Keep Circulating The Tapes / Video Games Rescued

Platforms

• For PC gaming, before branching out into indie games and movies, GOG.com originally started for this purpose (its original / full name being "Good Old Games"). Along with Steam (to a lesser extent), it offers some old games that were either abandonware or will have compatibility issues if people try to run the original release.
• "Greatest Hits"-type releases are made to combat this phenomenon. However; these were actually based on how well the game sold initially, regardless of critical and/or fan reception. There are exceptions; such as Final Fantasy Tactics which was re-released due to fan demand.
• Virtual Console (for the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U), Xbox Live Arcade, and PlayStation Network have sections for games from previous systems. Games that sell for ridiculously high prices on eBay and Amazon are available for far less on these services, such as Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII, and games that are very hard to find in retail (like Persona 3) can easily be found here.
  • Virtual Console (Consoles): Games for the NES, SNES, and Nintendo 64 for both the Wii and Wii U; and additionally games for the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive), TurboGrafx-16 (PC Engine), and even a few arcade games in the case of the Wii. (The Wii U, thanks to native backward compatibility with the Wii, is also able to download and play games on the Wii Virtual Console).
    • Three noteworthy titles available on this service are Alien Soldier, Golden Axe III, and Pulseman for the Sega Genesis. These are particularly valuable for U.S. players, as these games were previously available in America only on the short-lived Sega Channel service.
  • Virtual Console (Handhelds): Games from Game Boy systems, the Game Gear, TurboGrafx-16, and NES for the Nintendo 3DS. The New Nintendo 3DS is also able to play SNES games as well.
  • Xbox Live Arcade: Games for the original Xbox in the case of the Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
  • PlayStation Network: Games for the original PlayStation in the case of the PSP, PS3, and Vita, and additionally PlayStation 2 in the case of the PS3.
  • Zigzagged with the eventual closure of these online stores. Nintendo's Wii Shop Channel (and by extension the Wii's Virtual Console) was shuttered in January 2019. The Wii U and 3DS eShops were taken offline in March 2023. Sony planned to close store access on PlayStation 3 and PS Vita, but this was cancelled due to backlash^note the PSP's store was closed as planned, although its games can still be purchased on other Sony systems. Microsoft announced July 2024 as the end-of-life date for the Xbox 360 Marketplace.

Specific Titles

• Alice: Madness Returns: Although the PC version is available through Origin, it only carries the standard edition of the game and not The Complete Collection release, which includes the Weapons of Madness and Dresses Pack DLC and a remastered version of American McGee's Alice, and the game's Steam version was delisted in 2016 to push customers to buy the game through Origin (although the EA-related DRM was removed in an update for the Steam version in 2022 and uses Valve's DRM instead). Around 2019, The Complete Collection for PC did make a return through Humble Bundle but as a redeemable serial key for Origin. The game's Xbox 360 release is still available digitally through Xbox Live and has since become backwards compatible on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, and the remastered version of the first Alice game can be downloaded as free DLC for the sequel.
• Originally released to iOS for Apple devices, Ace Combat Xi: Skies of Incursion was removed from the App Store in 2015. Reportedly the game had issues running in iOS 7 that prevented Apple from permitting Xi from being sold any further. Thankfully, you can find the IPA on the Internet Archive. ^note  While it doesn't work on newer phones, if you have a phone that is older than iOS 11, you'll be fine.
• Alisia Dragoon never sold well in any territory, making copies of this Cult Classic Genesis game somewhat rare. It finally saw a re-release in 2019 after being included on the Sega Genesis Mini.
• The Baten Kaitos duology were a pair of cult hit RPGs developed by Monolith Soft for the Nintendo GameCube. They were the only releases of the games until it was announced that they were to be remastered for the Nintendo Switch in 2023.
• Battle Garegga received an arcade-to-console port on the Sega Saturn, but only in Japan and prices for it began to spike after it went out of print. Thankfully, Battle Garegga Rev.2016 was released on PS4 and Xbox One to alleviate this, both in Japan and in the West.
• Black&White first-person horror game Betrayer was removed from digital sale a couple of years after the small indie company that made it shut down. As the game was never released physically, this made it impossible to acquire it legally. However, years later it eventually showed up as a free download on GOG.com.
• Remember the old BIONICLE games on the LEGO website? Remember how cool they were? Now remember how sad you were when they were taken down? Cry no more, Bionicle fans, the Bionicle Online Game Archive has full working versions of every Bionicle game released online by LEGO, ever. The Bionicle creators and LEGO have turned a blind eye to the website, so no links to it here, but rest assured Google is a very helpful friend.
  • LEGO has a reputation for taking games off their web pages, but leaving the SWF files buried in the FTP. As such, once they're removed, they still have a chance of being recovered. In most cases the Wayback Machine will do the trick, but an interesting case was the LEGO Island Comic Adventures. While they were somewhat functional on the Wayback Machine, they usually froze on some minigames. They were thought to be lost forever, until a fan from BZPower finally found the sources and put them up for download.
