Retro Re-release Roundup, week of March 27. 2025

What’s this? The first-ever console port of Cyberdreams and The Dreamers Guild’s 1995 point-and-click adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s famous dystopian sci-fi short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, originally published to great acclaim in 1967; the game adaptation was originally published for MS-DOS and Mac, with a PlayStation port considered but ultimately not produced, and later reissued by Night Dive Studio for PC and Mac in 2013 and for smartphones in 2016. To my knowledge, this version’s essentially identical to the existing Night Dive versions, save for necessary additions like controller support and achievements.

Why should I care? Harlan Ellison was heavily involved in the writing and design process of this adaptation, both in terms of fleshing out the supplemental details and backstories of the five protagonists but also in crafting the game’s puzzles and outcomes to match the same bleak thematic denouements of the story; in practice, you’re looking at a game that’s nigh-unbeatable in the conventional sense — and a reissue that makes virtually no effort to accomodate those going in blind who might want to achieve something resembling a “good” ending — but if any game’s going to permanently reframe your thinking on “quality of life”, it’s this one.

Useless fact: Ellison even voiced one of the central characters, and I don’t think you’ll have any trouble figuring out which one.

SaGa Frontier 2: Remastered

• Platform: PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, PC via Steam (worldwide)
• Price: $29.99 or equivalent 
• Publisher: Square-Enix / Bullets

What’s this? A remaster of the 1999/2000 PlayStation entry in Square’s long-running open-ended RPG series, SaGa, that was just surprised-dropped across multiple platforms (sorry Xbox). Produced by Bullets, the studio behind the recent Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song remaster, this new version boasts restored and/or upscaled high-definition visuals (including newly-drawn sprites where necessary), additional story events and narrative by supplementary author Benny Matsuyama, new systems for transferring player skills from character to character, optional powerful post-game bosses, a more granular new game+ mode, various quality-of-life enhancements including a revised UI and battle speed options and the in-game implementation of the PocketStation mining minigame that was originally unavailable to non-Japanese players, among other unspecified changes.

Why should I care? SaGa Frontier 2 was an absolute pinnacle of 2D artistry on PlayStation, and part of the reason the team had skipped over remastering this particular entry until now was due to their desire to do proper justice to the illustrative environments of the original — and, considering some of the absolutely foul “HD” offerings proffered by Square and others in recent years, I’d say they did okay. On a structural level, the unique “History Choice” system, which sees players essentially selecting fragmented events that cumulatively form an interconnected, era-spanning narrative, might offer just enough structure for those who felt previous games were a little too directionless, and I imagine the new supplementary scenario go a ways towards plugging all the gaps presented by the original story, either due to the fragmented nature of the timeline or due to them simply not including a lot of crucial details and plot points within the game itself. 

Useless fact: I can only presume that the many undocumented system changes include a fix to allow the character roles to, like, function: after the release of the original game, the developers openly admitted that majority of roles were bugged to be non-functional and they couldn’t figure out how to repair them, and that they figured that releasing the game as-is, with a few roles that did work, was ultimately still preferable to just stripping ’em all out for the sake of parity.

LIMITED-EDITION PHYSICAL PRINT RUNS

Gradius Origins (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, Nintendo Switch) physical versions from Limited Run Games

• Price: $39.99 (standard) / $69.99 (classic) / $179.99 (collectors box)
• Availability: from 10:00, March 28 to 23:59, May 11 Eastern; ETA late September (standard)

Another fresh announcement via Nintendo DIrect: Gradius Origins, a M2-produced collection focused on the early arcade entries in Konami’s venerated shooting game series Gradius — specifically, Gradius, Gradius II, Gradius III, sister title Salamander and both versions of the revision, Life Force —  plus the brand-new, out-of-nowhere Salamander III. This collection will be out digitally in August (including on PC), but LRG’s got the plug on the internationa physical versions, with a few different variants that include alternate cover jackets (including one for Salamander III), a “classic” version in the Konami NES silver box tradition and a deluxe collectors box with an interview/materials book, 4-disc soundtrack, light-up desk marquee and much more.