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Anyone who’s read my content here or on other parts of the internet for the decade I’ve been active will know how I feel about some recent factors I dealt with in reviews lately (Hi, Over Horizon) on how Game compilations/reissues are still messing up in spots. Today, I feel the need to both praise the recent improvements in retro reissues, while also pointing out how the industry as a whole can still improve their treatment of retro content, by going through several catalogs of retro reissues and generally talking about if they are doing well in a post-Gold Master era.
But let’s take a step back. I’ve been a super huge fan of Retro ports and retro compilations for over a decade now, despite only being 26 years of age. Having nothing but VC games on a Wii U/3DS to kill time during the summers can absolutely absorb a Gen Zer like me into retro gaming, and sure enough while other people in my high school were playing Bioshock Infinite and Call of Duty Black Ops II, I was enjoying Summer Carnival 92 Recca on my 3DS thanks to the Virtual Console. So anytime a company reissues a retro game or makes a compilation, I always like to check it out, whether for the sake of the website, or my own personal enjoyment, since the more retro content I can introduce myself to, the better!
Then 2018 hit. SNK 40th Anniversary Collection blew me away by not just including a bunch of games with maybe the occasional online mode, but by instead adding a bunch of very rad offline museum content to browse through that gave history and stories behind each of the titles. Even the worst games in the set felt way more meaningful being there due to having a great history read to dive into, and the games that were good were very very good to make up for stuff like NES Ikari being a disaster. That in my view, made it the easiest retro compilation to recommend until SNK got bought out by one of the most evil human beings on planet earth, but luckily 2022 brought another epic collection from the same developer, which somehow improved on SNK 40 to the next level.
Atari 50. I wrote a gushing review here and it’s getting even better with a paid DLC expansion that just hit, and since then DE has done some followup sets in the same style, not just being content with history blurbs and scans, but video content galore and just more words from the actual people who made the games. Excellent!
So with that compilation coming out… And seeing other absolutely excellent stuff from companies like M2 and Hamster and even some smaller companies that knew their limits, I grew more and more irritated anytime I got a collection or port that didn’t do those things or at least tried the baseline of “help make this game just as fun to play now as it was back in the day”. Sometimes you’d get a basic wrapper with games and save states, and that’s fine and all, but it feels rather generic considering what we have to compare these retro sets to. But hey, if the games emulate well or have rock solid emulation or are at a great price, I usually don’t mind.
It’s when we get train wrecks priced for similar amounts to Atari 50, or compilations more expensive than Arcade Archives games but without less of the features or polish, that I get annoyed. And boy, some lineups have made me real annoyed. So I’m here to just ramble on why I feel the retro reissue industry should do better with plenty of examples, without just going to a “spend the money Atari spent to interview old people” point, since that isn’t always practical! In fact, it rarely is. But there are tons of simple, lower budget ports that do give things the care they deserve, and some of these fancy sets aren’t even being put up to that standard, or are outright taking advantage of people nostalgic for old games for the sake of dumping unwanted plastic on them or pushing FOMO. We’ll break into multiple reissue lineups and list the pros/cons of them at the end of the summary. Do note that I will not be covering HD remakes or remasters here, so some companies I considered who do remasters VS compilations such as Aspyr, are excluded as a result.
So let’s gripe about a more recent set of reissues first. Because boy, I see announcements on this “engine” a lot in the news and with my experiences over the wrapper, I’m quite frankly at a point that I groan anytime I see this on a retro game announcement, even with some recent improvements giving me a tiny bit of hope back. And that’s not just due to my long gripes with the company physical branch’s quality control.
Carbon Engine… of Destruction?
OK no the Carbon Engine doesn’t ruin every game thrown at it nor is anything in it deliberately bad or made to be the worst thing in the world.
But my experiences over the past few years sure makes it feel like it was built out of ducktape, glue and sticks. And I’m sick of seeing this thing announcing new games without any efforts to make improvements on older titles. For those who don’t know, this is Limited Run Games’ digital lineup of emulated rereleases. They port a variety of console games to various platforms, and some of the stuff they announced are legitimately awesome gems. Rendering Ranger R2, Tomba, Sigma Star Saga?!? Pretty cool stuff! They even have games like Trip World, Boy and his Blob and Rocket Knight out to buy and enjoy now, and some of those have been begged for reissues for years on end!
Except you might not enjoy them. Because the few Carbon Engine games I’ve gotten either through buying it myself like Bill and Ted, (delisted by an act of god) or by getting them from third parties publishing CE games, are almost all terrible or have baffling flaws that shouldn’t be in a modern emulation release. A lot of early Carbon titles for instance, lacked save states in favor of a Save & Quit system so baffling, it reminded me of the Suspend feature from the Wii Virtual Console, a thing from nearly twenty years ago. Wanna try and reload mistakes in Boy and his Blob on NES? You can’t, because you have to save and quit the game and then reload it. Hamster’s Arcade Archives does this as well, and it’s equally annoying there, but at least in those ports they still write your high scores and other save data without the need for a save state, and I’d much rather play Ninja Spirit to the end with that irritating quirk than Bill & Ted on NES. More on Hamster later.
Still, Carbon didn’t start off bad, even with the save & quit nonsense, I felt River City Girls Zero was a pretty darn good effort, with reasonable bonus content, a brand new translation, and a pretty well performing game with no major emulation issues that I could deal with. It also helps that RCG0 has a password system so generous, save states are not needed at all. Shantae on GBC had some odd pixel scaling and very annoying button mapping with no way of changing it, (going to a B and Y jump/attack style like the newer games, rather than a classic A/B GBC style) but provided a decent way of getting the original Shantae on the go, and it had actual save states. Xtreme Sports had proper controls, actual save states, and decent display/filter options. (None of the carbon engine games retain your display options upon closing out of the game though, which is a separate issue in and of itself)
All of these better carbon releases were published by Wayforward, and I would not be shocked if they provided a good amount of quality control and help with the releases. After all, who better to provide assets for bonus content than the devs who made the actual game/are familiar with the IP in question? That’s why I still had a decent perception of Carbon at first, and I still generally feel if Wayforward is publishing a Carbon Engine release, it should be fine. None of their ports so far have any major bugs, which I can’t say for the other titles.
Take Bill & Ted. That compilation was absolutely made to cash in on the license and nothing more, and my review on that shows just how bad it is as an emulated product. The godawful save & quit system. The lack of any bonuses besides a BGM player for the in-game music. Not even a manual or cart scan for either game, or instructions on how to play the nonsensical NES game from hell that again, they decided to reobtain the license to seemingly for no other reason than they thought it was funny.
Hell, the one semi-decent game, the Portable Journey, still feels miserable to play on this release due to the very sloppy wrapper and the save & quit system being so bad, that loading into a game forces an A press and causes you to jump, which will probably get you killed outright. It’s such a lazy, godawful wrapper that I’m bewildered they took the amount of money they did to make a physical version! Sure enough, they opened preorders for it long before the game hit stores, so if you bought that, you had no idea how the final quality of the emulation would be. In fact, that’s a common thing among all carbon games; their preorders close long before the games hit the eShop, so are you really preordering a compilation, or gambling on the quality of it?
