In this week’s newsletter: From Tomb Raider to Silent Hill, our all-time favourite games are being restored – but like film and TV before it, does this nostalgia come at the expense of new ideas?
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This week, a takeover by our friends at Pushing Buttons, the Guardian’s pre-eminent weekly gaming newsletter. Keith Stuart writes about the sudden deluge of remastered games flooding the market and what all this monetised nostalgia means for the future of gaming – Gwilym
The past is a big deal in the video games industry right now. Hardly a month goes by when we’re not being tempted by a new retro mini console, whether that’s a cutesy Nintendo or a demure ZX Spectrum (a new version of which is arriving in November, complete with rubbery keys and 48 legendary games). And this year’s release schedule is absolutely crammed with remasters of classic titles. In April, the video game news site Kotaku listed 30 old timers being exhumed and revived for 2024, including The Last of Us Part II , Tomb Raider 1-3 and Star Wars: Dark Forces. Thirty! And the article missed a few! October alone will see updated versions of horror adventures Until Dawn, Silent Hill 2 and Clock Tower, as well as Lego Harry Potter. Earlier this week, Sony held a livestream of upcoming PlayStation 5 releases and one of the most popular reveals was Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered, an overhauled collection of two admittedly wonderful action role-playing titles from the turn of the century, designed by the creative team who would go on to make the Uncharted series.
