the emulation’s not half bad.
Helpful tip: M2 may or may not get to all these games eventually but for the time being, this app is offering the first legit reissue of the shooter-esque block-breaker Ghox and the utterly absurd brawler Knuckle Bash.
