Earlier today, the Japanese studio Artdink announced a new 'Game Log' initiative to release some of its older titles on Nintendo Switch & PC (as spotted by Gematsu), with the first couple of reissues that were revealed being based on games created by Doshin the Giant creator Kazutoshi Iida.
While primarily associated in Japan with its work on the long-running A-Train series, Artdink arguably has one of the more eclectic back catalogs in gaming. Over the course of its 40-year history, it has done everything from original titles to work-for-hire projects and licensed adaptations of popular anime series, and has also worked across various gaming platforms spanning from early Japanese computers to several generations of PlayStation consoles.
As a result of that, it makes it a pretty interesting studio to embark on an initiative of this kind, potentially opening the doorway for new players to rediscover some of the company's hidden gems.
According to the announcement, the first title to be released as part of Game Log will be the 1996 action-adventure game Tail of the Sun, which will launch on December 16th in Japan, across Steam & Switch.
This is a PS1 game that saw players take control of a caveman who must collect enough mammoth tusks to build a tower to the sun, and was originally designed to be the antithesis of Super Mario 64, with Iida once describing it in an interview from Game Hihyou (translated by Shmupulations) as the "anti-Mario", before claiming that he "really wanted to make a Mario game without a happy ending."
Beyond Tail of the Sun, two more games are also expected to be released as part of Game Log, with the 1995 underwater sim, Aquanaut’s Holiday, also designed by Iida, being the only other title officially announced at this point.
Given that both games were originally released on the PlayStation 1, it's a little bit weird to see PS4 & PS5 missing from the list of platforms, but hopefully that will change as time goes on.