You may have missed one of the coolest announcements from this week’s Nintendo Indie World Showcase: UFO 50 arriving on Switch. It’s a weird name, but an excellent collection 50(!) retro-inspired, yet completely original games — and not ‘minigames’ at that.
The entire collection is designed to emulate the look, feel, and often, gameplay of 8-bit video games from the 1980s, through the fictional company of UFO Soft. All 50 games are playable from the start, and cover a wide variety of genres, from shoot ’em ups, platformers, point and click adventures, to full-on RPGs and strategy games. While many games were created to be specifically nostalgic toward certain titles, they developers weren’t limited to the “genres and design conventions of the past.”
Half of the games also support local multiplayer.
UFO 50 was developed by Mossmouth, best known for the Spelunky series, and had been in development for nearly a decade before its release. It first launched on Steam last year, which I embarrassingly missed completely, and features an Overwhelming Positive user rating.
The gigantic, original chiptune-tastic soundtrack by Eirik Suhrke (also a dev for Mossmouth) is also available on Steam, as well as Bandcamp.
UFO 50 is also getting a physical Deluxe Edition courtesy of Fangamer ($60), which includes an awesome-looking, old-school guidebook. You can preorder now, but it’s not out until February 20, 2026.
UFO 50 is rated T for Teen with Blood, Simulated Gambling, Use of Drugs, and Violence.
