Retro Re-release Roundup, week of February 20, 2025
Another bout of bad luck for KOFXIII…
A word of notice for anyone who might be dismayed by the state of the new KOFXIII PC port: SNK’s currently running a free beta for Fatal Fury: CIty of the Wolves, their long-awaited upcoming sequel to the 1999 Neogeo game Garou: Mark of the Wolves, and even this beta build’s far more playable online than KOFXIII has ever been. Incidentally, the in-univere chronology of CotW places it in the late ’00s, so if you’re looking for an excuse to claim it as retro, there it be.
ARCADE ARCHIVES
Othello
- Platform: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (worldwide)
- Price: $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
- Publisher: Hamster / Success
What’s this? An arcade adaptation of the famous boardgame, originally developed and distributed in Japanese arcades by Success in 1984; in addition to the ability to play against CPU opponents of various strengths, this adaptation includes a few other little flourishes like voice calls and a face icon with a few different expressions that reflect whether the player is at an advantage or disadvantage.
Why should I care? Success has existed for almost 50 years, and this game proved to be pivotal to their later fortunes: it was their second ever game and their first hit, allowing them to narrowly recover from the catastrophic failure of their debut arcade game, and it established Othello/Reversi as one of the company’s core specialties and one they continue to refine to this day. Now, there are obviously a million other avenues by which to enjoy this boardgame in 2025, but that’s primarily because it’s an extraordinarily hard game to screw up, so if the specific notion of playing the mid-’80s arcade version is what’s necessary to introduce you to the game, it won’t let you down.
Useless fact: Despite being obviously derivative of Reversi, Othello is not a public domain game: it was invented, owned and trademarked by a Japanese designer in the early 1970s, and Hamster had to secure an official license from the current owner for this reissue.
EGG CONSOLE
Burai: Jokan (PC-8801mkIISR)
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (worldwide)
- Price: $6.49 / ¥880
- Publisher: D4 Enterprise / Riverhillsoft
What’s this? The first part of an ambitious two-part multi-scenario RPG, developed and published by Riverhillsoft for PC-88 series computers in 1989 and ported to pc-98, MSX and FM Towns soon thereafter, followed by separately-produced conversions for PC Engine CD, Mega CD and Super Famicom; this game not only set itself apart via unique systems like visually representing various stats as orbs rather than numbers and by having characters learn skills by carrying books and “training” as they walk, but also via the many famous collaborators involved in its production, including Saint Seiya’s Shingo Araki and Michi Himeno on character design and illustration, the all-female rock back SHOW-YA on music and Last Armageddon creator Takeo Iijima handling story and game design.
Why should I care? Burai Jokan originally shipped on nine disks, and while one might wonder if they couldn’t and shouldn’t have trimmed their multiple, 30-minutes-plus cutscenes in order to avoid selling the game in two halves, one also shouldn’t write it off as an exercise in sheer excess: each of the multiple playable scenarios, which focus on individual protagonists and can mostly be played in any order, are not only more deftly written than comparable RPGs of the era but are designed with unique conceits and character gimmicks that elevate them beyond mere padding, and both the event scenes and the in-battle sprites are among the very best seen on PC88.
Language barrier? The vast majority of this game, save for certain menu items and nouns, is in Japanese, and it’s an extremely verbose game.
G-MODE ARCHIVES
Magical Fantasista 3
- Platform: Nintendo Switch (Japan)
- Price: ¥800
- Publisher: G-MODE
What’s this? The third and final game in G-MODE’s trilogy of magic-synthesis RPGs, originally released for Japanese feature phones in 2007; where the previous games were essentially dungeon crawlers set inside relatively staid and static indoor fantasy environments, this game’s more of a globe-trotting magical-technology game with a bigger focus on narrative.
Why should I care? Players at the time asked the same thing — for whatever reason, the sequel took the game from being a heavily tactical combat-focused experience with a deep character-building system to a relatively shallow, story-focused game that liberally lifts from SNES-era Final Fantasy, but the consensus seems to be that they didn’t do a bad job of copying Final Fantasy IV and VI‘s homework, so who’s to say the change was for the worse?
Useless fact: This game was one of a very small handful of feature phone games that G-MODE ported to DSiWare in Japan, as simply Magical Fantasista.
OTHER
X-Out: Resurfaced
- Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $19.99 or equivalent
- Publisher: ININ Games
What’s this? A remake of Rainbow Arts’ horizontally-scrolling subaquatic shooting game X-Out, developed and published or the Commodore 64 and Amiga computers by Rainbow Arts in 1990 and ported to Atari ST, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC; produced by the team responsible for the recent Rainbow Cotton remaster, this version offers drastically modernized visuals based on the Amiga-version graphics, a new 2-player local co-op mode, adjustments to the game’s shop system and weapon loadouts, brand-new arranged BGM by composer Chris Huelsbeck (alongside the original C64 and Amiga renditions) and more.
Why should I care? There was and is a whole ecosystem of so-called “euroshmups” that exist entirely outside of the purview of the arcade devotees who fight to carve a space for conventional shooting games in the modern zeitgeist, and for those whose appetite for shooting games goes no further than leisurely trudging through one of these games for a couple hours every few years, this seems like as cromulent an option as any. It’s also worth pointing out that this version does offer preset loadouts and other tweaks to the shop system to try and guide players towards a more traditionall-designed shooting game experience, should they want it, but I wouldn’t expect anything transformative.
Helpful tip: X-Out is supposed to be read as “cross-out”, but I suppose this detail wasn’t relayed to whoever decided to name the sequel Z-Out.
The King of Fighters XIII Global Match
- Platform: PC via Steam (worldwide)
- Price: $29.99 or equivalent ($6.99 or equivalent for owners of the previous PC port)
- Publisher: SNK / Safari Games
What’s this? A rollback netcode-equipped PC version of SNK’s final high-definition KOF game, originally released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2010 and subsequently ported to arcades, smartphones and multiple PC ports, with the most recent version released for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in late 2013; this new PC port is based on that recent console version, which primarily offered a sorely-needed overhaul of the netcode and lobby system, and also sports some small PC-exclusive additions like higher resolution support.
Why should I care? KOFXIII‘s truly abysmal netcode forced a low ceiling on a game that, under better circumstances, may have solidified a route for SNK to continue flying the flag for high-detail 2D fighting games, and so the demands for overhauled netcode for this game have been particularly high, even relative to more commercially and critically successful entries in the series. Unfortunately, the task of retrofitting the game with netcode fell not to the stalwarts at Code Mystics but the relatively unknown mobile developer Safari Games, whose console ports required multiple patches to finction properly and whose new PC port seems to reflect none of the patches produced for the console version, but who’s to say it won’t be playable in a year or two?
Helpful tip: Mr.Karate/Chin/Kim, trust me on this.
Originally posted by retronauts.com
