Magmax is the next Famicom shooter coming to Switch 2 and PS5

Hamster Corporation is bringing the 8-bit home console version of Magmax to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2 on May 7. The release is the latest entry in the company's Console Archives series, which focuses on classic home ports rather than original arcade hardware.

Nichibutsu originally released Magmax in arcades in 1985. A Famicom port arrived in Japan in March 1986. Players in North America had to wait until October 1988 to get the NES version through publisher FCI. By the time it reached American shores, it had to compete with more advanced scrolling shooters, but the core mechanics were always unusual for the era. The game has players pilot a small craft to defeat an alien supercomputer named Babylon.

The main hook involves assembling a giant robot piece by piece. You start as a basic ship that is the waist of the mecha. As you progress through the stages, you can find and attach a torso, legs, and a wave beam gun. Each new part adds specific firepower to your arsenal.

Surface and underground combat

The game operates on two different planes. You start on the surface, but warp holes allow you to drop into an underground cavern. You have to navigate both areas to collect all the mecha parts. The game hides different robot sections in different environments.

The underground sections operate slightly differently than the surface. Above ground, you can destroy certain buildings with the wave beam gun. Underground, the weapon fires a large fireball that punches straight through enemy formations. Losing the wave beam gun means you revert to standard twin pulse lasers. These basic lasers struggle against grouped targets.

The combination system is also a health bar. If you take a hit while fully assembled, you lose the part that got hit instead of dying. Your core ship is the only vulnerable piece. The trade-off is your hitbox. A fully assembled Magmax is huge. Dodging enemy fire is much harder when your robot takes up a large chunk of the screen. This forces players to decide if the extra firepower is worth the risk of being a massive target.

At the end of the stages, you fight Babylon. The boss is a three-headed mechanical dragon that bears a striking resemblance to Mecha-King Ghidorah from the Godzilla movies. You really want the wave beam gun attached before fighting it. Standard ship lasers do not deal damage quickly enough to easily survive the encounter.

The Console Archives shift

Hamster launched the Console Archives label in February 2026. The company spent the last decade releasing hundreds of arcade games through its Arcade Archives series. That lineup actually got the arcade version of Magmax back in 2015. The new console-focused line started with Cool Boarders and Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos. It is currently exclusive to the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2.

Emulating the Famicom version of a game that already has its arcade counterpart available is a specific choice. The arcade original had impressive parallax scrolling that the 8-bit console hardware simply could not handle. The home port is a flatter experience visually, but it is the version most people actually played in the 1980s.

This release costs $7.99. Hamster includes its usual suite of modern updates. Players get save states, customizable button layouts, rapid-fire toggles, and CRT screen filters. The rewind function is also present. This is extremely helpful when a stray bullet knocks off your wave beam gun right before the boss fight.