BODY: The Solvalou is flying again โ and this time it has depth.
Hamster's Arcade Archives 2 Xevious 3D/G launches today, September 24, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and Switch 2, priced at $16.99 / ยฅ1,800. It brings Namco's mid-90s polygon revival of the legendary vertical shooter to modern hardware with the full suite of preservation features the Osaka-born publisher has built its reputation on.
The original arcade cabinet, released by Namco Limited in 1996, took the flat, quietly menacing world of 1982's Xevious and rebuilt it entirely in polygons. Hamster's description leans into that transformation: "the classic masterpiece Xevious is reborn in polygons," with "diverse screen angles and camera work, plus new weapons and enemy characters." Players push through seven areas spanning desert flats and a climactic space fortress, with the camera swinging to show off geometry that the 1982 original could only imply.
The Arcade Archives 2 line โ Hamster's dedicated banner for 3D-era arcade titles, priced above the ยฅ900 standard Arcade Archives releases โ packs in Original, Hi Score, and Caravan modes alongside a Time Attack mode built around completion speed. Online global rankings, rewind, rapid-fire, adjustable difficulty and screen settings, and multiple save slots round it out. Variable Refresh Rate support is included for frame-accurate arcade reproduction, a detail that matters enormously to the score-chasing crowd this line courts.
The insider take
Hamster's Arcade Archives programme has quietly become one of Japan's most important preservation efforts โ not because it is glamorous, but because it is relentless. Week after week, the company ships another cabinet's worth of history while Tokyo's remaining game centres in Akihabara, Takadanobaba, and Nakano continue to thin out. Xevious 3D/G is a particularly telling pick: it belongs to the awkward transitional moment when Japanese arcades were scrambling to answer the PlayStation with polygons, and its System 11 hardware lineage makes it exactly the kind of title that falls through the cracks of both nostalgia and commerce. That the Caravan mode survives intact is a small gift to anyone who remembers the summer score-attack tournaments of the Showa-to-Heisei handover.
Originally reported by Gematsu (English).