Outside of the indie game space, where hard release dates tend to be kind of scarce, I’m not seeing a lot of prospects for proper 2D game releases in the coming month. Heartbreaking! But at least the ones I know about look pretty solid.

Resogun: Despite its 3D visuals and silly particle effects and desire to drown players in voxels, Resogun is a straight-up classic arcade game. It’s derived 100% from Williams’ Defender, up to and including the fact that its 2D plane of movement has been wrapped onto a torus for infinite scrolling. This game is the number one reason I’m excited about PlayStation 4. It is super rad, seriously.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: The sequel to A Link to the Past has kind of ugly polygonal graphics, but its perspective and mechanics feel more in keeping with the classic 2D Zelda games than anything since… Minish Cap, maybe? It even has a special power where you turn Link into a 2D image that shuffles along the surface of walls. I honestly have no idea if A Link Between Worlds will be any good, but… I’m interested. And I’m buying the special 3DS XL anyway. To hoard and speculate on and resell in a few months when it doubles in value. I’m sorry, everything bad about video games is my fault.

Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because… I DON’T KNOW!: A smooshy blend of Gauntlet, Mystery Dungeon, and Ikaruga (!?), Explore the Dungeon gets a special stamp of approval because its director is a regular around these parts, but also because it’s really fun. Plus, it’s the only properly 2D sprite-based old-school game in the coming month that I know of, and it look great. I just wish Cartoon Network would put the third seasons and beyond on Blu-ray already, dang it.