Arcade Archives 2 Swimmer hits Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox on October 29

Tehkan's 1982 river-dodging game Swimmer is coming to Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on October 29 under Hamster Corporation's Arcade Archives 2 line. It's an expanded current-gen upgrade to the standard Arcade Archives version that launched on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 back in March 2021, arriving alongside this week's release of Arcade Archives Prehistoric Isle.

The new edition costs $9.99, which is two dollars more than the $7.99 price tag on the 2021 release. Anyone who already bought the original Switch or PS4 version doesn't have to pay full price again, as Hamster is offering a $2.99 ownership discount on Switch 2 and PS5 when purchasing on the same account. Xbox buyers also get Windows PC access included through Xbox Play Anywhere.

What the extra two dollars buys you

Arcade Archives 2 overhauls the standard wrapper that Hamster has used for the past decade. Along with the usual Original, Hi Score, and Caravan modes, the updated release adds a Time Attack Mode where the only goal is reaching the end of the game as fast as possible, completely ignoring your point total. It also adds Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) support so modern displays can match the original cabinet's exact refresh rate, plus a redesigned menu interface, multiple save slots, rapid-fire toggles, and a rewind function.

Having a rewind button for a punishing 1982 quarter-muncher makes a lot of sense, though I'm not sure how much mileage anyone will really get out of a dedicated speedrun mode in a vertically auto-scrolling river game. Still, that $2.99 upgrade path is fair, and it's a relief Hamster isn't forcing returning players to drop another ten bucks just to get native PS5 and Switch 2 versions.

Before Wonder Boy, there was a guy in a river

Swimmer originally hit Japanese arcades in July 1982 from Tehkan (long before the company renamed itself Tecmo and eventually merged into Koei Tecmo), with Centuri handling North American cabinets that November. Before Hamster started porting it in 2021, the game's only home console appearance was on the 2005 Tecmo Classic Arcade compilation for the original Xbox.

On the surface, the game plays like an aquatic inversion of Frogger, tasking you with guiding a swimmer upstream toward a treasure island. Instead of hopping across traffic lanes, you weave left and right through hazard-filled water and use a single action button to either leap over floating logs or dive beneath them. The river is packed with waterbugs, turtles, piranhas, and a giant pink crab that blocks the stream near the end of the stage.

You can't fight back until you grab a flashing power pill, which works just like a Pac-Man energizer and lets you knock out monsters on contact. The real hook for score chasers is the fruit system: picking up strawberries, bananas, and grapes in consecutive sets multiplies their point value, and missing a single piece resets your chain back to the bottom tier.

Swimmer is also an early piece of developer history. It was programmed by Michishito Ishizuka with music by Ryuichi Nishizawa, the pair who later left Tehkan to co-found Westone Bit Entertainment and create the Wonder Boy and Monster World series. You can already spot their knack for bright, arcade-pop pacing here, even when the hardware is just a pair of Z80 processors pushing a pixelated guy past a giant crab.