Time for our regular roundup of the mostly (but not strictly) retro-interest games releases on the way for the coming month, with trailers for everything, and if you’re lucky, a few snippets of fascinating information too! We had a load of proper heavyweights last month, including my new obsession Diablo IV, but while things might be slowing down a bit for the summer, there’s a couple of cool things still on the way in July, so let’s get on with it!

We’ve actually got to wait until the 20th of July for our first game this month but hopefully it’s going to be worth it! Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island is coming in the form of three monthly Tall Tales, all on Xbox Game Pass (on console and PC), and seems to make the Monkey Island world fully and freely explorable in the Sea of Thieves engine, with the stories playing out in a point-and-click style but in a first-person view. Seems like a proper good mash-up, with Guybrush, LeChuck, Elaine and the rest being dumped into Sea of Thieves, which admittedly I’ve never really got into, but them being there might make all the difference!

I don’t think I’ll ever get Pikmin though! Each to their own all the same, and if you do get it then this looks like more of its cutesy miniature real-time strategy coming to Nintendo Switch for what I’m sure will be a reassuringly premium price on the 21st. I think it’s the usual raising Pikmin to secure specific objectives gameplay from before but there’s also new types of Pikmin with new skills and abilities to get to grips with, new deployment mechanics, an all-new camera option and you can finally dress up your main character. Lovely.

Also on Switch, but a week later on the 28th, it’s Disney Illusion Island, which I am mildly intrigued by as I did quite enjoy Mickey Mouse’s Mega Drive exploits, as well as the really old cartoons when I was a kid, which this seems like a pretty authentic modern take on. You can play solo or with up to three friends locally as you run, jump, swim and swing your way around the mysterious island of Monoth and it’s diverse platforming biomes, solving puzzles and fighting bosses to recover three mystical books to save the world from disaster. One to watch for me!

Strange to see a new Double Dragon on the way with so little fanfare – I didn’t even know Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons existed until I started scraping the bottom of the barrel for new games to include in this dry month! Anyway, the year is 199X, and ever since nuclear war devastated New York City it’s been overtaken by criminal gangs who terrorize its ruins as they fight for total dominance, and you and your brother have had enough of them! It’s the series’ classic beat ‘em action in an even more pixelated art style than the original was, with a splash of roguelite and a total of thirteen playable characters to tag-team with. It’s out on everything on the 27th according to the website, or seemingly a day later if you’re reading elsewhere, so take your pick if you’re more excited about it than I am.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for you this month, which might be a record low since records began for this feature, but at least we’ve got Baldur’s Gate 3 and Texas Chainsaw to come in August – even if there’s not a whole lot else besides again – and as always you never know what Arcade Archives releases might drop, or homebrews emerge for our favourite old systems! Anyway, hope you enjoyed looking at what I did have, and see you next time!