Ziggurat's C64 collection is back with a new name and a bardcore remake

Ziggurat Interactive has re-revealed its Commodore 64 compilation with a new trailer and an updated title, Cosmi: Forbidden Forest & Beyond. The publisher showed the footage at the August 2026 Pixel Arcadia showcase, confirming the collection is heading to PC via Steam and GOG, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 5. It was originally announced in March 2025 under a slightly different name.

The compilation packs 10 games originally published by Cosmi in the 1980s. Many of these were developed by Paul Norman, whose 1983 release Forbidden Forest anchors the collection. The package also includes Beyond the Forbidden Forest, Aztec Challenge, Caverns of Khafka, Chernobyl, Delta Man, Chomp!, Defcon 5, and Spite & Malice.

The original survival horror

Forbidden Forest is a strange piece of gaming history. You play as an archer wandering through the woods at night, shooting giant spiders and frogs. It has parallax scrolling, animated blood, and a day-night cycle, which were highly unusual technical achievements for a Commodore 64 game in 1983. The intense, driving soundtrack accurately reflects the sheer panic of trying to line up a bow shot while a giant pixelated insect rushes your character.

Norman's other major hit here is Aztec Challenge. It's a famously punishing obstacle course game where you run toward a pyramid while dodging spears. These early Cosmi titles are brutally difficult. They were designed to eat your quarters, even though they were released on home computers.

Ziggurat is wrapping these ROMs in a modern shell powered by the Arsenal Engine. You get the standard emulation comforts like save states and a rewind function. These tools are practically mandatory for finishing 1980s computer games today without pulling your hair out.

The extra material looks fairly extensive. There are digital comics by Ideas & Inks, original box art scans, and development archives. I'm always curious to see how much actual documentation survives from 1980s development cycles. Source code and design documents were frequently thrown in the trash back then, so any preserved artifacts are a net positive.

Well, that happened

The strangest addition is a complete visual overhaul for Forbidden Forest. Ziggurat calls it a "bardcore-inspired" remake. It replaces the 8-bit graphics with a stylized medieval aesthetic. The new art style is a jarring shift from the blocky C64 originals, but a real-time toggle lets you switch back to the 1983 graphics instantly.

I'm not entirely sold on the modern visual filter. The flat, illustrated look strips away the grimy atmosphere that made the original game so unsettling. But the toggle makes the remake harmless. You can just ignore it.

Playing Commodore 64 games on a PlayStation 5 with a DualSense controller is a funny concept. The original hardware relied heavily on a single-button joystick and keyboard inputs. Mapping those arcane control schemes to a modern gamepad is usually the hardest part of these retro compilations. We'll see if the control translation holds up when the collection launches.