syn Sophia's also dropping a small original next week, and it's not a dressup game nor a wrestling game: MahjongPuzzle 8, a puzzle game about forming high-scoring hands from a solitaire board www.nintendo.com/us/store/pro... (it hit Steam in January; zero reviews…) www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-om...

another small original game from MAGES, following the Rhythm Heaven-esque TIMINGooo! from a couple years back: Zombie Disaster Drill, a Kuukiyomi-esque assemblage of zombie outbreak scenarios framed as public safety drills www.nintendo.com/us/store/pro... www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MDs...

Snow Bros Classic Collection, minus the classics: all the ports of the arcade original (MD, NES, GB) without either of the actual arcade games ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ store.steampowered.com/app/3233400/... I can only presume there's a licensing conflict with the remakes (which now include the OGs), but still...

Imagineer finally scored a decisive legal win against that insane Spanish dude who was squatting on the EU Medabots trademark www.imagineer.co.jp/news/article... 🇯🇵 dude registered in 2018, unsuccessfully sued them(!) for infringement in '21, lost a '23 appeal & lost their final appeal on October 29

Rushing Beat X, the all-new sequel to the Jaleco brawler series released on SNES as Rival Turf, Brawl Brothers & The Peace Keepers, is finally dated; it'll hit Switch 2/PS5/XB/PC on March 19 www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWW-... they've demoed this game many times, never to great response...

Artdink's announced ARTDINK GAME LOG, a new reissue series for PC & Switch, starting with Taiyou no Shippo: Wild, Pure, Simple Life (Tail of the Sun) on December 16, followed by Aquanaut no Kyuujitsu (Aquanaut's Holiday) next year www.youtube.com/watch?v=quTg... store.steampowered.com/app/4038680/

lemme add the just-as-ugly flipside: rather than plainly leaning on MTL, some outlets try to launder their own forfeiture of responsibility by instead citing the same small handful of trash-peddling zerolingual SNS "aggregators" as sources, conferring authority in exchange for absolute dogshit

I wrote more words about how it feels to be a translator watching the games press report on AI and labor, coming from a field that's fought these battles for decades. It may look like I'm beating up on one outlet, but it's not about them; I've been trying to write this for me and my peers all year.

Romancing SaGa 3's 30 yrs old, & veteran Square pixel artist Kazuko Shibuya shared a glimpse at a dev doc that intersects with recent interest in specialised printed material: paper records of Monika's animation data, visually & with OAM index maps for each 8x8 sprite xcancel.com/Skazuko/stat...

icymi, 11/11 is Twin Stick day, and there's a mysterious 30th-anniversary Virtual-On announcement's going live in a few minutes www.youtube.com/live/l_GVbfb... 🇯🇵 (almost certainly a community tournament or something similar, so curb your expectations)

idk if the demographic for Rabio Lepus shirts is really looking for kids-store-dollar-rack captions on their shit but maybe Hamster knows something I don't know www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0FX9XPK3X 🇯🇵

out now (and very openly just a basic mednafen application, evidently)

TOUMA, current-day model maker, ex-Sega designer & creator of Fang the Sniper, is collaborating with toy company T-BASE on a line of classic Sonic blind box mini-figures toumart.biz/10048/ 🇯🇵neat to see Trip made the cut…I'm not super tapped in but I've never been able to gauge whether she really hit

lemme add that devs Cat Hui Trading put up a Steam page for their next game, to coincide with their presence at Digige over the weekend: Hyper Euphoria, a retro micom-style ADV with a silly yuri tinge store.steampowered.com/app/4012840/... many of Estique's collaborators returned for this one

thinking back to the emergence of Arslan Ash, whose rise to prominence shifted the global Tekken scene, put a lot of strong players on ppls' radar & opened the door for cross-cultural pilgrimages, all while demonstrating the value of homegrown FGC initiatives like the EFight Pass visa initiative…

have at it www.nintendo.com/us/store/pro...

