10 Best Gaming Surprises Of 2023

A study released this year said that nearly 90% of retro games are "critically endangered". Fixing that problem is a dedicated, Herculean task that should be taken seriously, especially for the rarer and more obscure games that have faded into obscurity unnoticed.

That said, it's not like this is an issue that the biggest franchises aren't in jeopardy of either. Thankfully, there has been a trend in recent years for license-holders to group old games together and sell them as a collection.

Obviously, this isn't done purely out of the goodness of a publisher's heart, it's preying on nostalgia somewhat. That said, it is still a net positive that old games are being brought forwards. 2023 saw collections of all kinds, some of which were pleasantly unexpected choices. Mega Man got its fifth and most surprising bundle with the Battle Network Collection. Oddly, the Jurassic Park franchise got a selection of seven retro games packaged together. There were also collections released for the likes of WonderBoy, Double Dragon and Duke Nukem, and the announcement for Lara Croft's first three adventures coming to Nintendo Switch next year.

The most obvious was the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol.1 which, even with its performance issues and the fact most of the games are actually in-store downloads (meaning they could still disappear at any time), was a long-awaited release. To have these games on modern systems at all was huge.