New games for retro systems have become so common that the novelty has begun to wear off – and I say this as someone who still regularly fires up the NES to play. But the story of Xcavator 2025, which will be released on an all-new NES cartridge next year, is too cool to ignore, and it certainly doesn't hurt that the game itself looks pretty good, too.
Announced on Showcase “Developers Day” Earlier today, Xcavator 2025 is a shooter that publisher iam8bit describes as “a never-before-seen, long-lost prototype game from legendary programmer Chris Obert.” Much of Oberth's work has fallen into obscurity among modern gamers, but his Stern arcade games made an impact on the development scene in the early '80s.
We're SO EXCITED to finally show you the Xcavator 2025! This is an unreleased (and unannounced!) NES game from 1991 that we've extracted from the source code. The rights to it have been 100% assigned to us and it is being published as a fundraiser cartridge to support our work!
— @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social (@gamehistoryorg.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-12-10T22:55:25.199Z
The game wasn't even officially announced and would have been consigned to the scrap heap of lost media if the prototype hadn't turned up among materials discovered by the Video Game History Foundation in Oberth's development archives, which were donated to the group after his death by his family.
“The Video Game History Foundation then worked with Mega Cat Studios to complete the game,” continues iam8bit, “staying true to Obert’s original vision and using the tools and environment that Obert would have used himself to make the game cohesive.”
You can pre-order Xcvator 2025 ahead of launch in Q2 2026 at $100. That's a pretty steep price even for a modern replay cartridge, but 100% of the proceeds from these sales go back to the Video Game History Foundation so it can continue its work of preserving forgotten pieces of the industry's history.
This best NES games of all times.
