Why I Love: the pristine sprites of Wild Guns Reloaded

Back in the heyday of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, when your Bionic Commando Rearmeds and your Rush 'N' Attack: Ex-Patriots were a dime a dozen, Wild Guns Reloaded would still have been an oddity. Retro remasters and remakes of Japanese 16-bit classics were common then and still made today, but none have taken the approach Natsume has with Reloaded. Both a remaster of the original but also a sequel with brand new playable characters and levels, Wild Guns Reloaded actually retains the sprite graphics style of the Super Nintendo original.

No high-res drawn characters like DuckTales on Wii U, not super fancy old-fashioned hardware mimicry like Shovel Knight, and no hyper-stylized retro look like Hyper Light Drifter. Natsume's actually recaptured the real chunky cartoon look that hasn't been seen in 20 years. People at E3 2016 were absolutely eating up its arcade-y action too. Every time I wandered by Natsume's booth in the farthest corner of the Los Angeles Convention Center, a line stretched out from the demo station like a sparking dynamite wick.