Release Date	Distributer	Publisher	Developer	Anticipation	Players	Price
7/11/2006	EA Games	EA Games	EA Canada		1-2	$TBA

The original Wing Commander.	B.O.B. has made the list.

Desert Strike is a classic.

It seems that everyone is jumping on the retro bandwagon of late. Activision, Sega, Midway, and Atari have all been there in the current generation, and now Electronic Arts have decided it's about time they make a bit of easy cash as well. EA Replay is that compilation, and gamers during the 16-bit era will certainly want to have a look at this package which looks fairly solid. This package includes 14 classic (well, some classic anyway) games from the 1990's.

So what are the games in the compilation. Well here's the summary from Electronic Arts:
B.O.B. -Help B.O.B. blast his way through alien goon squads and rendezvous with his galactic babe!
Budokan -Walk the path of the warrior as you master the most deadly martial arts.
Desert Strike - With a fiery blast from your Hellfire missiles you must annihilate a ruthless tyrant's military arsenal.
Jungle Strike - The Desert Madman is dead. Now his vicious son plots a nuclear strike against the U.S.A.

Road Rash - rumoured for next-gen too!

Haunting Starring Polterguy - Scare an evil family out of their house by being scary, funny, or just plain gross.
Mutant League Football - Anything can happen when mutants battle to prove who rules the galactic gridiron.
Road Rash - Blow opponents off the backroads in California's most illegal, unofficial, and dangerous race.
Road Rash II - Road racing isn't just a sport. It's an attitude! Cruising cross country just got a lot hairier.
Road Rash III - Keep an eye out for wildlife and other hazards as you engage in a 150-MPH bike brawl.

Budokan isn't great, but I like it.

Syndicate - Sources indicate a rival syndicate has developed a dangerous new computer program. We want it.
Ultima: The Black Gate - Solve the mystery that has befallen Britannia before its manifestation is complete!
Virtual Pinball - You design the pinball game, you build, you play it!
Wing Commander - Lead your elite Tiger's Claw squadron against the forces of the Kilrathi Empire.
Wing Commander: Secret Missions - Come face to face with the ultimate threat to mankind-a weapon capable of destroying entire planets!

There are also a couple of enhancements to keep you going. Each of the games now allows you to save mid-game thus eliminating the frustration of some of the harder titles, but also keeping them as portable as possible. Multi-player will also be supported with Ad Hoc support for Budokan, Road Rash II and Mutant League Football. We are a little disappointed there won't be more games with support for multi-player, even if they were new modes added onto the original games (Syndicate could/would have been perfect for this!). Finally Electronic Arts are promising unlockable game art for the titles.

I never played this, did you?

Graphically EA Replay should offer perfect reproductions of the 14 games. These were all released during the 16-bit era so there is no reason why they shouldn't run flawlessly on Sony's handheld. It will be interesting to see how much effort Electronic Arts put into the game front end, extras and audio.

Ultimately the success of this package is going to come down to how well the games are ported - which if they aren't perfect I'll be very pissed - but also the extra features and effort Electronic Arts go to in order to make this a valuable package. With an American release set for early November we would expect the Australian release to be fairly close behind - certainly by Christmas.