The now-defunct LucasArts, the original developer, and the game’s director Tim Schafer crafted a rich, inviting world that instantly draws you into its narrative. Manny heads off in search of Meche to rescue her and ensure she secures her place on the train to the Ninth Underworld - and hopefully make it there himself in the process. When a computer error fails to assign the Number Nine train to Mercedes “Meche” Colomar, it’s revealed that the entire system is corrupted - someone is stealing the tickets assigned to good souls, leaving those who qualify for the train to walk the four year journey. House Republicans Want to Expel George Santos Those who failed to lead a good life must make the journey on foot, and are thus resigned to a four year journey to reach their destination. The Number Nine train is the ultimate reward, capable of reaching the gates of the Ninth Underworld in four minutes, while boat and bus packages are also available. Manny determines how good each person was while alive, with those leading better lives able to access better travel packages for reaching the Ninth Underworld. Players are given control of Manuel “Manny” Calavera, a travel agent in the Land of the Dead who helps souls move from the Land of the Living on to the Ninth Underworld. Often revered as one of the hallmarks of the adventure genre, which was at its peak in the late ’80s through the mid-’90s, Grim Fandango is a beautifully realized, wonderfully scripted, gorgeously depicted world to explore.

Everything that gave the original game its cult status is here. Which is exactly why it’s still so utterly fantastic. Grim Fandango still runs at a 4:3 aspect ratio (it can be stretched across a 16:9 aspect, but don’t bother) and, aside from the option to point and click on PCs and the PS Vita, or use camera-relative movement on PS4, instead of the original’s tanks controls, this is essentially the same game you played back in the nineties.

Audio has been updated and remastered, with the game’s beautiful score recorded by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (the original game’s audio files didn’t hold up to modern scrutiny). Character models are overhauled, with smooth textures that will render well on any size screen, a new lighting engine subtly illuminates everything in a more realistic way, backgrounds have been cleaned up to let them better stretch across 1080p screens, and there’s better anti-aliasing to smooth everything out as you play. That’s why, at first glance, Grim Fandango Remastered looks as if developer Double Fine didn’t really bother at all.īeyoncé Joins Taylor Swift at Concert Movie Premiere Do too much, and you risk ruining the magic that earned the game its classic status, by potentially transforming its world to be unrecognizable or fiddling too much with game mechanics. Resident Evil’s tank controls, for instance, feel utterly alien in today’s world. Do too little, and the game’s age will be all too apparent for those used to modern control schemes and pixel-perfect graphics. Both took established, older franchises and pulled them into the modern era, giving young gamers a chance to live through the same worlds their parents did almost two decades ago without vastly altering the original experience.ĭevelopers must walk a fine line when remastering a beloved title. Or, for horror fans, the seminal classic Resident Evil, which was released in 1996 on the original PlayStation, remastered in 2002 for the GameCube, which in turn was then updated in high definition for a 2014 release on current gen consoles. Take Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty!, last year’s PS4 remaster of the cult classic Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, which saw an updated game engine and so much polishing that, in many ways, it’s a vastly superior game to the 1998 original. There are, thankfully, more than a few titles that are genuine remasters.

That’s not to say it’s limited to the classics: GTA V, Saints Row IV and Sleeping Dogs, for instance, have all recently been “remastered” from the PS3/360 to run on the PS4 and Xbox One, letting their respective publishers wring every last cent from gamers on all four systems. Whether for nostalgia, profit, or both, developers are digging through their back catalogs to find titles worthy of a quick spit ‘n’ shine to give a new round of players - and those who fondly remember the original - a chance to experience an older game. It’s become very du jour of late to remaster older games.

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