I already mentioned Boy & his Blob, and again, I repeat that the save & quit system is utter trash. No recent compilation should be doing this, especially if you’re again skimping on bonus content. This was published by Ziggurat, but I know they let other devs do more with their IP and add bonuses to stuff, and LRG threw in some poorly implemented maps from the internet for the collection, so they could have definitely added some box art, manual scans, and other bonus content, or maybe a history blurb! The Japanese version was thrown in, with no context! Just part of a list of games, nothing more, nothing less. These two are actually really fun puzzle games, which is why seeing them treated as a games list with the most barebone feature set imaginable, again, sold for pretty darn pricey physical editions first and foremost, is just depressing! The barebones Wii VC release of the NES game was at least $5, but the compilation is $10, and both games are in a really shitty wrapper, and this set was again, sold for $30+ as a physical product months before the game came out.
But oh, before I end my rambling on this compilation, I have to also reiterate that this compilation might be the first and so far only time I heard major audio emulation issues on a commercial NES emulated product. I mentioned in the review itself but for those unaware, A Boy and his Blob had a speech sample that would kick in at the end of the game. NES games have been emulated fairly well since forever, so I didn’t even think this as a possibility when playing through the game the speedrunner way, but lo and behold, beating the game in the collection gets you glorious static.
Yeah. That lack of care is what soured me the most on the carbon engine. The fact clearly nobody playtested the game to even beat it and catch this error, and went “eh ship it out, that’s fine”, and then subsequently never patched it just really, really shows how these Carbon releases usually are; a cash grab meant to sell overpriced physical editions, usually thrown up months before the compilation actually comes out so you won’t know if it’ll be actually well-ported or not. That’s what annoys me, as while more compilations are good, (and we’ll soon highlight plenty of great and underrated ones below, even cheaper, simpler ones!) bad compilations aren’t, and when some are being birthed seemingly for a quick buck with cheap IP by throwing them into a shitty wrapper, well that just stinks, doesn’t it?
I only have one more Carbon game I personally played, but before we go over that one, I also have to call out an aspect of these releases that kinda bug me, and one the industry doesn’t seem to pay much attention to when reviewing these. (though to be blunt, a lot of the poorer collections are well, rightfully reviewed as such, so don’t take this as me saying everyone but me likes these compilations, as the press sure don’t seem to!)
It stems from how due to LRG’s influence/popularity in the retro game community, they decided to help the Carbon engine out by hiring some pretty notable retro YTers from the scene to help with the emulation. I thus see a lot of people confidently going “oh, Modern Vintage Gamer and Audi from Digital Foundry work on these, they can’t be that bad!”
No. They really are that poor, and even the best of them are just fine. OK enough if they were sold at their digital prices, but absurdly expensive and overvalued physically for what polish goes into these. There’s a reason M2/Digital Eclipse get ton of praise, and that’s because their compilations have lots of polish and care into them. Even the worst Digital Eclipse compilation at least had a lot of hard-work done to it with tons of bonuses to poke around at, which I can’t say for stuff like Bill & Ted and Boy and his Blob.
I don’t care if LRG treats some of these as meme games not worth full polish; you have an emulator, you make darn sure it at least works and isn’t filled with bugs, or at the very least, you fix the bugs if they do pop up. It just blows my mind that two people who talk about their many emulation accomplishments and have openly dunked on other bad compilations in the past, ended up contributing to equally poor if not worse compilations, and yet are silent to comment on why or if they’d do anything better the next time. Hmm, that’s strange. I wonder if maybe them dunking on other bad compilations without acknowledging the work environment those compilations were made in, maybe has aged poorly with them doing these lower quality compilations now and realizing the realities of game development.
Ah, it’s probably nothing.
Anyhow Felix the Cat. I reviewed it and in terms of fine releases, this would be it. Barebones with no bonuses again, but at least we have working save states, better filters and a rewind feature this time. It fits in the fine category with no bugs impacting enjoyment of the game like the Bill/Ted and Boy/Blob sets, and I’d even say it’s worth a pickup akin to other simple ports/compilations we get to later, but oops this one is $25 because why not, gotta sell the plastic. Joy. At least it does seem that the newer carbon games consistently have save states and rewind now, so the era of the save & quit seems to be finally over, but god, I just can’t believe those earlier carbon games exist, let alone were such a contrast quality wise with the bonus-packed Wayforward releases.
Before we go onto the next batch of compilations to highlight, I will also address the other Carbon games I did not play, because I didn’t want to cover a LRG game or work with the company directly for obvious reasons. Jurassic Park came out last year, and introduced the Rewind feature. It is also another expensive compilation that seems to play the games fine, but with little in terms of bonuses once again. The rewind timer is short but otherwise I don’t see much complaints and there are more games there, so if you somehow like the weird Ocean games and the Genesis title for JP1, there’s a compilation for you.
Trip World DX is another notable one as like with RCG0, they made actual improvements to the game itself, by hiring a pro colorist romhacker to fully colorize the game with the style guide from the original creator to make it as accurate as possible. The rewind feature is here, but it seems to be janky from impressions I see, and I don’t think the save state system is in this one either. Still, the actual colorization effort is outstanding and this does have a lot of bonus content that I argue should be the baseline for Carbon titles, such as interview content with the original creator. It also includes the OG Trip World so you can compare and contrast, which is neat, and while it is a higher priced digital collection, I feel the bonus content + DX ver make it a better recommend than Felix the Cat, even if I can’t speak to the emulation myself. At least in this case even if you don’t like the compilation you can buy a GBC cart and enjoy the colorization that way.
Next up after Felix in the Konami den was Rocket Knight Adventures: Re-Sparked! This compiles three excellent Konami classics from the 90s and impressions here sound a bit more mixed. The games themselves are great and playing them on newer hardware is a good thing, and this has an assortment of great bonus content unlike Felix, but there’s still oddities reported that don’t seem to be fixed, as only one patch has come out for it per the Steam page, seeming to be quickly abandoned after launch like the other Carbon games.
Still, the most common complaints I can find is genesis audio oddities (nothing abhorrent, just weird sounding compared to real hardware, and Genesis emulation gets messed up from time to time, so this doesn’t surprise me, as even the TMNT collection had oddities with Hyperstone Heist at first) and the new boss rush mode being pretty messy with the RNG save states, which also seems to bring back the jumping after loading a state issue from the Bill & Ted set. Still, this has the regional variants, this has save states and rewind, and has three great games, and despite also being higher priced, this is a release I think is also fine. The Boss Rush really should be patched though, but otherwise this is one I honestly do plan to pick up down the line to play these classics for myself.
Lastly, there’s Tomba. This is the first PS1 game the Carbon Engine did, and impressions of this one seem to be the most publicly negative of the games so far because Tomba is a beloved niche game. You have scanned materials, bonus content like interviews with the original creator, and a brand new soundtrack to play around with. Unfortunately, bug reports are abound and the Switch version in particular has tons of reports of random crashes, possibly due to a memory leak. The PS4/5 versions had issues with a trophy not popping, but that did get fixed as of a month ago. With the sheer amount of bonuses and a fair price, I do think with one or two more patches this could be a legitimately good port to recommend, though I do agree with how odd it was that the devs noted a patch was incoming the day of launch. Maybe shouldn’t have been released so early in that case? Here’s hoping Tomba 2 launches a bit better.