• Before Diablo I and Warcraft I and II were added to GOG in March 2019, any Blizzard Entertainment games older than the original Starcraft (1998) were largely inaccessible. The Lost Vikings, Blackthorne and Rock n' Roll Racing were available for free for a time on Blizzard's official website, but the download links have since been removed and there was no way to legally acquire digital copies until 2021, when all three games were rereleased as the Blizzard Arcade Collection.
• Castlevania: Bloodlines had to deal with a complete lack of ports and rereleases compared to other console Castlevania games of its time for 25 years, until 2019 when Sega announced the Sega Genesis Mini, with Bloodlines being one of the first games to be announced for the collection and then releasing it as part of the Castlevania Anniversary Collection for those who didn't want to wait for the Genesis Mini to be released.
• Chu-Teng, a sequel to the similarly obscure Eastern Mind from the same creator as LSD, was for a long time considered the most obscure game ever and a lost video game. A massive investigation began in 2013 to find it, but Osamu Sato himself told them he didn't own a copy and the only collector known to have it refused to upload the content. Eventually someone revealed that they had a copy in their attic and uploaded the game.
• The original version of Conker's Bad Fur Day. Given its Mature rating in a cutesy setting and barely any promotion (it was released the same year the GameCube would debut and was generally ignored by Nintendo), it was hard to get then, and it sure as hell is even harder to get now. Rare did indeed fully remake the game for Xbox under the title Conker: Live & Reloaded but this remake received a massive backlash from fans of the original because it censored a great deal of content from the original. However, at E3 2015 Microsoft announced Rare Replay, a massive Compilation Re-release for Xbox One that includes not only the original, uncensored version of Conker, but 29 other classic Rare games, many of which will also be rescued from limbo. (That said, this also had the side effect of putting the Live & Reloaded version into limbo — like the 20th Anniversary Edition of E.T. — though not many are complaining.)
  • As of April 14, 2018, Live & Reloaded was finally re-released through the Xbox One's Original Xbox backwards compatibility.
• The only re-release of Crystalis used to be the 2000 port to the Game Boy Color. This was one of the few games SNK originally created for the Nintendo Entertainment System rather than for arcades, and their Virtual Console support was usually limited to Neo Geo games. (SNK's pre-Neo Geo arcade games, however, are well represented on the Play Station Network.) This changed with the 2018 release of SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, which includes the NES version of Crystalis.
• The Wii compilation Data East Arcade Classics was a bit of a surprise, since Data East had been defunct for almost a decade by the time of its release. (Most of Data East's assets are handled by a company called G-Mode, who pretty much solely exist to archive their old game library. However, the rights to a few Data East games, including Karnov, are held by a different company.)
• Daytona USA 2 had no home ports until it was included as a Club Sega cabinet in Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name.
• Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: Due to the game requiring one check with the official server before starting a new game even if the player doesn't intend to use online features, due to there not being a server since 2015, the game can't start and players would have to stick with existing save files. Furthermore, the game is not even playable on modern Android phones and would crash on launch. A fan patch by eipip1e0 created in 2023 has fixed both issues.
• Donkey Kong 64 was absent from the Virtual Console for years, for whatever reason. The most popular theory due to its absence were the inclusions of Jetpac and Donkey Kong as playable mandatory mini-games within the game (you have to play them if you want to fight the final boss and complete the game, so removing them isn't an option unless they were to heavily alter the game's code)—Jetpac as it's owned by Rare themselves, and Donkey Kong as the version Rare ported to DK64 is the original arcade version, to which Nintendo doesn't own the rights. An alternative theory was Rareware's N64 games need a certain code to run on Virtual Console that Rare may have access to, but Nintendo may not—which was evident when people have tried to inject Wii Virtual Console files with ROMs of Rare's N64 games to no or very little success. Fortunately, the situation was eventually remedied when Donkey Kong 64 was released on the Wii U's Virtual Console in April 2015.
• In a strange — though brief — case of circulating the tapes, Rare's original Donkey Kong Country trilogy were mysteriously delisted from the Wii Virtual Console in November 2012, with Nintendo giving no reason as to why. Nintendo owns all the rights to the games (in contrast to the majority of Nintendo games developed by Rare), new Donkey Kong (Country) games continue to be produced for their platforms, and Rare's Game Boy Donkey Kong Land trilogy was re-released on the 3DS Virtual Console, so the removal of the games was certainly not because of licensing issues. Thankfully Nintendo re-released the DKC trilogy on the Wii U Virtual Console throughout late 2014/early 2015 (it was even re-listed on the Wii Virtual Console as well!), but it's still odd that one of Nintendo's biggest franchises could see their games fall under such a situation (despite the time period of their lack of legal availability being nowhere near as severe as other entries in this list).
