Following a set of exciting announcements last week (namely, Console Archives and the impending rerelease of Rave Racer), Hamster, the company behind Arcade Archives, is back to basics this week, with another arcade deep cut: Konami's tank-based shoot 'em up, Mega Zone.
The game, in case you've never heard of it, is a vertically scrolling shooter, featuring multiple branching pathways. It was developed as a conversion kit for "vertically mounted rastar scan monitor game[s]", and was also available as a standalone machine.
It is believed to have originally been released in Japan in 1984. However, prior to that, it was also demonstrated at the Amusement & Music Operators Association Show (AMOA) in Chicago in October 1983, where Play Meter's Gene Litkin reviewed it as one of the conversions on display, giving it 5 out of a possible 10. In that review, he described the title as "somewhat similar to [Namco's] Xevious" but clarified at the time that they "did not have enough time to really get into it to see if there is something different."
As is typical with games of this era, Konami has never officially announced who was behind the game's creation, but looking at some hidden developer credits (found by TCRF) reveals some familiar names, including K. Hiroshita (Contra arcade lead Koji Hiroshita) and T. Fujiwara (the future Ghosts 'n Goblins creator Tokuro Fujiwara).
In the past, Mega Zone has appeared on Xbox 360 and Windows, as part of Game Room, but beyond that, it hasn't been ported that widely to modern platforms.
As stated in the announcement, the game will be released on consoles tomorrow (February 11th) on Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S, and will once again come in two separate versions: Arcade Archives and Arcade Archives 2. The former (for Nintendo Switch and PS4) will cost $7.99, while the latter is priced slightly higher at $9.99.