Retro Re-release Roundup, week of December 21, 2023

The little-played successor to Sunset Riders finally leaves Konami’s vault.

One quick notification for those of you who’ve been enjoying the recent reissues of vintage Japanese computer games: EGG Console publisher D4 Enterprise has opened a public Google form for people to officially request games they’d like to see reissued; the form’s in Japanese, but you can find a breakdown of the form here, should you need it, as well as a rundown of the games already confirmed to be appearing in the not-too-distant future.

ARCADE ARCHIVES

Mystic Warriors

• Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4
• Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
• Publisher: Hamster / Video System

What’s this? A run-and-gun action game with an over-the-top future-but-ninjas setting, originally developed and distributed in arcades by Konami in 1993 and never ported or reissued until now. The player and up to three pals are tasked with choosing from five distinct player-characters and taking on the evil Skull Enterprise in order to rescue their kidnapped comrade; players can throw shuriken, slide/roll/dash and jump between platforming planes in a manner not dissimilar to Konami’s earlier Sunset Riders and can also perform melee attacks at close range, with the properties of their shot, melee and dodge/plane-switching moves being distinct to each character. (The Arcade Archives version includes both the Japanese and North American versions and, as is typical of Konami games of the era, the American version’s significantly tougher, and not necessarily in a fun way.)

Why should I care? For reasons known only to Konami, Mystic Warriors saw only modest distribution overseas and very little distribution in Japan, and this long-awaited reissue is bound to prompt countless people to once again ask: why? It’s the sequel to Sunset Riders you wanted but probably never knew about; it’s the game adaptation of the cartoon you wish you could’ve watched every weekend, it has more Konami techno-orchestra than you can shake a stick at and it’s a bombastic capstone to the short-lived era of plane-swapping platform action games as codified by Rolling Thunder. 

Helpful tips: First off, if ya wanna play with 4 players, you have to set the 2P/4P toggle in the options menu. Secondly, they’ve added a slowdown reduction toggle in the game settings and I suggest you turn it on as the game can really chug, particularly in co-op. Thirdly, if you enter the Konami Code on the main Arcade Archives menu, you can access a hidden sound test.

EGG CONSOLE

Hydlide (PC-8801)

• Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
• Price: $6.49 / ¥880
• Publisher: D4 Enterprise / T&E Soft

What’s this? An overhead “active RPG”, developed almost solely by Tokuhiro Naito for T&E Soft and published for the PC-8801 computer in 1984, with subsequent ports produced for most other contemporary Japanese computers of the day, as well as a Famicom remix, titled Hydlide Special, which released in Japan in 1986 and for the NES in North America (as simply Hydlide) in 1989; players control the hero Jim (yeah) on a quest to reclaim the cursed princess and reclaim the world of Fairyland from a demon that was unsealed from within three magic jewels, which he seeks to achieve by bumping into enemies, collecting items to solve basic puzzles and occasionally standing dead still to recover HP.

Why should I care? The entire Hydlide series has, for mostly circumstantial reasons, been dismissed or downplayed as little more than a footnote outside of Japan, but this first game in particular was a massive critical and commercial success in Japan and one whose influence on many of the Japanese action-RPGs that followed for years after, and I should hope that people might be willing to re-evaluate it outside of the context of most people only playing the NES version after having already played newer games that used it as a foundation (like Zelda, for one). I’ll also add that, unlike a lot of the action-RPGs that have and will be reissued via EGG Console, I really do think this is a game that the average player could genuinely figure out all on their own without a walkthrough or glossary of hidden win conditions (with one exception, perhaps…)

…and here’s that exception: In order to rescue the final fairy, you have to let the wizard enemy hit you with five magic attack before you defeat it, and if you kill any of the enemies on the screen before being hit five times, you’ll have to exit and re-enter the screen with the wizards and let them start hitting you again.

Silpheed (PC-8801)

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

What’s this? A vertically-scrolling shooting game presented from a unique, slightly-tilted overhead perspective, originally developed and published for the PC-8801mkIISR computer by Game Arts in 1986 and subsequently ported to Fujitsu FM-77AV, with international ports published for DOS and Apple IIGS by Sierra in 1989, and successive sequels for the Sega Mega CD, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360 and smartphones. In addition to the unique left/right-mounted weapon system, whose configuration can be adjusted before starting each area in accordance with the player’s performance, the game’s most immediate notable features are the heavy implementation of real-time polygonal graphics and some laughably quaint lines of Japanese speech produced entirely via FM synthesis.

Why should I care? You’re capable of admiring what was a truly admirable technical achievement relative to its time and hardware, you want a shooting game with a ton of stages and a gameplan based on the strategic memorisation of each stage and attendant weapon loadout, or you just want to A/B them with the Mega CD game, or even the PS2 game, so you can marvel at just how similar these games are to one another, from the basic game feel to even specific stage layouts and motifs.