HD remakes have become increasingly popular over the past few years. Developers have been remastering popular PS2/Xbox games and releasing them on the modern consoles. Overall this has been quite successful. Grim fandango is one of the first games to be remastered that has come from a old age of PC gaming. While we have seen games like Doom and Duke Nukem released on consoles, they have been ports rather than remasters. Console gaming has pushed a lot of these classic PC games out of the mainstream market. It seems that any game that was made in the 1990s is more in line to be completely remade rather than being remastered. This is a shame since these remakes are much less common due to the huge effort it takes compared to a HD remake. These remakes often go on a tangent and change some of the original game which often ruins the game. Most gamers would never have even heard of Grim Fandango if it weren’t for this Remaster. Remastering old games rather than remaking them, could end up becoming an untapped gold mine. There are so many classic games that should be remastered in the same way that Grim Fandango was.
It was impressive to see how little needed to be done to Grim Fandango to bring it up to modern HD standards. Other than the character models the rest of the game remained unchanged. This is a real credit to the original developers. This type of design was quite common back in the 90s which means there are plenty more games that could be remade. It was further credit to Double Fine, that they stayed so true to the original. Although the game does have a new control system, the ability to use tank controls is still there. Even if you hate the idea of HD remakes, there is no denying that Double Fine did a fantastic job of bringing this game back to a mainstream audience without completely destroying the source material. Judging by the overall critic review scores, the game has been quite the success.
Although we do not have any official sales statistics, I think it safe to assume that the game has sold well. It’s highly likely that developers and owners of old classic game IPs are going to start looking into the option of remastering their games. Think about Fallout 1 and 2. If it weren’t for the number 3 appended to the end of Fallout 3, most people would have assumed it was the first game in the series. Even with the knowledge that there were 2 games that came before Fallout 3 the option to actually play it might not be there for people without a PC. Fallout 1 and 2 were such brilliant games. The top down perspective was a welcome change for me when I first played it (which I admit, was after I played Fallout 3). It was impressive how good the game still looked, even though the resolution was a bit low. A remaster of this game would involve having to bump up the resolution of all the games textures so it doesn’t look so blurry and that’s about it. The rest of the game is absolutely perfect the way it is. The story, the camera, the controls even the level design, everything in the original was perfect. Rebuilding all of the textures in a game is no simple task, but it’s a lot easier than completely rebuilding the game from scratch.
It would really be a great thing to see some more games like Grim Fandango remastered. How could anyone complain about a remaster like this, when it stays so true to the original. Due to the lack of keyboard and mouse control, it might be a little tricky to make it work out, but this is only minor in my opinion. We have no idea how things are going to play out here, but lets home that Grim Fandango is a financial success and leads to many more remasters over the next few years.