• Doom 64: An original entry to the classic Doom series that was unfortunately mistaken as just another port of the original Doom due to the "64" in the title, never left the Nintendo 64, and—to make things worse—came out around time when Turok and GoldenEye 007 were considered state-of-the-art for their time. Thankfully some copies of the original Nintendo 64 cartridges are floating around for a reasonable price on Amazon and eBay, and numerous fans have made remakes that are compatible with Doom source ports. However, in September 2019, Nintendo and Bethesda announced that a remastered port of the original game would be coming to the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, courtesy of Nightdive Studios, and included as a pre-order bonus of Doom Eternal as an apology for the delaying the game from its original Q4 2019 release.
• The arcade version of Double Dragon was rereleased on Xbox Live Arcade for a while, until Empire Interactive went bankrupt, also erasing hopes of a rerelease of the second game. Luckily, all three arcade games were rescued in the Steam and GOG.com Compilation Re-release Double Dragon Trilogy.
• Around August 8, 2019, DuckTales: Remastered was removed from digital distribution via Xbox LIVE, Wii U eShop, PlayStation Network followed by the game being removed on Steam days later, leaving many to either hunt down a copy of the console versions or get their hands dirty to play on PC. On March 3, 2020, however, Capcom was able to get the game back to digital storefronts.
• After its unfortunate initial US performance in 1995, EarthBound saw no re-release in America for nearly two decades, not even on the Virtual Console. Its Masterpiece demo in the Japanese version of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and its appearance in a Nintendo Direct press release regarding the Wii U Virtual Console (losing its position to — of all games — Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream), were even explicitly removed from international versions! Rumors abound as to why this was the case, the most common ones involving legal issues over its music, but nothing was ever confirmed by Nintendo and plenty of arguments against those theories surfaced too. ^note The real reason for it being kept from a Western re-release for so long was actually due to concerns involving its frequent use of flashing and flickering effects, which had to be blurred in the Virtual Console release. At any rate, it became very rare to find someone who actually played the game on a console rather than just emulating it. Being a very famous game, during the years where it was difficult to find, it was selling for anywhere between $80 and $200, making it a true standout. Finally, after plenty of patience and plenty of waiting, Nintendo at last announced its release for the Wii U Virtual Console, later making good on their promise in July 2013. It was also added to the SNES Online service for the Nintendo Switch, making it even more available than before. There is still no word on its sequel, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.
  • Its predecessor, MOTHER, had it even worse in the west. Originally planned for an English release in the very early 1990s, it was cancelled due to the release of the SNES and the high price of the cartridge the game would require, despite the localization and programming being entirely completed before the cancellation. Only five prototype cartridges of this version are known to exist, making it impossible for anyone but the most dedicated (and wealthy) of collectors to play it on official hardware. ROM dumps and pirated reproduction cartridges were the only way to play the game for many years... until the strong Virtual Console sales of EarthBound finally convinced Nintendo to officially release the localization under the title EarthBound Beginnings for the Wii U's Virtual Console. It would also be added to the NES Online service for the Nintendo Switch, making it available to even more potential fans for the first time ever.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Bethesda has Arena and Daggerfall for free download on their site to combat this. However; you have to download a DOS emulator to actually play them and they assume you know this already.
  • Likewise, the spin-off games Battlespire and Redguard were victims of this trope until August 2015 when they were made available on GOG.com. As a bonus, versions of Arena and Daggerfall that have a DOS emulator included and set up were also made available to anyone that bought another game published by Bethesda on GOG.com. This changed in 2022 as the aforementioned games became freely available on GOG.com and Steam, with the former even adopting the fan-made Daggerfall Unity port project and includes a very large collection of mods.
• A similar situation to Chu-Teng happened to another obscure Japanese game: Garage: Bad Dream Adventure by the developer Kinotrope. While the other two games by Kinotrope, Alice on the Borderlines and Sarara's Little Shop, which are equally as obscure, can at least be found on the internet if you search hard enough (with the latter even receiving a non-translated release in the American PSN), Garage was thought to be a legitimate piece of lost media... Until a copy of the game was put up on Yahoo Actions Japan, and a user on the Hardcore Gaming 101 forums bought it and subsequently ripped it for the world to enjoy, along with various scans and photographs of the manual, box and other included feelies.
• GoldenEye (1997) didn't see a re-release for 25 years after its original release on the Nintendo 64. The fact that it was a Licensed Game developed for Nintendo by Rare, who were later purchased by Microsoft made its rights into a complicated issue. However, in September 2022, it was announced that the original game would be re-released on the Nintendo Switch Online Service, and that a remastered version would be launching for Xbox consoles.
• The majority of Harvest Moon games before Friends of Mineral Town are difficult to find used copies of, especially the Game Boy and Color ones. However, the ones on Nintendo systems received Virtual Console releases while Back to Nature for the PlayStation received both a PlayStation Portable port and a PlayStation Network release of the original version.
