DISPATCHES APRIL
Dialogue
Send your views, using ‘Dialogue’ as the subject line, to edge@futurenet.com. Our letter of the month wins an exclusive Edge T-shirt. original visuals), and one that can really bump an old game back up to relevancy.
Rinse and repeat
I’ve recently been torn in a two-way decision for my next purchase. The choice: Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection or the Dead Space remake. On the surface, these two titles have little in common, but both approach the concept of nostalgia, albeit in two very different ways.
Whilst Atari 50 presents older games as they were, with context, interviews and a real desire to give a feel for the era in which they were released, Dead Space follows that intriguing idea of updating the game so it feels “as you remember it”. This is a trick that Halo employed with the remakes of the first two entries (although they did, of course, offer the shock value of switching to the
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That’s not to say Atari’s method is without merit – it is like the Criterion Collection of games, that presents the games, blemishes and all, but treats the creation and development of the titles with the same reverence as the game itself.
Why am I thinking about all of this? My absolute disappointment in revisiting GoldenEye on Nintendo Switch Online. It really has exposed some of the laziness with Nintendo’s ROM dumping, for games that deserve so much more. I would love to have some making-of documentaries, prototypes, and sketches for titles such as Pilotwings 64, and I would also love to see that game cleaned up, perhaps with closer-tophotorealistic (or even Mario Odyssey-style) visuals. In an age when the remake can be as big as any triple-A title, it seems that Nintendo’s infamous secrecy denies us a true chance to appreciate its legacy.