Are We Past ‘Content’ Yet?
You know how this works, friends. It’s time for one of Hamster’s somewhat rare sales on some of its Arcade Archives releases. This time around, it’s a Namco sale. A whopping fifteen games are on sale for 30% off until May 27th, 2026. The sale should apply to both Nintendo Switch/2 and PlayStation 4/5, and if you don’t see it yet at the time you’re reading this you…
Price: $11.99 USD Console Archives Release Date: April 30th 2026 Original Platform: Sony PlayStation We’re finally getting another break from the Famicom reissues with the third PlayStation release in the Console Archives line. This time around, we’ve got some of the finest Data East action you could find in the arcades. Well, one of the console ports of it, anyway. It’s Rohga:…
Price: $7.99 USD Console Archives Release Date: April 23rd 2026 Original Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Okay, here we go. The last handful of Console Archives releases have had limited appeal for various reasons, but this time around we’ve got the NES/Famicom version of Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom. This is a great addition to the Console Archives line, as it’s a…
It feels like it’s been a little while since I did the last one of these, but it’s time to get on with it again. In the past, I picked my favorite games for the original Game Boy. At the time I said that I was only considering the original library, leaving hybrid cartridges to a future Game Boy Color list. Well, the future is now. Here are my favorite Game Boy Color games, including…
Price: $7.99 USD Console Archives Release Date: April 16th 2026 Original Platform: Nintendo Famicom Well, I asked for something more “interesting” than a Famicom port of an existing Arcade Archives release, and I guess I got it this week. Ishin no Arashi is another 8-bit historical simulation game from Koei, this one focusing on the most fearful type of warriors the imagination can…
Price: $7.99 USD Console Archives Release Date: April 9th 2026 Original Platform: Nintendo Famicom We’re now eight games into Console Archives, and I can’t say I love the pattern that’s emerging. Six of the eight released titles are Famicom/NES games, with the remaining two being PlayStation 1 games. Five of the eight are games from Hamster’s own catalog, with only three…
Price: $7.99 USD Console Archives Release Date: March 26th 2026 Original Platform: Nintendo Famicom As it has done often with Arcade Archives, Hamster is filling out the Console Archives schedule with titles from its own library. Over the years, Hamster has acquired the catalogues of several defunct companies including Nichibutsu, Athena, UPL, Video System, Allumer, and NMK. These acquisitions…
Price: $7.99 USD Console Archives Release Date: March 19th 2026 Original Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Ninja-Kid II is the kind of release I hope we don’t see too much of in the Console Archives line, but I suspect we will get them at least now and then. What we have here is a Famicom port of UPL’s arcade game of the same name. This version of the game was ported by the…
Uh, well… let’s try. The Tiger Game.com was in some ways a very ambitious piece of tech, but for every one thing it tried to push forward, it lived five years in the past on something other aspect. Its library has a lot of big names in it thanks to Tiger’s strong licensing partnerships, but there aren’t many good games to play on it at all. Not even many decent ones.…
Price: $11.99 USD Console Archives Release Date: March 12th 2026 Original Platform: Sony PlayStation The Sonic Wings/Aero Fighters series of vertical shooters has never been in the conversation for the best of the genre. There isn’t much about them that is terribly exciting or innovative, and the fact that two of the three mainline entries were made for the 4:3 display of the NEOGEO puts…
Price: $7.99 USD Console Archives Release Date: March 5th 2026 Original Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System If one were to try to find the exact opposite of the quick pick-up-and-play experiences that Arcade Archives tends to offer, a Koei simulation is as good a candidate as any. The fourth Console Archives release is none other than the NES port of Nobunaga’s Ambition, which was the…
It’s time once again for another Arcade Archives sale, and as is often the case it’s a publisher-specific one. These typically involve SNK, Namco, or Taito. Konami doesn’t do Arcade Archives sales. It’s just how it is. Anyway, this time it’s Taito. Ten games in total, 30% off each. All of these should be available on Switch/Switch 2 and PlayStation 4/5, and if you…
Price: $7.99 USD Console Archives Release Date: February 19th 2026 Original Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System With these being early days for Hamster’s Console Archives line-up, a lot of the rules are still being established. This third release clarifies some things, and not really in the way some might have hoped. Dezaemon is a Famicom game that allows the player to make their own…
Price: $7.99 USD Console Archives Release Date: February 6th 2026 Original Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System Here’s the second Console Archives release, at least according to Hamster’s internal numbering. This is Tecmo’s sequel to its hit NES game Ninja Gaiden and like that game it’s a scrolling action-platformer. Ryu Hayabusa returns to face a new threat, the evil…
Price: $11.99 USD Console Archives Release Date: February 6th 2026 Original Platform: Sony PlayStation I’ll be doing some summaries of each release in Hamster’s new Console Archives series of classic reissues. These articles will appear first on my Patreon , but if you don’t mind waiting a little they will all eventually make their way here. That said, I wouldn’t mind the…
Well, this is a bit of a relief after the last couple of consoles. I’m not the hugest fan of the Nintendo 64. I think it plays host to some of the best games of the era, but that pool does not run very deep or wide. It certainly doesn’t help that I’m not a fan of most Rare games, and this console more than just about any other was leaning on that developer’s work. Still, I…
Wow, if SEGA Saturn was a tough ranking thanks to its library of over a thousand games, thee PlayStation is completely bonkers. This console had in excess of four thousand titles released for it during its original commercial lifespan, and only about a thousand of those are yearly sports games. It took a while to put this list together, and even now as I write this I am finding myself wanting to…
Okay, time to rank more games. We’ve reached the generation where things stepped up quite a bit, and I think the fact that the third-place SEGA Saturn ended up with a library of over a thousand games is as good a demonstration of that as anything. I love the SEGA Saturn a lot. It was my first console from that generation, and while I will readily admit the PlayStation was the clear king, I…
When I reviewed the previous Atari 50 DLC here a little over a year ago, I had a feeling we would see more added to this amazing interactive documentary in the future. There are still plenty of games owned by Atari that have yet to make an appearance, and with the company continuing to make new acquisitions, one never knows what could be added to that library. I was rather surprised when the next…
The SEGA 32X had a short, nasty, and brutish life. One has to wonder why SEGA even bothered to release it, all things considered. But release it they did, and while its library is quite small it has a lot of character to it. I had some fun picking out my favorites for this add-on. As always, these are drawn from commercial releases only, but all regions are allowed. This is simply my personal list…