  • Harvest Moon 64 took such a long time to see a rerelease that said rerelease came out on the Wii U in 2017, the year that system was discontinued. It is a Cult Classic and considered the best Harvest Moon game by many, but it never received a Wii Virtual Console release, an enhanced remake (a la the PS1 games to GBA), or a port release (like the PS1 games). Only the original SNES game ended up having a Virtual Console release on the Wii, and the same game's Wii U Virtual Console release came when the system was still in production. Interviews with Natsume executives reported that technical problems concerning the source code made the notion of any possible remake or port impossible; despite the fact that this game was supposedly one of the first games they planned for a Virtual Console release. But to everyone's surprise, it was finally announced for a Wii U Virtual Console release—not only for North America, but for Europe as well, even though the game was never originally released there.
  • The GBC version of the original Harvest Moon GB was released on the 3DS Virtual Console in the summer of 2013, which was followed by Virtual Console releases of the second and third 8-bit Game Boy games. The Game Boy Color version of Legend of The River King, an obscure fishing-themed game that shares Harvest Moon's developers and publishers, was also re-released on the 3DS VC (on the same day as Harvest Moon GB no less), with its sequel later getting the same treatment.
• ICO and Shadow of the Colossus sold poorly on the PS2, and are some of the rarest games on the console. But then in Fall 2011, Sony released a compilation pack for the PS3 containing both games on one disc, with loads of bonus features, and the UK release of ICO instead of the American release (which had easier and altered puzzles than the UK/JPN versions). This pleased both those who had played the games before and those who never got to play them due to their rarity. Shadow of the Colossus would later receive a built-from-the-ground-up (but still faithful to the original) remake for the PS4 in 2018, this time handled by Bluepoint Games with assistance from SIE Japan Studio.
• Infinite Space. Due to Sega's treatment of Platinum Games, they shipped it out to stores without any announcement beforehand, and non-existent advertising. Because of this, the Nintendo DS game's sales were awful, it was pulled from circulation, and now the cartridge alone goes for $40 on eBay. Thankfully, you can always find the ROM on the Internet Archive.
• Judgement Silversword was one of the most sought after WonderSwan games, being developed as a homebrew title during the WonderWitch contest in 2004 and gained a cult following in the shoot 'em up crowd. Due to its obscurity and limited print run, the game could go for upwards of hundreds of dollars at auction. Its Gaiden Game, Cardinal Sins, was released as freeware for the WonderSwan, but not in a form playable on emulators. These games, however, did see a re-release on the Xbox 360 bundled with their Spiritual Successor, ESCHATOS, albeit as a Japan-only region-free import title, but it was later ported overseas to PC via Steam for a much more wallet-friendly price of $5 USD. It also was bundled with the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch remasters of ESCHATOS.
• Just Dance Summer Party is a compilation of all the DLC and Best Buy-exclusive tracks that were released for the game at that point; this was a wise move, as at the time the series was still a Wii exclusive, and the aforementioned DLC was rendered inaccessible due to the shutdown of the Wii Shop Channel in 2019. Despite being a "limited edition", it is still pretty easy to find at reasonable prices.
• Keen Dreams was often referred to as the "lost chapter" in the Commander Keen series, and follows Billy having a dream where he has to fight a potato king in a vegetable kingdom. It has a confusing rights history — developed by Softdisk Publishing and published by id Software, with the rights to the game being owned by Flat Rock Software from 2005-2014. The game was considered freeware for quite some time (although this wasn't the case), and copies passed freely between collectors. In 2013, an Android port was made available, but the original game still hasn't been officially released. Instead, the source code was bought by a crowdfunding campaign, and there is an attempt to get the game ported to Steam through its Greenlight program. It was later released on the Nintendo Switch eShop in early 2019.
• After a while, Kirby's Return to Dream Land became surprisingly expensive to acquire, with copies running up to $80/£50. However, it eventually was re-released on the Wii U eShop. Not just that, but an enhanced remake for the Nintendo Switch, Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe, was released in February 2023.
• The Living Books series was thought to have gone past its prime, gradually disappearing from store shelves when they weren't agreeing with modern operating systems well. Also, somewhere along the way, a few of the licenses expired during the shelf lives, such as The Berenstain Bears and Sheila Rae, the Brave, and their prices soon shot way up. Enter 2012, when Wanderful Storybooks was formed to rescue all the games to put them on modern tablets and computers, as well as finally breaking No Export for You and making all the foreign translations purchasable worldwide. They have also rescued the Berenstain Bears, Little Monster, and Arthur games, though there is still yet to be a word on the other expired licenses.
• In The New '10s, LucasArts, Double Fine, Sony, and GOG.com embarked on a quest to rescue largely popular games in the former's library that have been stuck in circulation limbo. To wit:
  • Day of the Tentacle goes for notoriously high prices, hardly ever going below $50 in the US. There was a DVD re-release in Europe, but it too has gone out of print, though it's somewhat cheaper ($30 onward). Frustratingly, this almost wasn't the case — some sources report that an HD remake was 80% done before it was shelved, never to be greenlit. Fortunately, a remaster for the PS4, PS Vita, and PC was released by Double Fine in March 2016.
