Polymega Collection Vol. 23 bundles seven Jaleco games for $39.99

Playmaji has opened pre-orders for Polymega Collection Vol. 23 - City Connection, a $39.99 physical compilation bundling seven classic Jaleco arcade and console titles on a single DVD.

The disc works natively on both the standalone Polymega PM01 base unit and the Windows 11-based Polymega Remix add-on without requiring any separate cartridge Element Modules. Along with the game DVD, the box includes a visual companion booklet, a controller reference card, a collection sticker, and a promotional enamel pin while supplies last. It's a solid amount of physical pack-in material for a $40 release.

Seven games and a lot of spilled oil

Volume 23 pulls its lineup from Jaleco, the Japanese developer founded in 1974 that became one of Nintendo's earliest third-party Famicom licensees before shutting down in 2014. Today, the catalog is owned by Japanese publisher City Connection, which took its corporate name directly from the 1985 headliner on this disc. The compilation includes seven titles spanning multiple hardware generations, frequently pairing the original arcade ROMs with their home console ports:

• City Connection (Arcade, NES / Famicom)
• Game Tengoku / The Game Paradise: Master of Shooting (Arcade, Sega Saturn)
• Plus Alpha (Arcade)
• Chameleon (Arcade)
• Rod Land (Arcade, NES / Famicom)
• Scud Hammer (Arcade)
• The Ignition Factor / Fire Fighting (SNES / Super Famicom)

City Connection casts players as Clarice, who drives a Honda City hatchback across global highways to paint the roads while chucking oil cans at pursuing police cars. It's joined by Rod Land, a 1990 single-screen platformer where fairy protagonists Tam and Rit trap monsters with magical wands and slam them into the floor, a game whose European NES cartridge now commands steep aftermarket prices. On the Super Nintendo side, 1994's The Ignition Factor drops the arcade score-chasing for a top-down firefighting simulation where equipment weight and oxygen management determine whether you actually make it out of a burning building alive.

The arcade-exclusive picks dig much deeper into the vault. Chameleon is an obscure 1983 platformer where you guide a tongue-flicking lizard around egg-stealing hazards, while 1989's Plus Alpha is a vibrant vertical shoot 'em up that lets players swap between three fighter types on the fly. Scud Hammer is the biggest oddity of the bunch, an arcade mechanical whac-a-mole spin-off featuring Jaleco's Ninja JaJaMaru-kun cast, and I'm curious how its reflex-heavy smashing translates to a standard console gamepad.

All of those characters collide in 1995's Game Tengoku, a self-referential vertical shooter set inside a video game arcade that pulls pilots from across Jaleco's history, including City Connection and Plus Alpha. Including both the 1995 arcade board and the expanded 1997 Sega Saturn port on one disc is a smart move, considering original Japanese Saturn copies regularly sell for well over the $39.99 price of this entire package.

How Polymega's physical discs fit together

When Playmaji finally began shipping the Polymega console in 2021 after years of supply chain delays, the pitch centered on playing original retro media. The base unit's built-in optical drive reads vintage CD-ROM formats natively (including PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Sega CD, Neo Geo CD, and TurboGrafx-CD), while six plug-in Element Modules handle cartridges from the NES through the Nintendo 64 and Atari 7800.

Playmaji later launched the Polymega Collection line to give owners newly pressed physical media to buy alongside their old shelves of games. Instead of running a traditional digital storefront where licenses can quietly expire, the company manufactures numbered DVD-ROM releases that install licensed games directly to the system's menu.

Because the Polymega wasn't originally built to take raw arcade PCB boards, these discs have become Playmaji's main method for getting arcade-accurate builds onto the hardware alongside expensive console ports. Reaching Volume 23 shows the format has found a steady audience among collectors who prefer a plastic case and a printed manual over a digital download queue.