Well here’s an article category I didn’t expect to be writing for again. Usually this sort of stuff gets noticed by other outlets way quicker than I do, especially since most of these come out of ratings boards and the like.

Yep, at 10:06 in the embedded livestream above (showing early gameplay from Ufouria 2), an icon is accidentally shown when the VTuber scrolls too far to the right on the Switch OS, showing an unannounced product that caught my eye: “SUNSOFT IS BACK! Retro Game Selection”. Here’s an exact photo of the scene in case the embed gets altered:

So what could this be, considering there’s currently no trace of this compilation being announced anywhere on the internet? Well, my personal speculation is that it might be related to the campfire crowdfunding campaign they did last year. That was for reissues of three of their popular Famicom games, those being Wing of Madoola, Tokaido, and Ripple Island.

While I think crowdfunding for three NES games may have been a bit silly, and the english title of this collection indicates a western release, (and two out of three of these games are just flat out not viable to play without knowing Japanese) I feel there might be a slim chance that crowdfunding could have paid off to potentially netting us english localizations of these titles? I’d love to play Ripple Island officially in English, at the very least. Heck, i’d just love to play Wing of Madoola at all! The border of the game’s icon seems to have the Famicom color scheme, so whatever this collection may be, it could be NES related, which also reminded me of something very, very old…

Way back in 2019, when the Jajamaru Collection got announced, a Jaleco and a Sunsoft collection were announced alongside it. While the Jajamaru set got released and then remade for the western market later on, the other two completely vanished into the ether, never to be seen again. Per the info at the time, the following games were to be in the Sunsoft set:

-Hebereke
-RAF WORLD (Journey to Silius)
-Battle Formula (Super Spy Hunter)
-Wing of Madoola

with other games to be determined. Now, of the four announced, one was already crowdfunded in that campaign, and two were reissued via other means (Ufouria via the upcoming Evercade Sunsoft 2, RAF WORLD/Silius via Switch Online/Evercade Sunsoft 1), leaving just Battle Formula MIA. Whether that’s something to do with Warner Bros owning a stake in Spy Hunter or not is uncertain, but maybe that collection is the one this icon refers to?

Either way, Sunsoft has an upcoming livestream in March, which I’m guessing is when this compilation will be officially announced and when we learn all the details. Personally, I’d just love to be able to play Blaster Master and Ufouria on more modern consoles, even though the Evercade sets are great, these games should be everywhere!

EDIT: The Steam Page is now live. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2821290/SUNSOFT_is_Back/ Which further confirms the campfire trilogy of games is indeed the set that’s included here. Unfortunately, this also means the set is only in Japanese, since none of these three games ever got US ROMs. Still, it does seem to include a lot of bonus material, so I’ll likely be picking this up to review for SFG.