  • Up until 2015, Grim Fandango was known for being notoriously hard to obtain, as there had been exactly zero re-releases up until that point, and the game suffered from extremely low sales (it was released during the same time as the more anticipated titles of '98). Thankfully Double Fine released a remastered version of the game in February 2015 for Sony systems (PS4 and PS Vita) and personal computers (Windows, Mac, and Linux).
  • Sam & Max Hit the Road. Outside of its CD-ROM re-release in 1995, the game did not receive another re-release (except in Europe) due to LucasArts dropping the license for Sam and Max games. Not even on Steam or Good Old Games (GOG chose to put the Telltale series on their service instead). The only way to play it was to buy a used copy, or to illegally download it...until October 2014, when, thanks to a fresh new deal with Disney (who owns the entire LucasArts catalog per their ownership of Lucasfilm), GOG.com made the game available yet again.
  • Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders was, for the longest time, only ever released on floppy - with the exception of a super-rare Japan-only FM-TOWNS VGA port. This was until March 2015, when it was finally released on GOG — and the best part is, it includes not only the DOS version, but the FM-TOWNS port as well!
• For a time, Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven was pulled off Steam due to undisclosed reasons, but was eventually re-released in October 2017 on GOG, albeit without the licensed soundtrack due to issues with the songs.
• The original Macintosh releases of the Marathon trilogy would have fallen into obscurity since retail copies are hard to come by, however, Bungie has released the source code of the Marathon 2 engine and later the games themselves before being acquired by Microsoft, effectively making them freeware. Fans have since created an open-source continuation of the Marathon 2 engine with Aleph One, porting the game to Windows and Linux with many modern improvements and modding support. Marathon 2: Durandal also saw a re-release on Xbox LIVE Arcade for the Xbox 360 in 2009 and an ISO of the Windows 95 version with an official serial key generator has been distributed by Bungie themselves.
• Both Marvel Ultimate Alliance games had DLC on the Xbox Live Marketplace that was delisted due to licensing issues. The first game at least had a gold edition that included the DLC, but it commanded a high price on the used market; there was no such option for the second game, and the regular versions of both were already expensive used anyways. Both games were released digitally in late 2015, and included the DLC in the download.
  • Deadpool and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 also went through this process for the same reasons until re-releases of the games in 2016; the former for the movie releasing around the time and the later for the announcement for its sequel.
• Mega Man: The Wily Wars was only released in the U.S. and Canada for a brief time on the Sega Channel and had no physical release in those regions whereas the Japanese and European versions were released physically. After the Sega Channel service ended at the end of the Sega Genesis' lifespan, there was no legal way to obtain the game unless you imported and either put up with playing the game in Japanese if you couldn't read the language or playing the game at 5/6 of the original speed. The game would later get another release as one of the games included in the Sega Genesis Mini in 2019 and later as a limited edition reprint by an official partnership with Retro-Bit in 2021 with a few framerate issues ironed out.
• Melty Blood: Actress Again Current Code is an interesting case: the game was never released on its own like its predecessors (the original, Re-ACT, and Act Cadenza Ver.B) but instead was shipped with the third season Blu-ray of Carnival Phantasm. The Blu-ray set however became sought-after item simply for the game alone and it eventually ran out of print with the Blu-ray set going for as much as $150 used, almost twice that for a brand-new copy, and it wasn't put through any digital distribution services such as DLsite. The game was eventually released overseas through Steam by Arc System Works in 2016 along with a PC port of Under Night In-Birth.
• For a long time, the only way to experience Metal Wolf Chaos — a Japan-only Xbox game by FromSoftware about the 47th President of the United States taking on a military coup armed lead by his running man armed with a mini-mecha and red-hot American justice that was deemed "too American to be released in America"^note (it was however later explained part of the reason for the game not releasing in the U.S. was the game's use of the Seal of the President of the United States, which is considered illegal when used outside of official government business, so the Seal was redesigned to feature the bald eagle holding a mini-gun and missiles with its talons for the XD version; the other reason being the the events of 9/11 and the War on Terrorism changed the developer's mind of releasing a game with over-the-top patriotic overtone given the political climate of the time) — was to import a copy of the game, which became one of the most sought after original Xbox games with prices drastically increasing over time, reaching upwards of hundreds of dollars on auction and online retailers, and buy a Japanese Xbox to play it (or soft-mod a North American one). In 2016, Devolver Digital had expressed interest in localizing the game overseas thanks to popular demand generated from various Let's Plays of the game (especially from Super Best Friends), and in 2018, this came to pass as they, along with General Arcade, released a remastered version of the game through physical and digital distribution for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam and GOG.com for $24.99.
