8 remastered games worth playing all over again
Raise your hand if you have a working SNES at home. How about an Atari 2600? What about a functional PC from 1990? Didn’t think so.
Gamers love getting new hardware that can play the latest and greatest titles with maxed out graphics and silky frame rates, but that sometimes means that our old favorites get lost to the march of progress.
1. Halo: Master Chief Edition
The Halo franchise has spanned multiple hardware generations since its first game appeared in 2001. The Master Chief edition offers updates to Halo 2, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 3 and Halo 4. That’s a total of 45 campaign missions and more than 100 multiplayer maps. If that wasn’t enough, the collection also has the Halo: Nightfall live action digital series that serves as a prequel to the upcoming Halo 5: Guardians. It’s a must-have for any serious fans of the helmeted hero.Available on Xbox One.
2. Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition
BioWare’s classic role-playing game Baldur’s Gate got a remaster and more from BeamDog in 2012. The remake spiffed up the original title and its expansion pack with more than 400 improvements. It also added in some fresh content, including new characters, new map areas and a new arena adventure. The team also expanded the available platforms to include mobile options. But it still has all the things that first turned heads about the game when it first launched in 1998: branching dialogue, compelling story lines and complex character relationships.If that’s not enough classic RPG for you, Baldur’s Gate II also got an Enhanced Edition. That means you can adventure once more through all of this vision of Faerûn on the contemporary hardware of your choice.
Available on Android, iOS, Mac, Linux and Windows.
3. Grim Fandango
Tim Schafer has been supplying gamers with top-notch titles for more than a decade. But before the creation of his Double Fine studio, one of Schafer’s earliest projects was the noir adventure game Grim Fandango. It won critical acclaim for its excellent writing and soundtrack, but seemed lost to the ages when LucasArts closed down its adventure game development arm and eventually was bought out entirely. But fans of Manny Calavera were able to get reacquainted with the skeleton earlier this year thanks to a remaster for modern hardware. Updates in the remaster included character textures, dynamic lighting, a re-recorded soundtrack and lots of developer commentary.Available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.
4. LucasArts Star Wars games
When Disney Interactive took over LucasArts, it seemed like the end of an era. LucasArts was responsible for several pivotal and beloved titles during the 1990s that we feared would not reemerge again.Luckily, the Disney crew teamed up with GOG.com to re-release more than a dozen old LucasArts games. From the X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, Star Wars Battlefront II, Star Wars: Dark Forces and Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.
If that isn’t enough of a treasure trove for you, the partnership also includes refreshed versions of Sam & Max Hit the Road, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. All of the remastered games can be found DRM-free on GOG.com.
Available on Windows, and selectively on Mac and Linux.
5. Homeworld
This title holds a place in history as the first fully three-dimensional real-time strategy game. Homeworld debuted in 1999 as a space game where you control a fleet in either singleplayer or multiplayer missions.Then Gearbox Software (of Borderlands fame) picked up the intellectual property and launched remastered versions of both games this February. The Homeworld Remastered Collection also includes the classic versions of the games, but the refreshed takes feature vastly improved graphics and sound. The team even redid the score and the original actors’ voice recordings.
Available on Windows.
6. System Shock and System Shock 2
When the first System Shock debuted in 1994, it was a genre-defining shooter that allowed the player to explore through emergent gameplay. The sequel in 1999 continued that march of shooter innovation. Games that mix the first-person shooter and RPG genres might be a dime a dozen now, but the System Shock games were among the first to find the perfect balance between the two.Although Looking Glass Studios is no more, the System Shock games have benefited from an active and creative modding community. There are whole fan-sites dedicated to sprucing up the original games and making them playable on today’s PC hardware. SystemShock.org gathered the game’s superfans to create a Community Patch that would bring the creation a final bit of polish for total immersion on today’s PCs.
Available on Windows.
7. Wings Remastered Edition
Back in the days of the Amiga console, Wings brought gamers into the shoes of a World War I fighter pilot. The game drew accolades for its combination of a classic flight simulator with arcade-style fun. While the look of the game was about as good as you could get in 1990, the Cinemaware team launched a Kickstarter project to remaster the game with all the power of modern hardware. Following successful funding at the end of 2013, the team redid the graphics, music, sound and controls for a fresh take on the fighter pilot experience. They even secured enough funding to port the remastered game onto both iOS and Android platforms, although the work on those is ongoing.Available on Windows.
8. Another World
When a game merits inclusion at the Museum of Modern Art, it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s a classic. Starting with its initial release in 1991, Another World has managed to retain enough players and popularity to support several updates, ports, and anniversary editions. Players have gone on this fiendishly difficult adventure with Lester on the Amiga, Atari, PC DOS, SNES, Mac and Windows platforms. The most recent release is the 20th anniversary edition, which brought it to just about every game-playing piece of hardware you might want.Available on Android, iOS, Mac, Nintendo 3DS, Ouya, Playstation 4, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, WiiU, Windows and Xbox One.
