Limited Run Games' press conference was today, and they've announced a great lineup of stuff coming soon. If you want to see the full list, you can find it at https://limited-run-games.myshopify.com/blogs/news/lrg3-2020.
There's a lot of things I'm excited about on this list — packaged releases of the Castlevania Anniversary Collection and the excellent Mighty Gunvolt Burst, to name just two, but one of the greatest things is that Shantae is making a comeback. Yes, the original Game Boy Color game — the one that commands astronomical prices on the second-hand market these days, and where you're probably getting a reproduction cart anyway. (Okay, LRG's version says up-front that it's a reproduction, but it's still a nice "official" way to get hold of a packaged copy of Shantae for Game Boy.)
Even better, both the original Shantae and Shantae: Risky's Revenge are getting packaged releases for Nintendo Switch. This means that the entire Shantae series will be available on one console, which I know doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but always makes me very happy when it happens. And Shantae is one of those series that just feels right on Switch.
Other highlights include the Grandia HD Collection — had a feeling this would get a limited-press packaged version — Ys Origin for Switch and the mysterious River City Girls 0 from WayForward. All of these are coming in the next couple of months, frustratingly for my wallet — but I'm damned if I'm missing out on a complete Shantae collection if nothing else!
Packaged releases of games are alive and well and, as I've said before, the whole "limited run" thing provides the potential for everyone's library of games on modern systems to be quite different to each other. While that may frustrate completionists who want a "full library" for a console, realistically that hasn't been an option for a good few console generations now! I think at this point I'd much rather celebrate my favourite games by proudly displaying them on my shelf rather than picking things up just for the sake of it.
I realise I say all this after I pondered getting into 2600 collecting yesterday — but even in that case, I'm primarily interested in tracking down some interesting or unusual games rather than the same things I can just boot up Atari Flashback Classics to play. A collection should, to my mind anyway, be an expression of your own personal interests and passions rather than shelves upon shelves of things you've never played and probably won't.
Anyway, I see Ys Origin is up for order today, I believe, so I guess it begins already…
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