• Metroid Prime Trilogy: When Nintendo and Retro Studios hawked this compilation of all three Prime games as a "Limited Edition release", for once, they weren't kidding. It's cheap enough (and easy, due to the Wii's backward compatibility, but... not for those with a Wii U, as Trilogy is the only way to play the first two Prime games on that system, or play them in widescreen on either) to get all three games by themselves, but those looking for this triple-pack including all three games on one disk with Wii Remote controls and bonus features were left searching for pre-owned copies that could run up to $100 for the disk alone. Fortunately, in January 2015, Nintendo announced that Trilogy would become available to download from the Wii U eShop by the end of the month for $20 (initially available for $10 during the first week of its release).
• Until 2018, The Curse of Monkey Island and Escape from Monkey Island were the only Monkey Island games not to be re-released on modern platforms. Escape isn't very severe, but Curse commonly goes for almost $20-$30 for something that should only cost about $10 at the most. In March 2018, Curse was released on Steam and GOG, and Escape was released on GOG in June, and later Steam as well.
• The Game Boy Advance title Napoleon was one of the very few RTS games for the system and received a limited release in only France and Japan. Because of this, copies are hard to come by and are expensive for Game Boy Advance titles. However, the game was recently released for the Wii U in 2015.
• For the longest time, late-entering fans of the Pikmin series had an extremely tough time getting a hold of it. The Nintendo GameCube version went out of print, and the game is so well-loved used copies would almost never pop up anywhere. They were eventually granted a Wii re-release of the game with enhanced controls in 2009.
  • The sequel, Pikmin 2 was hit harder, as those lucky to find that game at a local GameStop would have to fork out $40, while Amazon had a minimum asking price for $60 used. An enhanced Wii version was also made, and was released shortly after the Wii version's first game in 2009... but only for European and Japanese markets. It took until 2012 for the Wii version to be released in America under the Nintendo Selects label, for a much more reasonable price of $20. In both cases, the fandom rejoiced.
  • In 2023, Nintendo released HD remasters of the first 2 Pikmin games for the Nintendo Switch.
• Ironically enough, Pokémon's debut games Pokémon Red and Blue used to suffer from this in the Nintendo 3DS era due to the Game Boy Advance and DS/DS Lite being discontinued, ruling out the remakes (FireRed and LeafGreen on the GBA), and the original games not being released on 3DS Virtual Console (likely because the Virtual Console didn't support link functionality, which would've locked off trading, which is a major, nearly mandatory part of the game). With the Johto and Hoenn gap being closed on remakes playable on the Nintendo 3DS, they were the only Pokémon games not playable on it in either original or remade form. However, they were released on 3DS Virtual Console (with trading and multiplayer battling intact, now done through local wireless connections as opposed to Link Cables) for their 20th anniversary on February 27, 2016. Yellow also suffered from this problem even worse, as almost none of its differences were implemented into the remakes, but it too was re-released. The following year, the original forms of Pokémon Gold and Silver were released on the eShop in September 2017, once again being able to trade and battle wirelessly (the former also being possible with Red, Blue, and Yellow once the Time Capsule is unlocked), as well as retaining the ability to use Mystery Gift via the system's built-in infrared port (a feature the 3DS shares with the Game Boy Color, as the Game Boy Advance dropped the infrared port). Then, Pokémon Crystal was announced for a Virtual Console release on the 3DS eShop in January 2018.
• Puyo Puyo:
  • The English version of the first arcade Puyo Puyo, so obscure that it used to be Common Knowledge that it was an unlicensed bootleg, is included in the 2019 Nintendo Switch "SEGA Ages" version of the first Puyo Puyo. The closest this version has come to being ported elsewhere is the hidden translation in the Game Gear version (that never left Japan) some 25 years prior.
  • Despite the rights to Puyo Puyo and parent series Madou Monogatari being divorced following Sega's receipt of the Puyo series, the vast majority of the Madou Monogatari games have been released on PC throughout The New '10s thanks to D4 Enterprise (who owns the rights to the Madou Monogatari games themselves) working with Sega.
• Radiant Silvergun was notorious for running for at least $200 USD after the game went out of print. It was finally re-released on Xbox Live for the low low price of $15 USD. It was later added to the Xbox One's and Xbox Series X|S's backwards compatibility in 2017, followed by a Nintendo Switch port by Live Wire in 2022 with a PC version via Steam in 2023.
• Radical Dreamers, the prototype to Chrono Cross, was only released for the Satellaview add-on for the Super Nintendo, and only in Japan, so the only way to keep it in circulation used to be via sharing its ROM. Fortunately, it would eventually see an official worldwide release in 2022, via an HD remaster of Chrono Cross for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam.
• The entire RAY Series, especially RayCrisis, were lost in time a few past-generation console or limited PC releases, with RayStorm HD being only available on Xbox 360 outside of Japan as a downloadable title. However, they've been brought back to iOS and Android systems based on their arcade counterparts. These games would get another arcade-accurate re-release as part of the Ray'z Arcade Chronology developed by M2 for the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation version of RayStorm HD, however, remains stuck on those consoles, and the Android ports of the series were delisted.
