As the video game industry matures, there’s been a major push to revisit the past, especially in the last decade. Remakes are a dime a dozen now, but alongside that, we’ve also seen a major shift toward the other side of the coin: remasters. Generally, remasters simply update the original game for more modern platforms, maybe making light tweaks to visuals or quality-of-life features. Remakes, on the other hand, more integrally change the experience, making drastic changes to gameplay or adding entirely new sections.
Alongside just giving players an updated version of the game, remasters can play an integral role in video game preservation – saving key titles from being lost to the ravages of time. Few companies have been more influential in that space than Nightdive Studios, the team behind remasters for System Shock, Star Wars: Dark Forces, The Thing, and much more. Nightdive’s work has helped the industry, in part, reckon with the importance of its past.