remember when former Capcom arcade head Yoshiki Okamoto linked back up with Akira Nishitani, Noritaka Funamizu & Yoko Shimomura, plus character designer Raita Kazama, to make a new fighting game? it turned into this, and it's out today on iOS/Android in Japan www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Cs... 🇯🇵

out next year on PC/Switch/XB/PS5: Changeable Guardian Estique, the brand-new horizontal STG from veteran devs stretching back to Compile, Westone & beyond store.steampowered.com/app/4078160/ this game hit FC/NES carts at the beginning of the year & I'd argue it's more impressive than Earthion

quelle surprise, Zaleste's been delayed into next year www.compileheart.com/news/?num=20... 🇯🇵

after a zillion delays, the Switch port of Elminage Original's finally dated for April 23 gamepress.jp/archives/169... 🇯🇵 this is a fresh port of the 3DS version, not based on the (English-only) Steam version, and it looks to have the original Basiscape BGM & not the replacement tunes from Elminage Ⅲ

his week's Arcade Archives release: Namco's 1996 3D tank deathmatch game, Tokyo Wars www.youtube.com/watch?v=55Xr... do note that the ACA (Switch/PS4) version's limited to singleplayer, with 4-player splitscreen exclusive to ACA2 (Switch 2/PS5/XB)

this week's G-MODE Archives title: the zodiac-themed chain puzzle game Kira☆Kira info.gmodecorp.com/gmodearchive... 🇯🇵 the selling point for this game (if they're lucky, anyway): the character art's by Atsuko Nishida, designer of loads of classic pokemon www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-g-...

obviously the Ninja Gaiden interview shmuplations translated is super interesting but I also feel compelled to point out they dropped this absolute banger at the same time shmuplations.com/namcomusic/

Psyvariar 3 has a release date, it'll be out March 19 for Switch 2/Switch/PS5/PC psyvariar.success-corp.co.jp/3rd/ 🇯🇵 standard & LE physicals; LE has a pin set & CD OST…Switch version's ¥1000 cheaper than SW2/PS5 icymi, this one's being developed by Brazilian studio Banana Bytes, makers of Sophstar

Gradius Origins has been updated with a lot of small tweaks/additions, including multiple new maniac/hardcore options for Gradius III, flat-black borders with wallpapers disabled, training mode tweaks, increased BGM range & separate BGM/SFX volumes for SalaIII & more www.konami.com/games/gradiu...

Holy shit. @shmuplations.bsky.social translated a massive thread of old tweets from Hideo Yoshizawa that goes deep into the NES Ninja Gaiden's development, including finally confirming the Castlevania influence shmuplations.com/ninjagaiden/

folk from City Connection detailed R-Type Delta HD's technical underpinnings www.gamespark.jp/article/2025... 🇯🇵 put simply, it's a genuine port, primarily reconstructed from a 60~70%-complete source base by a single programmer on a slow-burn, if-it-happens-it-happens basis, beginning during lockdown

calling for as many senate hearings as it takes to get you people to start offering content warnings for this shit, jfc

Arika's celebrating their 30th anniversary by permanently dropping the price of Fighting EX Layer to $0.99 on PS4 & PC—the new price is live on Steam rn & will go live on PS at ~00:00 Nov.2 in your region store.steampowered.com/app/871200/F... store.playstation.com/en-us/produc...

PasocomMini PC8801's been delayed for a third time, to "March, maybe", due to work not being finished on the software side… their ETA references the lunar new year, which has ppl wondering if they outsourced the emulation to a CN/TW company, but it could just as easily be a manufacturing concern

can't even remember the last FC dump as monumental as this one... the ROM's backed up here, btw splatterhouse.kontek.net/new.html

Konami heard your calls for Tokimemo comp, and here's their response: a physical print compilation of the 30th-anniversary comics they've been posting on SNS store.kadokawa.co.jp/shop/e/eebte... 🇯🇵

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yvt... aight so why are we japanizing a euro game series claimed by brazilians, exactly