• Recca was not only Japan-only, it wasn't even a consumer title—it was only available at special events, hence the full title of Summer Carnival '92 Recca. However, it was finally officially released for the consumer market in the form of a Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console title in December 2012 for Japan and September 2013 for North America.
• For decades, Red Earth was the only game made for the CP System III arcade board to have never received any kind of home console release. To make matters even worse, while the arcade cabinet was fairly easy to come by in Japan, it wasn't widely distributed overseas, making the game virtually impossible for Western players to get their hands on legitimately (thus leading many Westerners to be more aware of the game's cast, Tessa in particular, from the crossovers they appeared in, not Red Earth proper). In 2022, Capcom announced that the game would receive its first-ever console port in the Capcom Fighting Collection compilation.
• The Red Star had been this way for the longest time, until a recent PSN re-release.
• Over six years after its sudden disappearance, Ubisoft announced the re-release of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game on September 10th, 2020, albeit on digital-only fronts outside of the Limited Run physical editions.
• Shantae (2002) was a very late release Game Boy Color game by WayForward Technologies. It sold less than 100k copies during its release (only about 77k, if numbers are to be believed), but word of mouth (and reviews) spread stories of the game's excellent quality. Copies routinely go for over $100 on eBay, and people who attempted to play the game through slightly cheaper methods were out of luck, as the game proved difficult to emulate, with most emulators of the era either having major inaccuracies or not even running at all. Its rarity was even lampshaded by WFT themselves on official Risky's Revenge soundtrack release video. Come 2013, when WFT announced that they were working on a port of the game for the Nintendo 3DS's Virtual Console, and eventually released said port in July that year. Another enhanced port of the game was later for the Nintendo Switch in 2021.
• Despite being considered one of the greatest and most important video games of all time and becoming a best-seller for the platform, Shenmue was only available on the Dreamcast for nearly 20 years after its first release—arguably due to the game failing to recoup its high development costs, which also added to Sega's financial debt that ultimately led them to bow out of the industry as a console maker. Its equally well-regarded sequel, Shenmue II, underperformed in sales^note despite being made on a significantly cheaper budget, some of the budget for the first game went into the sequel; the only place to obtain the game outside of the Dreamcast release was the subsequent Xbox port. And even those two releases had their own issues of No Export for You: only Europe received both versions of the game, with the Dreamcast release skipping America and the Xbox release skipping Japan. Years later, however, series creator Yu Suzuki (who left Sega to create his own studio, Ys Net) got the license from Sega and enough funding to start production on a long-awaited third entry, re-igniting hope from fans that the first two games could finally see a modern re-release someday. These hopes eventually came to fruition in 2018, when Sega announced a High Definition Compilation Re-release of the first two Shemmue games for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
• The retail copy Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri was fairly expensive to obtain. Its expansion pack, Alien Crossfire, cost a pretty penny and was rather difficult to find due to the game being by far the least selling of any in the civilization series. However, its release on several digital distributors such as GOG.com has averted this trope.
• Sierra released Vanilla Edition Compilation Rereleases of Space Quest, King's Quest, Police Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry in 2006. The Quest for Glory series, on the other hand, wouldn't see daylight until it was finally released on GOG. The compilations themselves are lacking, though. Besides lacking the original versions of their first games (using just their remakes):
  • King's Quest: Mask of Eternity (which did eventually get on GOG) wasn't in the compilation, perhaps owing to the game's dubious standing among the series fans, making it a case of Canon Discontinuity.
  • Leisure Suit Larry: Since the collection shipped on just one CD, they had to use the floppy version of Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out instead of the talkie CD version, and Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail is missing entirely, so as far as Al Lowe is concerned, the definitive Leisure Suit Larry compilation is still the Ultimate Pleasure Pack, which includes the talkie version of Larry 6, as well as Love for Sail and Larry's Casino.
    • GOG.com's version of the collection eventually included talkie version of Larry 6 (after initially claiming that they couldn't make it run well enough on modern computers), and at the same time as that, they released Larry 7 as a separate purchase (after a claim from Codemasters that they didn't own the rights to it).
• For years, Sim City 3000 was the only game of the series not to have any sort of legitimate digital release after going out of print. This wasn't because of poor reception or sales, but because it couldn't run on DOSBox like its predecessors (and couldn't run natively on modern Windows like Sim City 4 can). After many years of remaining a conspicuous gap in the series, EA and GOG.com finally teamed up to bring it back in mid-2016, and this time it's compatible up to and including Windows 10.