In the end, the Carbon Engine is still heavily up in the air for me. Outside of the Wayforward stuff, a bunch of the earlier ports were just plan abysmal, and definitely felt more like a cashgrab to push physical items. The newer compilations seem to finally be getting better with bonus content, and if that baseline continues, I think these releases would be fine. Not great, not bad, just fine. I know publishers ultimately dictate what can/cannot go into a set, but even still, I think stuff like Boy & his Blob and Felix the Cat could have included some extra features or stuff to explain and give context to the different versions. It seems like newer compilations might be stabilizing into getting past the dark stuff put out in 2023, but lemme say when I feel that those compilations in 2023 were bad, I mean really, really bad. So for it to rebound from that level of bad to just fine, well… It’s a start, at least. Hopefully I can get past the point where I see a game listed as a “Carbon Engine” game and not roll my eyes, and hopefully bonus content becomes a standard for these ports going forward.
Carbon Engine Pros/Cons
Pros: Bonus content that gets thrown in is legit cool, some niche games getting pulled out again, improvements like DX colorization and translations are awesome
Cons: Earlier games made clearly to sell the physical products, some barely had any effort put into them at all, a lot of them are buggy or lack polish and are fine at best right now, also proof just because someone involved is a tech youtuber doesn’t mean the tech youtuber will put out a good product all the time.
QUByte Classics… From Who?
Oh boy. See, Carbon Engine at least improved over time, and even the worst release is slightly less bad than the second worst release. Qubyte classics on the other hand, well… I think may be the thing to get me blacklisted from the company publishing it. Or at least I think I might be blacklisted, as after publishing my review of the Beat Em Up collection they did, I haven’t been able to get any response back to inquiries since then. No matter.
I think I may cover some of the newer ones some day for reasons I’ll get into later, but a good chunk of the line in question has the same damn issues, and shows what I feel are the worst retro reissues we’ll talk about today.
So uh, to start off, outside of two compilations about Visco, all of the games Qubyte have published so far are from Piko Interactive. For those unaware, this company is one that bought a shitload of games nobody else wanted and became “custodian” over them. They license them out to literally anyone and everyone, and they kinda got notorious for a lot of their poorer games ending up on low effort plug and play machines or badly made repro carts.
They do own legitimate gems though! To name a few, Blender Bros, Iridion 3D and Iridion II, Noah’s Ark on NES, Tinhead, Rage of the Dragons, Glover, Street Racer, 40 Winks, Switchblade, and Top Racer are all really darn good games that they do own, and if ported right, these would be outstanding games to play on a modern machine. We’ll be looking at their sets on Evercade in the future, but today we’re focusing on the Qubyte line, where the porting was all done by Qubyte games, who made what might be the worst wrapper I’ve ever dealt with for emulated reissues, and picked some awful games for a few of them. Unfortunately, when you buy tons of games, a lot of them will be dumpster quality and thrown on stuff like Antstream and this lineup for pennies.
But yeah, Qubyte’s first emulated reissue was The Immortal, which included two versions of the game, and I reviewed that a while ago. That game while frustrating, is decent and if emulated properly could be a fine release for fans of the game in question. The problem is that every single Qubyte Classic by Piko so far, with one exception, has issues everywhere. Extreme amounts of input lag? Check. Very, very clunky wrapper? Check. Super slow saving/loading of save states? Check. No bonuses? Check. No context/historical info? Check. Weird button mapping/game edits? Check. Emulation issues on GB games, including screen tearing? Check.
All of them suffer from this. It doesn’t matter what game you play, all of them will have garbage input lag. All of them will have the slowest, garbage wrapper you could ever dream of dealing with. All of them will be barebones and hardly playable. All of them will even make the good games they put out miserable to play. None of them got patched. Ever. Just a miserable line all around and even when I saw a newer one coming out and hoped it’d be fixed, it was the same god damn shitty wrapper again and again! Just constant disappointment, made to be a cashgrab and nothing else. It sure seems like me calling out these releases constantly is why I no longer get replies to inquiries on Qubyte titles anymore, but I honestly don’t care. If being blunt about QC that never improves is enough to get me on a “do not send review copy list”, I’m fine with that.
I just wish these releases were better or gradually evolved in some way, so that people who do like the games being reissued can enjoy them properly without the input lag and bugs. A whole bunch of them were announced a few years ago, but a lot of them failed to materialize, which does make me hope they maybe stopped using this awful wrapper for good and spared everyone from more torment.
With that said, there are four newer reissues, which give me hope that the Qubyte Classics line isn’t a total wash; even for Piko games. Breakers Collection came out and had a way better wrapper with good emulation quality, tons of bonuses and rad rollback netcode. That was why seeing the Beat em Up collection go back to the shitty wrapper made me real sad, as it indicated to me if it was a set of games they didn’t deem worthy of such treatment, into the input lag wrapper you go! Still, this was a very promising set.
Then, while I haven’t been able to obtain these yet and plan to review these on my own time in the future, both Top Racer and Visco Collections, while simple, do appear to offer pretty well emulated reissues with bonus content and way better emulation than the earlier console Qubyte classics, seeming similar to Breakers Collection in that regard. They even delayed Top Racer for better QC and I think that was a pretty rad move to do. Currently the slate for Qubyte Classics includes a console port of Glover, which hopefully won’t follow in the footsteps of either the Steam port of the earlier Qubyte Console releases, (it doesn’t seem to use that godawful wrapper, so I think we’re safe) and a port of fighting game Rage of the Dragons, which is even having a beta test with more Rollback Netcode. While I absolutely cannot defend their earlier classics lineup, I can confidently say they’re trying and listening to feedback now, even if it took a while to get there.
Qubyte Classics Pros/Cons:
Pros: More uh, interesting titles, I guess? Rollback netcode in fighting reissues and very recent improvements in QC
Cons: The inexcusable quality of many, many input lag riddled compilations before all this, and putting out unspeakably bad games like Thunderbolt. Most of these games are also Piko Interactive titles, and not actual classics for most people.
Ratalaika/ININ Games
I’m grouping Ratalaika in with ININ as while there are differences with the ININ stuff, they all use the same wrapper. I cannot list all the games these two have put out or ported, as there’s so darn many of them now. But I can go over some favorites and a brief overview of the line, and why I feel mixed on this set of reissues, but find them to fit my fine/great category sometimes, and my bad/abysmal category other times, with a mix of silly FOMO complaining while I’m at it.
So, Ratalaika standalone ports. These usually are made for Shinyuden, and cover a bunch of obscure Japanese releases. A lot of these are pretty darn rad and I generally find the simplistic wrapper is offset by reasonable prices, lots of work into bonus content/QOL, and usually decent emulation. They translated a lot of games into English by now, have stuffed some games with tons of bonus content, and are honestly a bargain for the price.
Outside of Avenging Spirit, I can’t think of any Ratalaika published port that had major emulation issues at launch. (and Avenging Spirit did get fixed later) Some don’t like the generic looking wrapper, but it works and has a lot of options, so I think it’s fine. Right now they’re publishing the entire Aero franchise in Japan with new Japanese translations, and I think that’s pretty neat to see a reverse localization being done. Hopefully they do continue bringing out gems to the west even with struggles with their other ports, as I do think these guys have enough talent to bring some stuff like Albert Odyssey, Eliminate Down or Langrisser over to modern consoles if they really wanted to. This is the sort of cheap reissue I want to see more of; nothing too overboard with bonuses but well emulated enough you can buy the game to play the game and enjoy the game.
