I'm so glad that Hamster's Arcade Archives are a thing.

[velo]

30% off some Taito games at the moment.

[bbbhltz]

Rastan for under €5? Pretty good deal just to hear Agressive World.

[Gojiguy]

Dang! I was hoping for Gun Frontier PS4 to be on sale... Still Rastan, Cadash and Halley's Comet are good deals.

[OldSkoolShmuper]

What are we gonna get this week?

Please be Rave Racer.

Yes, the visual upgrade & gameplay/game mechanics of Rave Racer compared to Ridge Racer are quite something to behold. It's just a matter of time when Hamster releases Rave Racer as it's never gotten a proper home game console port to this very day.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Absolutely, the first significant advance over Ridge Racer since Ridge Racer 2 was more of a QOL update. Rave Racer was awesome and as you said it never got a proper console port to this very day. PC version was shown in 1996, but got cancelled. The two PSP Ridge Racer released had the tracks from Rave Racer, but not the game play. There was the recent Arcade 1Up Ridge Racer mini cabinet which had it, but that's not a console.

Sorry, no Rave Racer this time as Hamster reveals this week and sadly it's Konami crap: Video Hustler.
https://www.famitsu.com/article/202509/51999

Makes me wish we had a Namco game instead (or Raiden II), but looks like Hamster plays blind eyes and deaf ears on fan demands.

Sigh. Oh well, another week to wait for the next release.

[Jucksalbe]

30% off some Taito games at the moment.

I think it's finally time to get the ACA version of Bubble Bobble. Even at the risk of getting that song stuck in my head for all eternity.

[Jonpachi]

30% off some Taito games at the moment.

I think it's finally time to get the ACA version of Bubble Bobble. Even at the risk of getting that song stuck in my head for all eternity.

Even just reading this got it stuck in my head.

[velo]

Doesn't seem like they're quite there for every game yet, but yeah seems like it's becoming a trend.

So far, since the Switch 2 launch they've done AA2 releases for all four Namco games (Ridge Racer, Air Combat 22, Aqua Jet, Mach Breakers), and then Scrambled Egg was the first non-Namco game. But the other 9 AA releases since the start of June have only been available as AA1. King of Fighters ‘98 is also available since February as the first and currently only ACA NeoGeo 2 release, but only on PS5 and Xbox Series S/X for now.

Little tip: if you ever want to buy an Arcade Archives 2 game on Switch 2, and you have any desire whatsoever to play on Switch 1... buy the S1 version first, then you can purchase the "upgrade" to the S2 version (separate game launcher) for only the difference in price between the AA1 and AA2 versions. Discount is already applied in the Nintendo eShop if you have the AA1 game on your account. Then you get both games for the price of just the Arcade Archives 2 version. If you do it in the other order and buy the Arcade Archives 2 version first, you do NOT get access to the AA1 version and won't be able to play it on a Switch 1 unless you re-buy the full-priced AA1 version. Learned that when I immediately bought AA2 Ridge Racer on Switch 2 on launch day, oops!

And again we have AA2 Video Hustler. Also kind of interesting they went back to 2D Namco last week. I thought they might be done with that for a while.

[hamfighterx]

I am always especially interested to try to the real oddball or under the radar Arcade Archives entries, and many times I see one that looks uninteresting at first glance but ends up surprising me big time. A couple of my favorite AA releases from this year fall into that category, Super Basketball (another older Konami title) and Tecmo's Pinball Action (love this one).

Grabbed Video Hustler in the hopes that the modest presentation might conceal a fun little puzzle-ish billiards take. But unfortunately, this one disappoints me.

There's a lot of potential here:
- The idea of making it more of a scoring game with 6 balls to sink and each pocket having a different points multiplier is promising.
- Multiple different patterns of the six balls could have be a really fun way to make it more of a puzzle challenge if they gave you different ball layouts, but unfortunately the "patterns" are limited to changing up the score multipliers on the six pockets each new round/"pattern" - the six balls are always in the same pyramid layout for a standard break shot. Could have been something more there.
- I'm strangely on board with the aiming system, where you get a dot on the edge of the pool table that you can move to any point around the table to aim your cue ball straight at the dot, plus a constantly cycling 3-speed shot strength meter to time your shot (and shot strength also impacts your scoring).