• Possibly due to copyright issues with the magazine of the same name, as well as the use of the likeness of real-life mercenary John F. Mullins, neither of the classic Soldier of Fortune games (Payback doesn't count) were reissued on Steam, GOG, or other digital storefronts for quite some time. That changed in October 2018, when both games made a surprise appearance on GOG as part of the service's 10th anniversary celebration.^*...All right, Payback was rereleased, too.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) was widely considered to be the worst Sonic game by many. This eventually led to the game being one of the Sonic games known for their poor quality being delisted by Sega in 2010, causing new copies of the game being pulled from stores and the game removed from XBLA. It was quietly relisted in 2022. Used copies are also pretty easy to come by.
• Space Harrier received a Master System port, and its sequel received a Genesis port, and that was it. As years passed, the series got many references in other video games, such as Bayonetta (which has a whole segment that plays like Space Harrier, complete with a pop remix of the main theme) and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (which has a remix of the main theme in the final race track), but no sign of a port or remake. Because of these references and homages, fans constantly demanded some kind of re-release of the series, and so Sega finally listened and released a 3DS port of the first game in late 2013.
• Star Control II is long out of print, and was unlikely to ever see rerelease as the sequel (which did not involve the series creators) proved to be a Franchise Killer. Fortunately, SC's creators were nice enough to make the game Open Source in 2002, and a lovingly made fan version called The Ur-Quan Masters (the title "Star Control" is still under trademark) is freely downloadable.
  • And then Atari re-released it on GOG.com along with the original.
• For the longest time, Suikoden II was one of the rarest games for the PS1 owing to its very limited print and low initial sales, much to the chagrin of fans as it is often cited as one of the greatest JRPGs ever. Thankfully in late 2014, it was finally uploaded to the PSN, to the joy of fans worldwide.
• For nearly two decades, Super Mario Sunshine didn't see any kind of re-release, so the original release was the only way to legally play it. In 2020, it was finally re-released as a part of the time-limited Super Mario 3D All-Stars.
• System Shock 2 was for the longest time almost impossible to find on any modern PC digital distribution method. However, finally the game has seen a full re-release through GOG.com, which along with being configured to work effortlessly on modern machines, includes tons of extra stuff to boot. The first game eventually followed suit in mid 2015 with System Shock: Enhanced Edition which allows the game to be played natively on modern Windows operating systems with some extra enhancements such as widescreen and mouse-looking.
• Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together: The SNES version of this classic game never made it to the West due to it being released around the same time the PlayStation came into existence, and the PS1 re-release (which did get localized) was super-rare even at launch, not to mention being a notoriously shoddy port (and for English-speaking gamers, a notoriously even-worse translation). Sixteen years later, Square Enix released an enhanced remake of the game, overjoying fans and enraging speculators the world over.
• Too Human is a particularly surprising case — due to losing a lawsuit with Epic Games in 2013 over the use of the latter's game engine Unreal 3, Silicon Knights was order to recall and destroy all unsold copies of games they had created using the engine; those being Too Human and X-Men: Destiny. Silicon Knights, being a skeleton crew by this point, didn't have the resources to actually pull this off and thus simply delisted the game from the Xbox storefront. In 2019, however, to everyone's surprise, the game was added to the Xbox One's backwards compatibility list and relisted on the Xbox store - for free, to boot. When Major Nelson was announcing the addition, he even stated that it was "One I bet you never thought would happen." (X-Men: Destiny, which was wrapped up in the same lawsuit, will likely remain MIA due to the X-Men license.)
• After years of being insanely hard to attain out of Japan, the Touhou Project finally broke through in May of 2015 with Playism's digital release of Double Dealing Character, plus a couple of fangames. Whether other games in the series will follow suit remains to be seen.
  • Then, on November 3, 2017, ZUN announced that the two then-most recent entries, Hidden Star in Four Seasons and Antinomy of Common Flowers would be released on Steam. Soon after, the official Steam page for the former was revealed, and HSiFS was finally released on November 17, 2017. AoCF was also confirmed to be released on Steam worldwide in 2018. By 2019, every game from Double Spoiler to Wily Beast and Weakest Creature had been released on Steam. The exceptions are Hopeless Masquerade (unknown reason at the time of this writing) and Urban Legend in Limbo (likely due to the existence of the official PlayStation 4 port).
  • In June 2020, Mountain of Faith, Subterranean Animism, and Undefined Fantastic Object, were all released on Steam.
  • And then, on June 18, 2021, Shoot the Bullet was released on Steam.
• Voodoo Vince had some unique code that made Xbox 360 backwards compatibility and Xbox Live re-releases for the platform unfeasible, leaving the game to languish in obscurity for a time. It would later receive an Updated Re-release for the Xbox One and PC in 2017.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 for the Wii was originally only given a tiny print run in North America, causing it to go out of stock almost immediately thanks to its really good word-of-mouth advertising. Due to its popularity, it eventually received a port to the New Nintendo 3DS and a subsequent Wii U Virtual Console re-release of the Wii original, opening it up to the audience that couldn't get it in time. This was followed by a remake on the Nintendo Switch that overhauled the graphics and added new content.

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