Hamster's Console Archives is adding Dezaemon, the Famicom shmup maker
The 1991 shoot-'em-up creation tool gets its first re-release through Hamster's Console Archives series.
Hamster Corporation is adding Dezaemon to its Console Archives lineup tomorrow, February 19, for Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5 at $7.99.
If you've never heard of Dezaemon, you're not alone in the West, but in Japan, this series has a deep following. Originally released by Athena in 1991 for the Famicom, Dezaemon is a shoot-'em-up creation tool. Not a shmup. A tool for making shmups. You design your own ships with pixel art, compose background music on an 8-bit sound engine, lay out enemy patterns, and build up to three stages of vertical-scrolling action. It shipped with a sample game called E.D.I.T. to show what the engine could do, and from there, you were on your own.
A whole franchise you probably missed
The 1991 Famicom original was just the beginning. Athena brought an enhanced version to the Super Famicom in 1994, then Dezaemon Plus hit the PlayStation in 1996. The Saturn got Dezaemon 2 in 1997, which is arguably the fan favorite: it added horizontal scrolling, bumped the stage count to ten, and introduced a 3D modeling tool for sprite creation. That was followed by Dezaemon Kids! on PlayStation and Dezaemon 3D on Nintendo 64, both in 1998. Six games across five platforms in seven years, all centered on the same premise of letting players build their own shooters.
The Saturn community in particular kept Dezaemon 2 alive for years, sharing user-created games via memory cards. It was essentially a homebrew scene built into a retail product, two decades before "user-generated content" became a buzzword.
Back from a long absence
This Famicom original hasn't had an official re-release in its 35-year history. Getting it through Console Archives is notable because game creation tools are an unusual pick for a retro reissue series. Most of Hamster's catalog leans toward straightforward arcade action. A creative tool is a different proposition entirely, and it suggests the Console Archives label is willing to dig into corners of Japanese gaming history that other publishers wouldn't touch.
Console Archives Dezaemon launches February 19 on Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5 for $7.99.
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