Take To The Skies In Hamster's Latest Arcade Archives Release MX5000

I am pretty tired of this kind of release, it's hard for me to get excited about this or most of the ACA games they have been releasing lately. I want to see them finish off the VS arcade series and focus more on later games.

Everything looks like Raiden but it's never Raiden

Keeping an eye out for Sunset Riders every week....

@Angelic_Lapras_King oh baby sunset riders!! I Can’t wait!!! 😆

Wanna know what arcade game I wanna see come to Switch?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time
The Simpsons

...Let me dream... XD

@MasterGraveheart Yeah I would love to see some early 90's classics!

Agree with all the above comments. All the recent rare/obscure 80s releases are bewildering. Guess I just don’t get their revenue model. I thought companies like money? Assuming all the classic popular 80s and 90s release we’re all craving would be too expensive licensing wise? Would love to see a comment, or even article, explaining this.

@liam_doolan you should probably note that it’s also listed as Flak Attack on the UK eshop.

@JayJ I don't lol.

@Jeff I'd imagine they've already put in all the difficult legwork they needed to do to emulate the arcade board on the Switch, so putting out obscure releases like this is probably more or less a 'plug and play' situation that requires minimal effort on the company's behalf. I doubt it needs to sell many copies to break even, and anything on top of that is just additional revenue.

@SwitchVogel
Thanks. I appreciate the response. That makes sense, if it takes only a couple of hours (or whatever) to get one of these old games set to publish.

Well it is called the arcade archives, not the arcade greatest hits. But yes, I also await some of the later 2D games

@Angelic_Lapras_King
I love Sunset Riders, but I'm happy with the SNES port. Konami later made an excellent Sunset Riders clone called "Wild West Cowboys of Moo Mesa", which is a bit more fun. Then they made an even better game in the same style called "Mystic Warriors". I hope Hamster releases those games, as they were never ported to home consoles.

It does seem like diminishing returns for these releases. But at least there was a strong start when we needed it most when there wasn’t much else to play in the early days.

More good shmups are always a good thing.

@MasterGraveheart as great as those would be, I suspect the licensing is an issue. Konami bought back the licenses for the PS3/ 360 releases, but they would probably need to do so again for this.

That said, there must be more 90s games for them to port.

I am one of those sad individuals who is constantly checking for updates on ACA website and Wikipedia every week, in the hope that we see some better updates.
Sunset Riders is listed as coming soon, but I want to see more Taito from the mid to late eighties, also Midway and Atari.
But at least we are getting weekly releases. If only Ages was as quick

And another one which wasn't previously announced, but available on PS4 since 2016. That gives me hope about the future release of Arcade Archives Bubble Bobble.

But also means one more week to wait for Sunset Riders and VS Wrecking Crew.

@sixrings Exactly! Give me Raiden 2!

@KIRO I feel like by the time Raiden comes out I'll have forgotten all the cheat areas for bosses. I used to be able to finish it on a quarter.

I'd also like final lap 2 and 3 with system link support please!

Another really bland release. The quality of these lately is getting worse and worse. They are clearly just grabbing the cheapest licenses they can.

Mysterious Stones - Dr Johns Adventure will be next, surely.

Was a pleasant blind buy on Game Room on the Xbox 360, so I'll happily double dip here.

I had my suspicions the audio emulation fell well short on the 360, so it will be nice to have a version with faithful sounds.

I hope we get Juno First. That one also had lackluster audio emulation on Game Room, but was a joy to play. Would love to see it get an Arcade Archives release.

@Atariboy I remember Game Room! I haven't loaded it up since they switched from Microsoft points to real currency, lol. I didn't know much about Flak Attack so I had to look up a video, but it's got some decent music and the boss fights are interesting since you get to fly all around the screen instead of just attacking from the bottom. I'd like to see Juno First again, too. I first played it at a classic arcade competition around 10 years ago and it just kinda clicked with me.

@JayJ @YANDMAN When HAMSTER's goal is to release 800 games you can't realistically expect them all to be hits. It's understandable that they have to balance out the release schedule. Though, as a deep-cut Konami release, this gives me a little more confidence that they're not yet done with that era. I'm hoping for Jackal, Gyruss, Juno First, Devastators, Dark Adventure, The Final Round, Blades of Steel, and a few others.

@masterLEON Yeah I wouldn't want them to stop releasing these games entirely, I am just hoping for a change of focus is all.

@masterLEON I literally didn't know this was their goal and the fact that it is, I find totally idiotic. Why even set out a goal like that, to begin with. Just release good quality titles, not all the cheapest crap you can lay your hands on. Which is exactly what's been happening of late.

@YANDMAN When we get these "cheap" games in the lineup, I can only assume that it's likely because they're "part of the deal" with certain publishers' contracts, i.e. Konami. Like, when HAMSTER got the rights to make the Konami Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection for the Switch, they may have also been allowed to bring over the games that were released on the PS4 Arcade Archives over the past 5 years. As in ALL of those games are also intended for rerelease on the Switch (because prior to last year, there were no Konami arcade games on the eShop).

Coincidentally now, with the exception of a handful of titles, we actually caught up to the PS4 Arcade Archives. So whatever is releasing nowadays is a complete mystery until the next livestream, or as was mentioned in the recent article, may be unannounced titles (which are, more or less, ready to go) that were bumped up in their internal release schedule due to the CERO shutdown. So the "balancing out" of titles may not go as originally planned. But since they're out there preserving arcade history, we're at the mercy of whatever PCBs they're sitting on, popular or not.

@masterLEON MAME preserved arcade history many years ago.

@YANDMAN Yeah, I know. I got a 20 year old CD-R full of ROMS, too (I'm also interested in MiSTer, which could be the end-all beat-all emulation thing, but time will tell). But not everything out there has been dumped, nor is every dump good. The vast majority is fine though.

I say let them do what they want, as long as it keeps their lights on. They probably already know that the "good" games are and how they give them a nice bump in revenue when it happens (SunsetRiders is going to be absolutely huge for them). In fact, I'd rather they have a consistent, unbroken, release schedule because at least I know there's more stuff coming (and what titles are coming out thanks to the live stream). It's better than stealth-dropping 3 or 4 mystery games every who-knows-when like some other online service.