Although Hollywood is often lampooned for its remakes, sequels and soft-reboots, the gaming industry is equally culpable for that trend. Recently we've seen a whole host of remakes, remasterings and rereleases for a variety of games from a number of different genres.
Arguably it's more justified with gaming than with movies though, as while a movie from yesteryear is still viewable in many modern guises, games aren't always playable. Modern hardware and operating systems aren't always backwards compatible and in the case of consoles, the original systems can be hard to find and expensive to buy.
Starcraft is a great example of a worthy rerelease. Its HD remastering makes it easier than ever to play, with better visuals, improved widescreen support, new changes to online play and matchmaking, cloud saving for campaign progress, custom map support, replays and keybinding adjustments and new support for as many as 13 different languages.
Blizzard is of course a company that really respects the history of its games. While there is some debate over WoW legacy servers, it has offered patches and updates for its games nearly two decades on from their initial release, which is not something that can be said for all companies.
However, that's sometimes because those companies don't exist any more. In the case of classic titles like System Shock, Looking Glass Studios went bust 17 years ago, so it can't update its games. Companies like Night Dive Studios however, can.
Founded in 2012, Night Dive has since acquired the rights to a number of classic games and has worked on several remastered or enhanced versions of those games over the years. It released an enhanced edition of the original System Shock in 2015, along with ports of Spirits of Xanadu, I have no Mouth and I must Scream, Turok, Turok 2 and Shadow Man, among others.
Not all of those have been hits, but Night Dive has done a good job of preserving, porting and recreating some of gaming's classic titles, especially some of the lesser known ones.
In perhaps a more polished manner, one interesting remastering coming soon is Crash Bandicoot's N. Sane Trilogy. The little critter will be returning on the PS4 with all new textures, models and artwork with all three of the character's original titles ported over in a single all encompassing rerelease.
Although we have yet to see how well it will turn out, trailers and images from the game look fantastic, with big updates to the visuals, slight tweaks to control to make the experience more fluid and all the original sound and action from the trilogy as it was on the PS One. Only better.
Of course though, we can't talk about HD remasterings without touching on Double Fine. That company features LucasArts alumni like Tim Schafer and previously Ron Gilbert. Along with its own original releases, Double Fine has also brought back games like Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle. With updated visuals and slightly improved controls, the games were such solid ports of the originals, that some people complained about the antiquated design of them.
While the viability of classic games in the modern gaming age is another topic for another day, they are incredibly faithful rereleases and are deserved of praise for that alone.
In this same breath it also seems fair to give a nod to LucasArts too, which has released HD versions of its Monkey Island games built on the SCUMM engine. They even had the neat ability to switch to the original graphics and interface at will, letting gamers see what playing those classic point and click titles was really like.
As much as all of the above games are great though, they barely scratch the surface of some of the remakes and remasterings we've seen in recent years. There's the Pokémon remakes, GTA V, Final Fantasy IV, Resident Evil, The Last Of Us, Banjo Kazooie, Ocarina of Time, Halo, Saint's Row IV, Metro Redux, Rez Infinite, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Skyrim, Dead Rising and many, many more.
The thing is though, as many remasters as there are, there are still gamers all over the world clamoring for more. Whether for updated visuals, improved matchmaking or simply making those older games work on modern platforms, gamers still have their favorites they want to see ported over into the modern era.
Personally, I'd love a new Seven Kingdoms remaster. Maybe a Dark Omen remastering too.
What about you guys? What would you like to see updated with new visuals or at the very least made compatible with modern operating systems?