Ratalaika Standalone Pros/Cons:
Pros: Usually great emulation quality, pretty responsive, some games have lots of bonuses, and even new translations! Pretty safe bet if you want to play the game in question
Cons: Wrapper is pretty generic and can seem like a basic paper bag, but it works and has save states/rewind. Some releases don’t have much bonuses. No other console ports included.
Now… When working with ININ games, we have an entirely different story where the quality is all over the darn place. Still usually the same wrapper being used, but sometimes themed for whatever compilation they put out. But sometimes there are features added or missing from some releases that were or were not in the last one, and just lead to a confusing mess all around. Unlike the standalone reissues, plenty of these have launched with bugs, or even got updates that added gamebreaking bugs like the Turrican Anthologies, which crash upon completing the game in challenge mode now.
Oh, and they’ve released the same games across multiple compilations more than once, most certainly due to United Games feeling like it; Wonder Boy got two compilations, Jajamaru and Turrican got three, Irem gets FIVE arcade volumes. it gets nuts. Usually the retail version is the weaker one, to push you towards Strictly Limited’s offering and get those sweet FOMO Bucks. Pretty darn sad.
Still, once again some of the games being ported are legitimately awesome. Parasol Stars, Cotton 100%, Super Turrican 2, all of non-hudson Wonder Boy, Over Horizon, Image Fight, and many more. Even if they’re made to put out physicals, if the compilations are good, I could say some of these are worth putting out a physical for. Hell, they even brought back canceled Arcade game Clockwork Aquario!
Sadly, there’s those bugs I mention, and the state some of these games launched/are still in baffle my mind. Panorama Cotton with invisible obstacles. Turrican with crashing errors. Jajamaru RPGs with bugged items. Steel Empire with slowdown not in the original GBA version. Lots of weird bugs that you’d think would have been caught during testing, but just weren’t for whatever reason. Some like Panorama/Steel Empire got fixed, but others like Jajamaru have remained unpatched since early 2023, and Turrican had those crashing bugs added post-launch, making them buggier by accident; it just is a weird mess all around. Parasol Stars also had a nasty bug with the True Ending, but that got patched in mere weeks, a farcry from the long gap some of these compilations still are suffering from.
Irem Collection 1, my arch nemesis of these reissues for having the worst launch out of all of the Ratalaika ports, only recently got a North American patch that fixed some bugs and finally added subtitles to Image Fight II, yet bugs like NES Image Fight having broken autofire still linger nearly a full year later.
Yet on the other hand, you have some ININ sets that remain relatively bug free and don’t need patches. Both Wonder Boy sets launched without major issues. Osman, as basic of a port as it is, is bug free, as was the Puzzle-Bobble SNES port. Just weirdly inconsistent emulation quality from SLG, and makes me wonder if the more recent cases of bugs has less to do with shortcuts being taken during development, and more due to crunch or the dev team being pressured to get these sets out quickly in hopes of United Games turning around their dicey financial situation.
Before, I used to always enjoy a good Ratalaika/ININ collab as there’d at least be well emulated games to check out, and digitally a lot of these collections still remain decently priced. With the recent set of releases being all over the place with QC though, there’s now a clear rift in the quality/output of these reissues compared to Ratalaika doing their own thing, and I really hope this gets fixed soon. Maybe this is just karma toward United Games for making multiple compilations with the same games included for little other reason than to promote plastic from Strictly Limited.
Ratalaika/ININ Pros/Cons:
Pros: Very niche games, lots of rare/cool titles being pulled out, one of which was a canceled arcade game properly finished off, reasonable prices and usually a decent set of bonuses included
Cons: Features are all over the place, lots and lots of bugs in recent releases to the point two of them (IREM 1/Jajamaru RPGs) I’d consider unreleasable in the state they came out in, older compilations got split up too many god damn times
Grab Bag of Smaller Reissue series
For this section, here are a bunch of small, not too big companies/lineups that don’t get much attention but I really like a lot lately, and hear good things about/like from some of their stuff. You may find some new retro gems while reading this section!
First up is City Connection, which has a bunch of different branches I could break down like my Ratalaika/ININ split, but I’ll just sum em up into one combo. Early on, you may see a bunch of ports of Psikyo shooters, and these have a bad reputation due to weird levels of input lag on them. For me I was able to enjoy and have fun with most of em as my first time playing these titles, but in the years since the input lag on Switch definitely annoys me more than it did back when I reviewed them.
Luckily, this lineup isn’t really City Connection’s fault at all; these were all made by Zerodiv before the Psikyo library got bought out by CC, and thus inherited the ports from them. Sadly, that means CC now has the stink of the godawful Zero Gunner 2-, and seem content to just port the same boring lineup of shooters everywhere rather than port some titles which Zerodiv never got to, but at the very least rebuying Tengai for Steam I can say those versions are way more responsive and fun due to the addition of online leaderboards and more responsive controls. Still not PCB perfect, but good enough for me to enjoy and to never touch those Switch compilations ever again. For what they had to work with, the Zerodiv PC/Xbox ports turned out fine.
But for stuff CC emulated internally/had more control over, this gets more exciting. Another lineup with a rocky start was the Saturn Tribute lineup, bringing several cool Sega Saturn games to the west for the first time ever, only to kick off the line with three of the laggiest shooters ever on the console. Throw em in a laggy emulation wrapper, and you have three games that feel like they’re on ice, and just aren’t great to play.
Thankfully in the years since, City Connection really upped their game with Saturn Tribute. From localizing Assault Suit Leynos 2 into english for the first time ever, bringing some decent Taito ports to modern consoles, including Puzzle Bobble 3, and doing Boosted releases like Batsugun and Wolf Fang, there’s a ton of fun gems to play here. On Switch and especially PC, they feel a lot more reasonable when the games weren’t originally laggy as all hell back in the day, and I can confidently recommend stuff like Cleopatra Fortune, Elevator Action Returns, and Puzzle Bobble 3 with ease. They just run and feel so damn good on the Steam Deck! This is the lineup I’m most excited to see branch out in the coming years, and I feel the more they work on it, the more they can nail these Saturn ports.
Lastly are Memory Clip/subsequent NES releases. These were originally done by Empty Clip Studio, but now seem to have been shifted to being made in house with City Connection themselves, to pretty good results as of late! From ports of excellent shooter Zombie Nation to physics gem Gimmick, with a wonderful Hebereke port and a bunch of newer Jaleco titles, this is a lineup of NES gems I’m happy to see picking up steam, and they include a bunch of stuff that should be baseline for these ports; bonus content, translation of Japanese versions, lots of manual scans and QOL features, and even some challenge modes! Definitely the easier/cheaper output of CC stuff to get into. I’m especially hopeful we see some unreleased titles show up this way, since CC does own stuff like Famicom Soldam.
