EXPANDING YOUR RETRO COLLECTION NECESSITATE HUNTING FOR GAMES, BUT OLD NOW BEING REISSUED FOR ORIGINAL SYSTEMS. COMPANIES BEHIND THESE RELEASES TO FIND OUT THEY’RE HAPPENING

Words By Nick Thope

There are plenty of ways to games today, from minith the Evercade to digital modern hardware, but some prefer original hardware. wrong with that, of course, demand doesn’t always play nicely with supply. Some games that are now classics were underappreciated in their meaning that there aren’t too many around. Others may have been regionally or wound up as the victim of publisher Lest we forget, gaming is also more was 30 years ago. Constant demand enthralled by modern sequels is enough up the price of even the most common In the past, that has meant that players to pay through the nose or go without, there are a number of companies out have decided to return classic console to market by manufacturing brand-new compatible with the original hardware.

» As you can see from its Mega Man editions, iam8bit bundle plenty of extra material with its games.

But why manufacture new games for obsolete hardware in the first place? Surprisingly, we encountered a variety of different motivations. For one company, it was a simple case of supporting its other business ventures. “Retro-Bit started producing clone consoles and peripherals so publishing carts was something we always wanted to do,” says marketing manager Richard Igros. “We believe there will always be a demand for physical media and even more so in gaming. With retro gaming having a more prominent space in the industry over the years and breaking more into the mainstream, this was only going to be a natural next step and companies are starting to realise that.” Retro-Bit’s reissues have included games such as the Data East Classic Collection and Jaleco Brawler’s Pack multicarts, as well as Metal Storm for the NES.

» External packaging often resembles that of the original systems, while carefully avoiding any potential trademark infringement.

Josh Fairhurst of Limited Run Games sees it as a simple case of satisfying market demand. “Reissuing existing games has always appealed to me because there are a ton of younger people being introduced to these older platforms via YouTube and they want to collect for these systems. Supplies are fixed, so prices have been rising to a pretty absurd degree. The market’s response to this has been to turn to bootlegs,” he explains. “These bootlegs aren’t earning the licence holders anything, but at the same time the licence holders aren’t pressing these themselves. Someone needed to step in to fix this so new, legal copies can enter the market.” Limited Run Games has manufactured new runs of The Secret Of Monkey Island for Mega-CD and a variety of Star Wars games including Shadows Of The Empire, as well as original NES projects like Jay & Silent Bob Mall Brawl.

Over at iam8bit, the driving force behind the decision to enter the market was a desire to celebrate games. “We’ve always been fascinated by the homebrew scene - going to classic gaming expos and seeing new riffs on the defunct consoles,” say co-owners Jon M Gibson and Amanda White. “Way back in 2006 we even officially commissioned, with Capcom’s permission, a playable Atari 2600 version of Mega Man for an art exhibition installation, to play along with a 15-times-scale Atari controller. Our cartridge obsession has always been there, so we started thinking - what if we created a ‘Criterion’ style label for old-school games?” The result is the company’s Legacy Cartridge Collection, which so far includes games such as Mega Man 2 for the NES, Street Fighter II for the SNES and Aladdin for the Mega Drive.