It’s no secret that SNES nostalgia is strong; The SNES Classic was one of the hottest items of the past holiday season and it doesn’t show much sign of slowing down. The inclusion of the Star Fox 2 turned the plug-and-play mini-console into more than just a totem of consumer nostalgia; it’s the only way to play an officially licensed version of one of the most famous unreleased games of all time. And being a physical release means that it will more or less be available to the people that absolutely need to have it. Nintendo’s previous venture into unreleased game territory was Earthbound Beginnings for the WiiU Virtual Console and as such is subject to the unpredictable whims of digital platforms – and judging by how quickly the WiiU has been abandoned it’s not hard to imagine that the digital storefront won’t be around much longer.

On the side of physical releases Retro-bit recently revealed the next two pieces in their line of licensed reproduction carts — Holy Diver for NES and R-Type Returns (containing the duology of Super R-Type and R-Type III) on SNES. Retro-bit’s line has already released several game compilation cartridges like the Jaleco Brawler’s Pack and the Data East Classic Collection. The latter featurs a translation of Magical Drop 2 originally made by prolific fan-translator Aeon Genesis. But this is the first time they’ve given individual games the full-package treatment and in the case of Holy Diver this is the first time that title has been officially released outside of Japan.

The combination of ‘releasing physical copies of games for legacy consoles’, ‘releasing games that were previously unreleased’, and ‘licensing fan-translations’ is setting a precedent that could easily lead to a golden age for fans and collectors of physical media that have grown tired of the increasingly frustrating retro market. There’s only so many retro game expos one can attend before the “$1000 CIB Earthbound and Friends” get tiring.

In 2017 Iam8bit brought reproduction cartridges of Street Fighter II into the world and they’ve already become a sought after collector’s item. The packaging is lovingly crafted, it contains a full-color manual with a foreward by Seth Killian, and even comes with a voucher for a free fanny-pack to really hit the 90s nostalgia on the head. It’s still vanilla Street Fighter II however so the odds of it getting a lot of play when better versions of the game are available on every system under the sun are slim. But again, it shows that there is still a market for physical media in an industry where licenses can expire and games can disappear from digital storefronts with little to no warning. It’s a rejection of the service platform model and all the trappings that come with it. There’s comfort in knowing that a piece of media can be owned, not just licensed from a provider, and companies like Retro-bit and Iam8bit are embracing that.