Six of the best retro rereleases

With the recent release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, it’s worth noting that there have been a variety of really high-quality retro rereleases over the course of the last few years. Whether you’re in the mood for extremely old classics from the dawn of gaming or more recent titles that are a bit more accessible to a modern audience, there’s plenty of scope to enjoy some of retro’s finest without having to bust out dusty old hardware.

So today we’re going to highlight six great retro rereleases (other than The Cowabunga Collection, which we’ve already raved about!) that you can pick up today. And if you ever find modern gaming getting you down with all its microtransactions, DLC and online connectivity, you can rely on these games to give you a boost up into your happy place for an hour or two before you return to face the futility of existence.

Let’s go!

Atari Flashback Classics

This retro rerelease from Code Mystics and AtGames is likely to be supplanted by the spectacular-looking Atari 50th Annviersary Collection coming later this year, but for now the sheer value of this bundle is hard to beat. Offering 150 games from the arcade, Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 platforms, there’s a wide variety of great experiences to be had here. (Note that on PS4 and Xbox One, the 150 games are split across three separate releases, whereas the Switch version gathers them all into a single compilation.)

Sure, not all of them are particularly palatable to a modern audience, especially from a visual standpoint, but you might be surprised how enjoyable some of the more “primitive” games actually are — the 2600 sports games in particular can be an absolute blast with friends.

The collection includes the games, plus scans of the original manuals and online leaderboards for the arcade games. There’s also support for online play, but given the nature of this collection you’re best off pre-arranging a time to play with a friend rather than attempting to rely on “matchmaking”.

Aleste Collection

Frustratingly only released in Japan — though easily acquirable via sites like Play-Asia — this retro rerelease is a brilliant collection of classic shoot ’em ups that haven’t had nearly enough love over the years, primarily due to the 8-bit platforms they released on.

M2’s emulation of the games is, as always, excellent, and like the other entries in the company’s ShotTriggers series, the original gameplay is supported by optional “Gadgets” in the screen border that help you to analyse your play and keep track of things the game otherwise takes care of behind the scenes. It’s a great means of learning not only about the existence of these games, but how they work on a fundamental level.

Prinny Presents NIS Classics

It’s impossible to pick one of these excellent retro rereleases, as they’re all fantastic. Bringing back some of Nippon Ichi Software’s most beloved games from the PS1, PS2 and PSP eras, the Prinny Presents NIS Classics range offers some of the best value gaming out there, as each individual title can provide potentially hundreds of hours of enjoyment.

The best thing about these collections is that they’re proper rereleases of games that can be pricey and difficult to pick up in their original format today. Don’t expect too much in the way of frills when it comes to the ports themselves — for the most part, they’re relatively bare-bones upscaled ports that have been tweaked to run in widescreen — but it’s testament to how enjoyable these games are that they didn’t really need much in the way of updating. And if you splash the cash on the limited physical editions, there are some delightful extras such as soundtrack CDs, acrylic stands and artbooks to enjoy, too.

If I had to pick a single favourite, it would probably be Volume 2 thanks to the presence of the fantastic roguelike ZHP, but all three bundles are well worth your time.

SNK 40th Anniversary Collection

Most people know SNK as “the Neo Geo people”, and indeed over the years the vast majority of retro rereleases focusing on SNK titles have concentrated on this angle. What makes SNK 40th Anniversary Collection interesting and remarkable is that it completely ignores the Neo Geo in favour of what the company was up to before then.

And, as it turns out, they were creating a wide variety of really enjoyable arcade games, pretty much right from the dawn of video gaming as a medium. SNK 40th Anniversary Collection allows you to enjoy these games both in their original arcade form and through their home ports, and in true Digital Eclipse fashion there’s plenty of supporting “museum” material to explore, also.

While the original method of distributing some of the games via DLC was utterly baffling — pick up the PS4 version if you want a “complete” physical archive, as the Switch version requires updates to get the full game list — this is a prime example of Digital Eclipse giving some underappreciated classics the “Criterion Collection” approach.

Castlevania Anniversary Collection

While some fans still hold out the vain hope that Konami might one day release a new 2D Castlevania, this retro rerelease certainly made a lot of people happy by collecting together some all-time classics from the series.

Deliberately focusing on the earlier part of the series where the action was much more linear than what many people associate with Castlevania today, the Castlevania Anniversary Collection is a great means of getting to grips with the distinctive way that early Castlevania does things — and to appreciate how influential these games have been on more recent games such as FromSoftware’s work. The deliberate pacing, the necessity to learn enemy patterns, the precise nature of combat — it can all be traced right back to the original Castlevania.

Featuring eight games (including both their English and Japanese variants) plus a digital art book, this is a good value retro rerelease, and a very welcome return for a classic series.

NeoGeo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 1

This retro rerelease goes on the list primarily because it’s so unusual — and that’s what I love to see in retro rereleases. We can bring back the same 30 Mega Drive games time after time — and indeed, Sega does love to do that, which is fine, as those games remain great — but the real appeal with modern retro rereleases is getting the chance to experience things that relatively few people engaged with back in the day.

The NeoGeo Pocket Color was a vastly underappreciated little handheld that featured a host of brilliant games, many of which were pocket-sized versions of titles from their big brother in the arcades. Rather than trying to ape the arcade experience with limited hardware, however, the NeoGeo Pocket Colour played to its strengths, bringing us some delightfully cute takes on classic franchises such as The King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown and Metal Slug.

Don’t let the chunky pixels and limited colour palette put you off; there are some really solid games here just waiting to be discovered.

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