This year’s E3 show has been absolutely absurd in a number of ways, and there’s been some great retro love out there. The most groundbreaking story has easily been the announcement of Shenmue III as a Kickstarter project during the Sony conference – not only did it break Kickstarter, but it reached its $2 million funding goal in less than 9 hours, making it the quickest project ever to reach that total. You can watch the trailer for that above, but be warned – it’s not expected until December 2017.
Next up, we’ve got Final Fantasy VII being remade for PS4. It’s a pretty huge piece of news, though this one’s not got any gameplay footage – just confirmation that some of the key members of the original team are back in charge. On the Xbox One side of things, Rare Replay is the big bit of retro love – a huge compilation of 30 games for £20, spanning Ultimate’s classics such as Knight Lore to the NES era of Battletoads, right up to the likes of Banjo-Kazooie and Viva Pinata.
Nintendo has, as usual, been marching to the beat of its own drum. Leading the charge is Starfox Zero, a reboot of the classic on-rails shooter series being developed by the talented chaps at Platinum Games. Metroid Prime: Federation Force is on its way to 3DS, although the return of the series after five years is being greeted with confusion due to its odd, child-centric nature. There’s also a new Zelda title on the way to 3DS, The Legend Of Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes, which looks to play an awful lot like Four Swords but with just three players. Meanwhile, the level design game Super Mario Maker is set to allow other Nintendo stars to cross into the iconic platforming franchise, by way of Amiibo compatibility.
Look out for more detail on these in issue 144 of Retro Gamer, on sale 16th July.