City Connection (Assorted) Pros/Cons:
Pros: Very good emulation quality for some lineups (The NES stuff, their CAVE ports), great title choices being picked, lots of bonuses/content in recent releases, possibility of unreleased games getting unearthed, newer Saturn Tribute titles are generally interesting and fun, good pricing on NES ports
Cons: Inheriting the bad Zerodiv ports and not being able to do much with them, no new Psikyo games ported since then, bad start to Saturn Tribute with a really laggy set of games, pricing can be a bit too high on Saturn/Cave stuff
Next up! Pixel Games UK. These guys quietly came onto the scene, seemingly beginning to dump retro compilations on the eShop outta nowhere just because they felt like it. They’ve had a bunch of compilations on Steam before, but those were really, really barebones to the point most people don’t even know they exist. But some of their releases are pretty darn fun, especially for UK computer fans.
The only one I picked up was Hidden Gems Vol 1, a set of assorted EU computer games, including an amusing favorite to me, Horace Goes Skiing. This was an incredibly cheap compilation to pick up but still has a nice little history blurb, multiple versions, and working save states to make use of! In terms of “basic, but effective” ports of computer games, you can’t go wrong with these, as you get what’s on the tin and just enough to introduce a game to you if there’s any context you might lack.
Other things they ported are pretty cool though; you have Chip’s Challenge for the Atari Lynx, just by itself, but it also came out at a great price. Impressions seem good about the Lynx emulation here, and it’s a great bargain for some retro puzzling. They also ported a bunch of early Epyx Lynx games to Switch, including Blue Lightning! Otherwise the only other recent port was back in July with the Amiga port of Rogue, which had a bug related to an item that was recently fixed. These guys don’t release games all that often, but their lineup so far has been solid, cheap, and well-done to the point I feel comfortable in labeling them an easy on the budget, respectful publisher of retro compilations.
Just because you can’t go all out like M2, doesn’t mean well made, simplistic compilations like these aren’t worth having fun with! You may discover some retro favorites this way, and I’d personally love to see a retro Boulder Dash collection in the same vein.
Pixel Games UK Pros/Cons:
Pros: Very affordable titles, Lynx emulation on Switch, and Chip’s Challenge! Offers decent context even for newcomers.
Cons: Not many games out so far, titles may be very niche for those outside of Microcomputer regions, and light on bonuses. Still, if you like the games on offer, you’ll like these ports. I have little to complain about here!
Last but not least in the “simple retro port publishers” grab bag, is 8-Bit Legit. Unlike the other companies so far, these guys haven’t made a compilation or anything with more than one game in the package, as far as I’m aware. In fact, their releases might just be the most barebones out of any publisher I listed today. These guys typically focus on NES/GB games, usually newer indie titles, and port them to Switch/Xbox. Their releases all include scanned manual content, (well, except The Meating for whatever reason) and a few borders, but nothing else, not even control configurations.
This means in a sense, you do get an experience just as raw as playing the game on original hardware, so if it relies on passwords, you gotta use the passwords. If the game is meant to be all in a single sitting, you gotta marathon it. If it has in-game save, that’ll work just fine. While I still believe that emulated reissues should try to stick to the basic QOL set of save states as an option, at least the 8BE releases emulate the games properly for the most part, (save for early hiccups with Battle Kid, which got a patch after my review went up) and the scanned manual really is a very handy addition that provides the context one needs to get in the game most of the time.
My only real gripe with 8BE games is that some of the games on offer are all over the place; you get good stuff like Battle Kid, Dead Tomb and Roniu’s Tale, but also some stinkers like Trophy, or middle of the road games like Full Quiet, Kudzu and Meating. It really just depends on what they have on offer, but if there’s an indie you like or heard good things about and these guys port it, you can at least expect it to be very faithful, maybe to a fault. I’d love to see other some more homebrew gems like Nix the Paradox Relic, Big2Small, and Aguna get ported by these guys.
8-Bit Legit Pros/Cons:
Pros: Usually pretty good emulation, scanned manuals, some really good games like Roniu’s Tale
Cons: No Save States/other emulation features besides borders. Some games are pretty lacking and some titles that would be easier to recommend are tougher due to the games themselves being a lot tougher without these usual features.
Hamster’s Arcade Archive Heaven
Speaking of “simple reissues”, this company is the one that’s easily the best of the bunch by far, and I noted as such in my last gargantuan retro game reissue article. Hamster Corporation, one I used to know for shoveling out bad Jaleco games on Virtual Console and a bajillion Japanese logic puzzle games, entered the space of reissuing Arcade Games over a decade ago.
And wow. In terms of quantity, these guys have put out over 400+ releases in the Arcade Archives lineup. And the best part? Most of these are emulated perfectly. Seriously! This has been an arcade gamer’s dream, especially since the Nintendo Switch came out. It appears that system gave Hamster the bump they needed to just dump every resource they had into making this line continue forever, and after a rough few years of nothing but Neo Geo fighting games, now we have a lot of good variety and some legitimate classics heading to the service, leading to so many great games that almost everyone reading this will probably be able to buy something from the lineup you like, if you haven’t already.
Since March 2017, Hamster has done one game a week on the Switch eShop in Japan, without fail. Sure, some months had worse games than others, but generally I pick up a title or two from the eShop once a month, and have enjoyed most of them since the Switch launched. Most of that comes down to super solid emulation and a consistent set of features, from online leaderboards and high score/caravan modes, to full customization of the button layout. A lot of these are way better emulated than MAME could ever dream of, leading to some outstanding ways to play some of the best Arcade gems of all time.
Tetris: The Grand Master! Mystic Warriors! Xexex! Emeraldia! Magical Drop III! Toki Denshou: Angel Eyes! Exerion! So, so many outstanding games, all back on modern hardware and usually available worldwide! There’s just so much goodness here that the $8 pricepoint makes them all a steal, even if there’s little in terms of proper save states. (They’re more like mid-game suspend points that erase when the online high score prompt pops up; this prompt is also how high scores are saved locally, so trying to use this as a proper save state is a huge pain! Luckily credit feeding exists for most of these games.)
You even have some actual undumped games here, playable for the first time anywhere. VS. Legend of Valkyrie. VS Urban Champion, Zero Team, English Sky Skipper, and a few others! Hamster are true preservationists, and have done god’s work by taking simple wrapper and making the most out of it. Almost none of their releases ever have major bugs and if they do, Hamster is almost always on patching them quickly. Next to no complaints here on the porting quality, with my only complaints having to do with lineups and odd regional restrictions.
See, sometimes Hamster gets in an annoying “cycle” of publishers they pull from constantly, to the point a lot of the same publisher will show up again and again with picks that feel like milking the cow while some publishers don’t do nearly as much in comparison. I feel that mostly relates to what Hamster is able/allowed to reissue per license, while it may also just do with how some publishers are more popular than others. You like Namco? Good, because I’m convinced Hamster is deadset on reissuing every darn Namco game known to man that isn’t 3D, and while that’s cool and all, I’m starting to get sick of Namco and would love for companies like Data East, Koei Tecmo, and Konami to get releases nearly as frequently.
Some companies like Irem and Data East haven’t put up an ACA game in years, which may just indicate their licensing situations being harder to work with nowadays. On the other hand, Koei Tecmo and Konami still put out stuff for ACA, but KT is a company I wish I could see pump out games like Gridiron Fight and Bomb Jack Twin nearly as often as Namco is pumping out random stuff. Yet I can’t stop buying the Namco stuff like Mazinger Z (A licensed game! a GOOD one!) and Burning Force. Help.