But the game commits a cardinal sin for a billiards game, in that it really doesn't nail the ball physics. Kind of vital! It just doesn't feel especially fun to play, and very unintuitive to predict where your shots will end up. To me, can't overcome that so this is pretty forgettable.

[Skyknight]

So chances are high that next week is Taito. Anyone else hoping for Night Striker? I don’t consider the Operation Night Strikers price tag to be worthwhile when just the one game in there appeals to me.

[Sima Tuna]

So chances are high that next week is Taito. Anyone else hoping for Night Striker? I don’t consider the Operation Night Strikers price tag to be worthwhile when just the one game in there appeals to me.

That's certainly why I skipped Operation Night Strikers. I would rather just have the ACA single release. I don't want to clutter my library with games I probably won't play.

[hamfighterx]

Taito and Hamster have much too good of a relationship for Hamster to do something as wild as sabotaging Taito's big annual retro release with an Arcade Archives version of one of the highlight games a mere month after the Operation Night Strikers release. Absolutely no way I'd expect Night Strikers any time this year.

Honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if we still haven't seen Night Strikers on AA next year and before that happens we get an announcement of Taito's 2026 collection with something like Chase HQ, SCI, and Chase HQ2.

[utsunderthesky]

Taito and Hamster have much too good of a relationship for Hamster to do something as wild as sabotaging Taito's big annual retro release with an Arcade Archives version of one of the highlight games a mere month after the Operation Night Strikers release. Absolutely no way I'd expect Night Strikers any time this year.

Honestly, I wouldn't be shocked if we still haven't seen Night Strikers on AA next year and before that happens we get an announcement of Taito's 2026 collection with something like Chase HQ, SCI, and Chase HQ2.

didnt they do this right when Taito Milestones 3 came out

[hamfighterx]

didnt they do this right when Taito Milestones 3 came out

Completely different situation, because the Taito Milestones games ARE just the bundled compilation versions of the Switch Hamster Arcade Archives releases. It's the same Hamster-published games, minus the online leaderboards, for a lower bundled price than buying the individual eShop releases. Taito and Hamster are partners on those. The majority of the games on the Milestones collections were already out on Arcade Archives at the time of the collection release; for any games that weren't already on AA, showing up on Milestones was basically a guarantee that it was going to come to Arcade Archives, and probably fairly soon.

Operation Night Strikers is a Taito published release that didn't involve Hamster, much like several of Taito's other collections over the past several years: Darius Cozmic Collection & Revelation, Space Invaders Invincible Colelction, Ray'z Arcade Chronology, the Laser Disc one they did in 2024...

Even for the examples where Hamster did eventually release games form those collections on Arcade Archives, they released quite far apart to give the Taito releases some breathing room:
- Darius Cozmic Collection released in February 2019, Arcade Archives Darius was over 3 years later in October 2022 (Switch, or PS4 got it as a very early release back in 2016) and Darius II was ~4.5 years later in October 2023.
- Space Invaders and its sequels have notably not shown up on Arcade Archives yet, Taito collection was 2020.
- Nothing from the Ray'z compilation has hit AA yet.

It would truly be insane for Hamster to be releasing their own ports of the just-released Taito classic arcade collection for the year, so close together. That would be clear competition against a company who is such a close partner (Taito people are constantly on the Hamster weekly streams, for instance). Hamster doing something that would reasonably be seen as sabotaging Taito's recent full priced release would be extremely unusual in Japan, and even moreso in such a niche space with so much frequent collaboration and staff all knowing each other.

We've even seen cooperation with stuff like City Connection CANCELLING their planned PS4 and Switch releases of S-Tribute Metal Black (but releasing the Xbox/PC versions), specifically to not compete with the Arcade Archives PS4/Switch release of the same game. Part of it may be not wanting to compete with Hamster's high quality and cheaper arcade release with a more expensive Saturn port, but you have to assume there's also an element there of not wanting to piss of one of the other companies in the relatively small space who generally seem to be on pretty friendly terms.

Anyway, maybe I'll be wrong and Night Strikers will show up next week! Personally, I'd be shocked to see it on Arcade Archives any time sooner than well into 2026.