BODY: Long before cats ruled the internet, they were storming arcades. On July 23, Hamster adds the deep cut Mouser to its Arcade Archives 2 line, resurrecting a 1983 UPL title that most Western players have never heard of—let alone played.
The setup is pure early-'80s charm: you control Nyanta, a plucky tomcat, on a mission to rescue his beloved Mariya, a she-cat who has been abducted by a gang of mischievous mice. Across a series of maze-like stages, players climb, dodge and battle rodents in a role-reversal that flips the usual cat-and-mouse dynamic on its head.
Mouser will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and Windows PC via Steam, with Xbox Play Anywhere support. Each version is priced at ¥1,100 (roughly $7). As with the rest of the Arcade Archives catalog, expect faithful emulation alongside modern conveniences like online leaderboards, save states, and adjustable display and difficulty settings.
The "2" in Arcade Archives 2 is significant. Hamster launched the sub-brand to tackle more technically demanding arcade boards that the original Arcade Archives line couldn't easily handle, allowing the company to dig deeper into gaming's forgotten corners—exactly where a title like Mouser lives.
The insider take
From Tokyo, Hamster's Arcade Archives project is quietly one of the most important preservation efforts in gaming, and Mouser is a textbook example of why it matters. UPL was a scrappy Osaka-area developer best remembered by enthusiasts for later shooters like Omega Fighter, and titles like Mouser would almost certainly be lost to time without Hamster's weekly re-releases. For Japanese retro fans, these ¥1,100 drops are less about nostalgia and more about rescuing history one obscure PCB at a time—a fittingly heroic mission for a game about saving a kidnapped cat.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).