As for the regional restrictions… Yeah, while these games tend to come out worldwide, even if they never left Japan originally, some titles just don’t make it out in certain regions for seemingly no reason. Jail Break by Konami? Not in the US just because! Marvel Land? Japan only because of a trademarked word. (Marvel) Finest Hour? Not in the US either, probably the same reason. Face-Off? Similar boat. It randomly happens, makes zero sense, and the most aggravating aspect is there’s zero communication from Hamster on this at all.
Even the EU will miss out on some games like Ninja Commando, with likewise no indicator as to why. I’d certainly love to see this issue get resolved so that all of their games make it out everywhere, without issues, since more people need to enjoy these wonderful Arcade gems. Let us give you more money, Hamster!
Hamster Arcade Archives Pros/Cons:
Pros: Outstanding emulation, outstanding lineup of games, a score chaser’s dream paradise for online competition, some games have new features/tweaks never before seen elsewhere, some games aren’t even possible to emulate in MAME at all, making ACA their exclusive home, plus an outstanding $8 price.
Cons: Earlier ACA games are a bit rougher on the features than newer ones, the Neo-Geo games especially. Wonder Boy got thrown in prison and will never leave the Japanese PS4 store. Some newer games skip certain regions without explanation. Hamster is seemingly allergic to 3D technology and thus gems like Solavou, Tekken, and Solar Assault probably won’t make it out.
A EGG Console of History!
Speaking of Switch-popular retro reissue lines, here’s a new one! EGGConsole! You like obscure Japanese computer games? Well here’s a bunch of them presented exactly as they would be in Japan, text and all. This makes the lineup a bit tough to judge as some of these games are all up my alley. The first three Ys games, Legend of Heroes, Silpheed, Hydlide, lots of obscure Japanese computer games available for a very low cost of entry!
The problem? While the wrapper is in english and has bonus manual scans/english descriptors of how to start the game, the core games and the manual scan does not. So if you’re playing an RPG, I hope you have a guide, can read some japanese, or just fumble your way through it! But on the other hand for games with little knowledge needed like Silpheed or Xanadu, this is an excellent entry into the early days of Japanese computer gaming, and seems to be inspired by the work D4E did for the Edia collections. (more on those shortly)
You have different screen sizes, game speed options, and save state options to pay around with. You have the ability to pull up a keyboard for games that need them, and a ton of chapters are added to some games, letting you jump around to relive favorite moments or poke further ahead in a very tough game. For just over $6, these EGGConsole releases are really simple, yet pretty darn good with no emulation issues that I can note in any of the games I own and beaten. If there are any, they probably got patched out, as D4E isn’t afraid to swiftly patch these games if needed, and that I do enjoy.
All in all, a promising lineup of microcomputer games that give you exactly what you need, but only for those who can read these games or know what they’re getting in for. Some of the picks make zero sense for the west and I feel some who blindly buy a game like Arguice no Tsubasa will be badly burned by the immense amount of Japanese language required to progress.
EGGCONSOLE Pros/Cons:
Pros: Obscure Japanese Computer classics made available worldwide with no region jumping required! The games that are accessible without Japanese text, are available for all to enjoy! Great QOL speedup features! Contextual info, chapter skips and manual scans! Great price!
Cons: Some games are so obscure or so buried in Japanese text that there are titles which are flat out not practical for anyone to bother playing, and no attempt has been made to translate said games. Manual scans not translated, either.
Telenet Rebirth (Into a Drained Wallet)
Next up is a thing that some of you may have gotten aware of due to the influx in compilations of stuff like Valis. Edia is a company that bought the Telenet catalog years ago and has been compiling a bunch of games together, and putting them out in basic wrappers very similar to D4E’s EGGConsole one. The difference is while EGG is pretty cheap to get into, the prices for all of these games are obscene, to the point it feels like a bit of a cash grab.
For a lot of their western compilations though, they did a weird approach, but one that I think puts it an edge over EGG in a big aspect; they fully translated everything they needed to. Valis? Well, even if it got a US release, now you get a re-translated Japanese version with subtitles or overlaid text. The Telenet Shooting Collection? Stupidly expensive ($45!!!), but neat to have Avenger and Psychic Storm out in English I guess. Cosmic Fantasy Collection? Two whole RPGs fully translated into english! The problem with that one is the translation is weird with the battles and UI, and it needed more polish.
And really, the polish is what makes Edia sets a lot harder to recommend unless you’re already a megafan of the IP in question like I am. Recently they’ve been adding bonus content like video trailers for the games included in the set, but even their first reissue had full manual scans for all the games, plus a cutscene viewer/sound test mode. The English compilations even translated the important bits of the original manuals! This alone makes Edia’s work a lot more appealing than the Project EGG stuff, but not “$15 for a subtitled Syd of Valis port” appealing.
Sadly, some of these compilations are better than others too, and some still suffer from annoying bugs, though nothing as tragic as the stuff ININ/Carbon Engine has had. Valis Collection 2 has bad Genesis audio emulation for the first Valis game, and that was never patched, even when released standalone and translated for the west. Cosmic Fantasy Collection emulates the games fine, but there’s the aforementioned weirdness with the translation, like reversed battle commands.
For the high prices these all go for, I’d love if maybe they weren’t immediately abandoned after release, though at the very least I can say Collection 1 of Valis has no emulation issues, and Valis Collection 3 has only very minor audio errors in the case of Valis III Genesis.
The US is set to get just one more Edia compilation in the form of Cosmic Fantasy Collection 2, and I’m very curious as to how those translations will be handled, seeing as there are three big RPGs to deal with there.
Edia’s Telenet Compilations Pros/Cons:
Pros: Obscure Japanese games reissued! Some translated for the first time ever! Manual scans, solid emulation, and bonus video content!
Cons: Poor post-launch support, Valis Collection 2 is a weird mess with Valis Genesis, Cosmic Fantasy has weird translation quirks, and by god the pricing on all these; also all of these compilations were crowdfunded which seems uhhhhh insanely confusing considering how while solid most of these are, they are not millions of yen solid. Also these are telenet games, so stuff like the Shooting Collection/two of the Valis sets means you’ll get some dull/bad games in with the good ones.
M2 The Masters
The holy grail of emulation standards. Right now, these guys will pretty much nail everything right even on their worst projects. I really don’t have much else to add here for a verdict, but I’ll give you a rundown of some recent thoughts anyhow.
These guys are known for doing a lot of SEGA stuff mostly. You may know them from works like the Genesis Mini/Mini 2, the Switch Online Genesis app, or SEGA AGES. Some of their stuff doesn’t always sell though, but even still, you’ll be in for a good/outstanding time depending on what they land. They also do contract work for simpler compilations, so stuff like Namcot Collection and Contra Anniversary Collection were done by them too. But even their contract work can be outstandingly impressive, as seen in the recent Castlevania Dominus Collection.Covering every M2 set, even the 2020 ones would be way way too much of a time sink, so let’s just skim over some notable, major “WTF” moments these guys did to prove their gaming mastery.
