A “new” game, Airball, is going to be released in physical format for the original NES and Gameboy Advance Consoles for the first time. The game is now on a presale at Retro Room Games. Yes, you can buy it on an original cartridge and play it on your old NES or GBA console.
But is it really the “first” release of the game? Let us go back in history to 1987.
The game
Airball is a puzzle labyrinth game and was released the first time in 1987. It was developed by Microdeal for Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 home computers and also TRS-80 Color Computer. The game was later ported to several other platforms including Atari ST and MS-DOS and so on.
The story of the NES version
The developer Novotrade, now known as Appaloosa, developed a NES version of the game that was going to be published by Tengen in 1990.
But somehow the game release never happened.
Disappears for years
Now the story gets a bit confusing. For a number of years the game was unheard of.
Then in 2007 Airball shows up again. A small publisher named Retrozone publishes the game and starts selling original NES cartridges and boxes and announces the game to never have been released for the NES console.
It was at then selling from the website Retrousb.com. Here is a link to the game at their website. I don’t know how the publisher Retrozone is connected to the website Retrousb.com.
The 2022 release
Now, in late 2022, Airballs for NES is discontinued on the Retrousb.com website and is once again announced as a “new release” by publisher Retro Room Games. This time the game is also as available as a GameBoy Advance version.
Retro Room Games
The developer Roo at https://theretroroomgames.com/ develops his own games and preserves licensed games. He is a licensed publisher for the games he sells.
You can buy the games on original cartridges or get them digitally for free. He loves games and that’s just great!
Go to Airball at Retro Room Games
Videos of the game
A video of Airball Gameplay from 2014 by NEScapades