HD remaster of the first Croc title will be released for “all the current consoles and PC". There’s no specific release date beyond “2024” at the moment.
Here’s an article with additional info and screen shots. Main points:
- HD graphics keeping the original art style
- updated controls
- digital museum containing development assets, design documents, concept art and more
I like the idea of the digital museum. Would be nice if remakes of games would include stuff like that about the original. If the remake isnt faithful to the original (faithful like the Resident Evil remake from 2002 was faithful, or something like Metroid Prime Remastered but an actual remake), then at the very least remakes should include a copy of the original game playable on the same device, either as a port or via emulation.
As much as I like this idea I don’t think many publishers would look at it and said anything other than “yeah, not worth the money”. We probably have a higher chance for the classic versions landing on GoG than being added as a freebie to a remake - they want you to play the new shiny thing, not the old one after all (that and no need to provide support to the old version).
Yes, but emulation is a very easy work around. There are even some open source emulators that allow commercial use without credit required and only require source code to stay open and post any changes made to the source code online. For most games, the default emulator will run like 90% of games perfectly fine and if proprietary code for porting to consoles is an issue, a compatibility layer can be written that isn’t open source can work around that.
Whats I am saying is, its such a low effort thing to do that shows the company honors and values their legacy content.
I totally agree. I just don’t have much expectations towards big publishers anymore, I guess. Not many approach the topic of remakes/remasters from the point of view of celebrating their history unfortunately. Heck, we had multiple instances of publishers removing the old versions from sale just to push people to the new one.
Low effort or not, companies (and many players to be honest) rarely care about their legacy.
I’d love to see developers and publishers start to do this. Though I am interested in Tomb Raider and how they handle the graphic toggling, which seems like a half-way point to what you’re describing.