Over time these guys have, and these are just some examples, worked to make new Famicom ports of Gaplus and Pac-Man Championship Edition, given G-Darius and the 3D Rayforce games an HD makeover, made a 16-bit Arcade remake of Fantasy Zone II that was a real Arcade board, made a working US version of Trials of Mana, completely in English and other new languages, re-made Space Harrier II on Genesis to be like the Arcade original with better scaling, made a brand new Game Gear shooter in 2020 that pushes the handheld to the absolute limit, and make some of the most accurate shmup ports with no input lag out on the market.
That just scratches the surface of what they’ve done lately. There’s a reason people call them out as the best standard for retro game compilations, and that’s because they don’t just do a simple port and call it a day unless they are forced to; they add tons of bonus content. They add new characters, modes, levels, and features to their ports. They provide the most perfect emulation possible for any system thrown their way. They make new retro demakes from scratch, for crying out loud! Really this company is one where if you see their logo, you’re in good hands, and I’d love if more companies out there could reassure me with their logo as much as M2 reassures me. God tier stuff.
M2 Pros/Cons:
Pros: Perfection on most of their reissues with zero complaints. Tons of great demakes/compilations/archival stuff. Lots of high quality reissues and some of the best versions of certain games (Castlevania Advance/DS stuff, CAVE shooters) to ever exist. Probably the best maker of Mini Systems, too.
Cons: Not all their games hit the west due to low sales for stuff like Shottriggers, since the pricing on a lot of their stuff is really high; but that price is worth it, every single penny, most of the time. Some collections like Namco Museum Archives are a bit simplistic, yet still well emulated.
The Gold Master Series
And now we come to our Thumbnail Focus, Digital Eclipse. I could cover strictly the Gold Master stuff, but this section would be over very quickly. I could also cover their old DE era in the early 2000s, along with their very rocky Backbone era of ports, but that would make this too long. Soooooo 2015-onward Digital Eclipse it is.
Digital Eclipse is well, a company that continues to impress me time and time again, especially considering how bumpy some of their earlier releases were. The name has been around since the late 90s, doing a bunch of retro ports to then-modern consoles even back then. They even had their own early interview-focused collections out, for Midway and Atari! So these guys have always been fond of retro stuff and have put out a few impressive pieces of work over time.
It should thus, come as no surprise that in 2015, they’d reform into a new company carrying the DE name, with a focus on retro compilations starting with the first Capcom Mega Man Legacy Collection. This was a pretty simple collection of the first six Mega Man games on NES, and while it launched in a really rough state at first, subsequent patches and rereleases would add in some neat QOL and archival material, with the Switch version being particularly robust in this regard. It also has a very awesome challenge mode, which I’m kinda stunned we don’t see much of in the newer Digital Eclipse sets? It must have left a mark on Capcom though, as they still include challenge modes in their own in-house collections, such as the Mega Man Zero/ZX collection.
Anyhow, 2017 would bring in the next collection, The Disney Afternoon Collection, again with Capcom, of a bunch of eh-good Disney NES games. Unfortunately, this was in my opinion pretty weak on the archival extras and was rather buggy for me on PS4, but it still manages to serve up a decent assortment of fine NES games, emulated rather well, even if they lack any sort of bonuses besides a speedrun/boss rush mode. Most people nowadays will remember this for not coming for Switch despite it launching a month after the console did, but considering how limited dev kit access was in that first month + Capcom being very reluctant to support the thing at first, I’m not surprised this set hit the unfortunate limbo of being between two platforms.
The next Digital Eclipse collection came in 2018, with two of them this year! The first to launch was Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, a pretty fun set of almost every arcade SF game pre-Naomi, only really missing Hyper II and the spinoff games. And wow, this one went overboard on the extras, even more than Mega Man did; tons and tons of archival material including the literal only photo of Street Fighter 1’s canceled NES port, and lots of unused sketches/character concepts. This set is honestly worth it alone for the museum material, but is still pretty darn good for offline play. It has SF1-III and III 2nd even has the gorgeous widescreen mode properly implemented. playability wise, I had a blast spending the summer of 2018 binging this collection, and going through each of the games plenty of times.
Unfortunately, this collection had a few glaring exclusions and baffling choices that make me wonder if there’s a reason Digital Eclipse and Capcom stopped working on collections together. The first is how this is a game with online multiplayer… But only for four games in the collection, and the rollback netcode is spotty, to put it lightly. You also can’t map 3P/3K to any button, which seems stupid for a fighting game collection to the point I have to wonder if Capcom wouldn’t let them add that feature, since surely they’d have to know that was a thing tournament people would want. The next and biggest problem is the complete lack of Japanese versions for the games, unless you import the Japanese version (International), which is a separate SKU, and THEN you’re allowed to play the Japanese versions and compare the differences and thus, get a more complete collection.
No, you can’t region switch in the US version. Yes, there’s some minor bug fixes and tweaks in the international version, and no, the western version didn’t even get this as a patch. It’s a big shame Digital Eclipse never did a Capcom collection of their NES library or something like that, as I liked what they were going for with this and Mega Man, but I think with Capcom’s latest internal collections being as good they can possibly be, maybe it was for the best for Capcom to go in-house. Still, Street Fighter 30th is really darn good, even if Capcom’s silly patching/SKU decisions soured this collection for quite a few people.
The one late in the year, SNK 40th, would set the baseline for DE collections to come, and I gushed about it plenty in the intro paragraph. But yes, this was the right amount of work needed for a retro compilation, and the games emulate rather well, though the Arcade games act a bit weird depending on the platform, with the Xbox/Steam versions having less emulation/stability issues VS the Switch/PS4 versions, which seem to be because NIS America stopped allowing the game to be patched after a while. Thus, if you pick the set up on those systems, you may experience some annoying crashes in menus and such, and DIP switch options not saving.
With a new high point in focusing on archival material and developer stories, Digital Eclipse put out a few more fun collections, all of which have archival aspects in some way. Disney Classic Games Collection came from well, Disney, and has the Virgin Games renditions of Aladdin and the Lion King. These games aren’t really that good, but their development story is rather interesting, and they even went out of their way to do a M2-like move and make a QOL version of Genesis Aladdin with some of the big gripes fixed. Good attempt for a mediocre game, and all emulate well.
There’s even video interviews this time around, a new thing for the company, along with vintage videos from back in the day. Noted Intellivision Amico loser Tommy Tallarico also appears in one of these interviews, which aged really poorly considering what he’s up to now as a Backgammon guy who stole money from investors. All in all, a pretty OK set that was probably better for those with more nostalgia for these games than me.
BUT WAIT! In a first for DE, the publisher allowed them to revisit the collection later on to improve it! Yes, now we have the Capcom SNES version of Aladdin and Virgin’s The Jungle Book as paid DLC, and these games are much, much better. Capcom’s Aladdin is a fun little platforming romp, and one I’m surprised managed to get included on the collection at all. You even have archival material for this new game, instead of it just being thrown in with no context. The Jungle Book likewise has archival material, though no interviews with the dev team. Thankfully, Jungle Book is pretty darn fun, which is more than I can say for the other two games, and while I don’t get why that game was thrown in after two years as paid DLC, hey, it’s really cool stuff. Once again, building off the great foundation set by SNK 40th, and that would be reflected in the two collections put out between this set’s launch and the paid update.