...and here it is: Dokapon 321 Super Collection!, a Switch compilation containing the SFC versions of Dokapon IV, Dokapon 321 & Dokapon Gaiden, out January 29 🇯🇵 it'll have savestates, x3 turbo, let you browse the manual while playing etc new key art/illustrations by 321 designer Ami Shibata, too

Sting's teasing a Dokapon 321 reissue... for reference, this is Dokapon game #2, and is the one they remade for PS2/Wii & recently remastered as Dokapon Kingdom (the OG was titled Dokapon IV, and that one was remade for DS as Dokapon Journey—ppl still think the DS+Wii games were the same but no)

so busy lately that I forgot to mention this: SINGOU BREAKA, a traffic light-themed grid-based puzzle game with a unique sign-flipping chaining gimmick store.steampowered.com/app/3506550/... this is the first Steam release for veteran doujin action-puzzle dev yanaboh www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0oL...

incidentally, the (extremely sketchy) publisher of Vanguard Princess on Steam tried to use this process in order to claim absolute global authority over the commercialisation of VP, but: it don't work like that they claim to have the official OK from the original creator, so why would they need it

note the legals: LRG's using Japan's arbitration system for orphaned games to reissue Little Samson—if you can demonstrate that you've made a genuine effort to contact/identify a potential rights owner to no avail, you can legally commercialise an old game by paying royalties to the JP govt, which…

out November 6 on Switch: NYAZ, a cat-themed Wizardry-like descended from a series of credible free Wiz clones, dev'd by a former Armored Core series programmer store-jp.nintendo.com/item/softwar... 🇯🇵 I'd love to believe they've purged the AI art from the PC early access version but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

live on kickstarter: Farniamura de Kurasu / "Farnia Village (temp.)", a new slow-life ARPG from Rune Factory 4 director Shinichi Manabe www.kickstarter.com/projects/100... they're being assisted by RF3/4's scenario writer, some illustrators etc but are making the majority of the game on their own

the Steam page is up for Super Hook Girl Ultra Challenge, the first commercial successor to the hit free game Super Hook Girl from 2016 store.steampowered.com/app/3426270/_/ this is more a remake of the OG than a sequel &, despite the name, isn't ultra-challenging www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNhA... 🇯🇵

held at a restaurant following the recent RTA in Japan, a roundtable convo between Arika's jin8 (Hitoshi Hirashima) , producer & programmer on Tetris The Grandmaster 4, and notable players/community figures Saito, Koryan, Greentea, RunningOutRate & haruka/radio613 goziline.com/archives/64221 🇯🇵

Edia's signed on to reissue the PS versions of Toshinden 1/2/3, ETA FY26~27 edia.co.jp/news/pressre... 🇯🇵 no Subaru, huh I wonder who might be doing the work, and if they're up to the task... the number of JP companies working with PS emulation atm is small & idk if their current go-tos are up to it

it's been a minute since I directed ppl to allcityslopshop.itch.io but it still gets a follow or two a week, which is certainly reassuring... yes, this is still happening (and yes to everyone who's asked about or otherwise side-eyed the name, it will be changing)

gamespark published an interview with animator Akio Watanabe (Higurashi, Grisaia, Nurse Witch Komugi, etc) on their work on Janken Game Acchi Muite Hoi!, the obscure 1996 Data East arcade game that randomly went viral on youtube a couple months back www.gamespark.jp/article/2025... 🇯🇵

Taito's planning to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Crown 602, Japan's first domestically-made crane game—they've opened the call for testimonials/info from ppl who might've played it, & are offering a ¥100k reward to whoever can help em locate an actual machine www.taito.co.jp/mob/topics/4... 🇯🇵

out-of-nowhere news from Cave: they'll soon be opening DANMAKU, an official Cave storefront in Shibuya, and they've put out the call for people interested in part-time work 🇯🇵

hard to argue against the "puyotet was a poisoned chalice" folk at this point

didn't watch the thing so correct me if I'm wrong, but will the new Air Ride really only have 9 tracks + the 9 GC tracks? did Sakurai offer a rationalisation for the low track count at any point?

it was only a matter of time