Retro Re-release Roundup, week of January 9, 2025

Resume the fight for freedom… until the end of February, at least.

2025 is kicking into gear, with all the usual sicko reissue lines reactivating and the rush of lower-profile remasters and ports kicking off in earnest. Of course, those publishers hoping to monopolize a traditionally quiet time of year must be stressing about the Switch successor announcement hanging over everyones’ heads, but after years and years of waiting for it to drop, it’d be silly to start treating the big reveal as a foregone conclusion… right…?

ARCADE ARCHIVES

Vs. Family Tennis

• Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (worldwide)
• Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
• Publisher: Hamster / Namco

What’s this? The Nintendo Vs. System conversion of Namco’s Famicom tennis game, originally released in Japan in 1987 and adapted for feature phones in the early ’00s; players pick one of 16 identity-infringing characters and one of 4 courts before taking on either a CPU player or another player in a race to win six games of tennis. (Aside from the removal of the lengthier single-player tournament mode, I believe this version’s identical to the Famicom version in terms of audiovisuals and mechanics.)

Why should I care? Namco’s legacy of home tennis games, which include the cult Turbografx-16 title World Court Tennis, have very apparent mechanical roots in this game, and any reissue of this particular game, let alone this extremely obscure version, has been a long, long time coming.

Useless fact: Vs. Family Tennis was distributed in such low quantities that some of its developers have openly wondered whether it was actually formally released; after some inquiries, it seems it was solely released in select Namco-owned arcades, hence its scarcity.

EGG CONSOLE

Ys (MSX2)

• Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
• Price: $6.49 / ¥880
• Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Nihon Falcom

What’s this? The MSX2 port of Falcom’s super-popular bump-combat action-RPG Ys II, originally developed and published for the PC-8801 in 1988 and ported far and wide in the intervening months, years and decades, including a reissue of the PC-88 original some months ago; this port preserves and maintains the form and content of the original while making necessary hardware-specific changes and concessions, the most obvious of which being a slightly lower resolution, an increase in on-screem colors and a lack of FM audio, with music and sound restricted to the PSG chip (which sounds very similar to that of the Sega Master System or Game Gear, for reference).

Why should I care? Unlike the previous MSX port, this one runs comparably to the PC-88 original, and the PSG renditions of the BGM have a certain charm that can’t be found in the original game nor the vast majority of its ports, so you may want to take this opportunity to revisit the game with a cute new soundscape.

Language barrier? As usual, you’re looking at certain UI/menu options being in English and most everything else being in Japanese, including quest details/prompts that one will need to be able to read to progress.

G-MODE ARCHIVES+

Psycho Mystery Series vol.7: Yokohama Bokushikan

• Platform: Nintendo Switch (Japan)
• Price: $7.99 / ¥800
• Publisher: G-MODE

What’s this? The seventh entry in Genki/And-Joy’s Psycho Mystery series of paranormal mystery adventure games, which spanned roughly a dozen volumes, as well as radio dramas and e-books, from 2005 to 2007; when childhood friend Mamoru is asked by his arranged fiance to appraise the demon-repelling mirror stored in their family mansion, detective and unrequited love interest Haruka invites herself along to the appraisal, only to discover that the fiance’s father has been murdered…

Why should I care? The will-they-or-won’t-they between Haruka and Mamoru takes a decisive turn n this episode, or so I’m told; what’s more, there was a significant shift in production style beginning with this episode that many choose to interpret as the soft beginning of a new “season” of the series.

Heavy-handed literary/historical reference? Lotsa Kojiki in this one.

OTHER

Freedom Wars Remastered

• Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam (worldwide)
• Price: $39.99 or equivalent
• Publisher: Bandai-Namco / Sony / Shift / Dimps

What’s this? A remaster of the Sony-published dystopic multiplayer hunting action game Freedom Wars, which was originally developed by Shift and Dimps and published for the PlayStation Vita in 2014 and, for whatever reason, has been picked up for remaster by Bandai-Namco; this version maintains all the hookshot-heavy hunting action and various competitive, co-operative and persistent faction-based multiplayer modes of the original while bumping the resolution and framerate to up to 4K/60FPS depending on platform, adding broad balance tweaks (including higher player speed) and a new extra-tough difficulty mode, customizable controls and access to all previous DLC.

Why should I care? I can’t offer any personal impressions of this one — my time spent with the Vita was short-lived, and of all the many not-Monster Hunters I could’ve played, I went with Soul Sacrifice — but it was clear at the time that Sony seemed to be most of their chips on this game to propel the Vita to new levels of popularity… and sure, that didn’t really pan out, especially outside of Japan, but seeing this game not only resurrected but signed off to another, less knuckleheaded published bodes well for the many other noteworthy one-offs tucked tightly under Sony’s wing. If nothing else, Bandai-Namco deserves credit for getting this out before Monster Hunter Wilds…

Helpful tip(s): Crossplay is only present between the PS5/4 versions, and not PC and/or Switch. Physical buyers, also note: the physical version’s currently exclusive to Japan/Asia, and further exclusive to PS6 and Switch.