Yep, Digital Eclipse and SNK would team up one final time for Samurai Shodown NeoGeo Collection. The final reason being well, uh, the unfortunate reality of SNK currently being owned by an evil bigot of a man, and them rightfully not wanting to work for a company owned by a man that goes against most people’s moral values.
Still, what a damn great collection to go out on for the partnership. This one didn’t include as much historical text info as SNK 40th, but it’s packed with tons and tons and tons of museum content yet again, along with more video footage! Interviews, pro gamer tournament highlights, now we’re cooking. It includes all Neo Geo MVS Samurai Shodown Games, all with online play this time that feels much better than SF30’s online, but not only does it have SS-SSV Special, but it introduced the mythical revision to Samurai Shodown V, Samurai Shodown V Perfect. A lost revision hidden away on the director’s hard drive, this final Neo Geo game saw the light of day via the collection, and while it isn’t particular special compared to well, V Special, obtaining a lost Neo Geo game of all things is a really impressive feat, and an awesome thing to be included here.
If this lost game was the only major addition to the NeoGeo Collection, then that would make it great as-is, but all the museum content? I’d say it’s easily worth the buy but uh, maybe don’t give Saudi-owned SNK your money anymore. Plenty of used physical copies out on the market anyway.
Still, going from SNK 40, to a surprising good Disney collection, to a SNK collection with a lost game in it, what could Digital Eclipse do next? Maybe pull out three obscure Blizzard Games in the weirdly named Blizzard Arcade Collection, and throw in some HD remastered versions to go alongside the console ports of the game. Yes, even the 32X Blackthrone is here, making this the only 32X reissue to currently exist. That alone is pretty rad! But yeah, you have 3 darn good games, darn good remastered versions of them, and a bunch of archival material yet again with video interviews.
I had zero playtime of anything Blizzard made before going into this set, and I came out a big fan of all three games. Just the sheer amount of quality of life in the DC versions alone makes this an absolute bargain, but then Digital Eclipse ended up throwing RPM Racing and The Lost Vikings 2 in as a free update, with archival material for those, too! I feel this collection went under the radar, but it shouldn’t have, as this is damn good, and one I can confidently say even newcomers will get a ton of fun out of.
Then, we get to 2022, the big year of two big collections. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection comes packed with tons of archival material, (no interviews this time, sadly) and every Konami TMNT game pre 1994, along with online multiplayer for a good chunk of them and some handy QOL features! More of the Street Fighter 30th approach compared to the SNK approach, but this was handled much, much better, launching great outta the gate and getting even better with future content updates. Good stuff indeed, and all titles emulate pretty darn well here.
Of course the big event, and the title that defined the entire article I made just now to begin with, was Atari 50. I sung praises already, I’ll sing them again, and I’ll continue singing them for years to come; this is SNK 40 and everything that came after it perfected, telling a great story with so many interviews you won’t be able to process them all, and so much archival material and trivia facts that it tells a pretty darn good amount of the classic Atari story.
So many darn games here and a bunch of them are pure scorechasing fun, and Digital Eclipse even threw in some great new games to go along with the older stuff, leading to a pretty outstanding package at launch, save for a Steam Cloud issue with Arcade Hi-Scores. (only a problem for scorechasing nerds like me, really) But then, two years later, they started doing DLC for it! And so far, the first volume is very promising, bringing more old games back into circulation with more archival info, and the only emulation issue I can call major at this time is Frenzy of 5200 having bad voice emulation.
If it wasn’t for those slight issues, I’d even go as far as to say Digital Eclipse is nearing a status as the Western version of M2 thanks to this wonderful collection, but there’s still a bit of ways to go before they can approach that level of perfection.
Now we approach the present. 2023, we got The Gold Master Series, our thumbnail topic. Atari 50 was the baseline for it, and now that template will continue for a lot more games. Making of Karateka, with a definitive version of that Apple II classic AND a remastered scorechaser brought back from the dead, which rocks? Yep, Digital Eclipse nailed that one. The Jeff Minter Story, including a bunch of ZX Spectrum/C64 EU goodness? Probably not a thing that sells well, but they did it anyway.
Tetris Forever, the upcoming collection which managed to somehow bring back the freaking Chunsoft Tetris 2? I’m very hyped for that one, and it seems with these four documentary style compilations, Digital Eclipse has nailed the path forward for how the industry should handle these more expensive compilations. Honestly? Bless them so much, and I’m eager to see what other compilations they can come up with in the future. Hell, I bet they’d be able to get cruddy Acclaim/LJN games from back in the 80s to seem pretty interesting in a collection! They did it for god awful Micronics NES games, by some miracle…
Digital Eclipse Pros/Cons:
Pros: Some of the best documentary work in the business. Tons of archival material without fail. Lots of options and increasing QOL features. Mike Mika’s genius skills really owe a lot to their earlier, 90’s success, too, and he’s doing the same sort of cool stuff now. This is how you preserve games and make even the less interesting titles memorable enough for a modern audience. Their newer remastered stuff in Gold Master titles/Atari 50 are really great.
Cons: Some older collections are in rough states due to publisher shenanigans. Some minor bugs in newer games, some collections have less archival goodies than others due to circumstances. Some collections aren’t on every system, but most are now. They really aren’t that great with online multiplayer implementation and have never done online leaderboards.
Conclusion
Wow, that’s a ton of retro compilation lines we looked at! Been a while since I did something like this… We started rambling about a company which put out some really poor quality sets and seem to be turning the corner, and ended on one that went from pretty typical collections of Capcom stuff to some of the most genre-defining compilations out there.
But yeah, I love retro reissues and compilations. My odd situation growing up meant I was stuck with out of date hardware like GBA/N64/GCN longer than most kids, and even after I got a Wii, I never really disliked the Virtual Console stuff I played. Old games were just older video games; they could still be very good and plenty of fun! Anytime a new retro port or collection comes by my line of sight, I’m eager to give it a spin or take a peek at it, and I obviously didn’t get to every single collection maker that put a set out on Switch or whatnot tonight; there are still a few including bigger companies like Capcom I thought about doing, but held off on to focus on the smaller developer side of things. Nor did I get into the devs doing outstanding remasters, like Nightdive Studios.
Maybe in the future I’ll do something like this for remasters, but as of now, I’m just happy to have rambled on, showed the pros/cons of a ton of different rereleases, and maybe got you to check out some retro ports you weren’t previously aware of! Either way, I feel the future of retro compilations is very bright; Digital Eclipse’s efforts clearly are inspiring other developers to try their hand at the “archival material” aspect, and when even Limited Run Games have managed to try and put more work into their compilations, I’m pretty hopeful other developers who work on pricier compilations will try and bring back a lot of old games in fun ways. And heck, even if they’re simpler emulations like Ratalaika/Pixel Games, they can still be incredibly fun to play, as long as the emulation works well.
So hopefully, this chronicle of game compilation makers showed you all just how this industry might be taking some great steps to preserving the history of the medium, and putting out a lot of much-needed games into circulation, while also pointing out the unfortunate missteps that happens when some companies get a bit too carried away by nostalgia sales. Either way, I’m pretty excited for the future of retro!
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