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Nightdive Studios, SNEG, Ziggurat, Piko Interactive and others rereleasing classic games

Semiurge

Cipher
Joined
Apr 11, 2020
Messages
6,074
Location
Asp Hole
Is that "Blood: Fresh Supply" any good? Were the official addons also included in the remaster?
I believe the add-ons come with the remaster. From what I've read and seen, most of the obvious issues the remaster had are fixed, so its perfectly playable if you're just going to be playing the game and the addons, with no fan maps. The physics are different than what they were originally, so things like dynamite throwing are different, but I don't believe its different enough to hurt the game and if you haven't played it in years you won't notice.

Is it finally possible to shake off those damn hands? I remember it has always been broken, even when Blood was played in the real DOS enviroment and with antique hardware.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Pixel Games goes to Gremlin's 3D era.



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Looks like both are PSX roms.
 

Ghulgothas

Arcane
Joined
Feb 22, 2020
Messages
1,598
Location
So Below
what happened to System Shock 2 R?
They're stubbornly insisting on only releasing it around the same time as the SS1 Remake. Currently, they're betting on March 2023.

I think it's more or less done, too. The only thing I remember them waiting on was for their guy in the SS2 mod community to finish a new HD model pack.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
And Philips Videopac G7000 games.



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And more Actua sports games.



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Bitwave Games, Swedish retro game publisher, will rerelease old arcade games from Toaplan, starting with Out Zone and Zero Wing. This company and Tatsujin, the Japanese company holding the IPs, were acquired by Embracer recently. (Now Embracer owns the meme "All your base are belong to us", get it?)

Second wave.



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Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Some Piko retro releases on GOG: https://af.gog.com/en/news/new_classics_from_piko_interactive?as=1649904300

NEW CLASSICS FROM PIKO INTERACTIVE!


You are not ready for this one – a whole package of brand new, brand retro classics from Piko Interactive is now out on GOG, with all titles releasing with a -15% launch discount! Hurry up; the offer ends on May 15th, 1 PM UTC!


Our great dose of new classics includes:

TigerShark

Perfect Weapon

Bugriders: The Race of Kings

Power Punch II

The Gadget Twins

8 Eyes


Let’s take a look at some of them, shall we?


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TigerShark



This absolute retro gem, first released in 1997, takes you into the far future of the year 2060 with a naval combat gameplay, in which you get to operate the titular Tigershark – a futuristic hydrofoil powered submarine. With the skies full of enemy birds, incredible speed and hunger for destruction, you’ll get to experience two simultaneous 3D worlds of smooth side scrolling, interactive real-time environments and dynamic lighting.


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Power Punch II

It’s a boxing game first released in 1992, taking place in the future (from the ‘92 perspective!) year of 2006. You take up the role of Mark “Tough Guy” Tyler, who has just defended his heavyweight title for the 9th consecutive time. Defeating all the best boxers on Earth though, it’s now time to conquer the universe – as the Intergalactic Boxing Federation, IGBF, has invited you to go head-to-head with twelve of their greatest fighters. Are you ready for the challenge?


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8 Eyes

This game is an absolute treasure – first release dating for 1988. It’s a 2D action platformer game set in the post-apocalyptic future, with the main quest of obtaining the titular 8 Eyes – strange and powerful jewels that were formed in the stellar centers of eight thermonuclear blasts. Taking up the role of Orin the Falconer, the bravest and mightiest of the King’s Guardsmen, you’ll have to fight for your life to snatch the jewels and return them to the Altar of Peace. If you manage, the Earth will pass into another millennium of peace and plenty, but if not… Better not to find out.


Jump into the retro adventure, now on GOG!
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Turns out SNEG got the rights to some non-D&D SSI games as well (the ones that weren't picked up by Forthright Entertainment):



https://af.gog.com/en/news/coming_soon_4_classic_titles_from_sneg?as=1649904300

COMING SOON: 4 CLASSIC TITLES FROM SNEG


Classics lovers rejoice – a new batch of awesome timeless titles from SNEG are coming soon to GOG: Veil of Darkness, Star General, The Summoning, Dark Legions. Here’s what you can expect:


Veil of Darkness


1993’s horror-action-adventure game with isometric point of view. Prepare for an intriguing horror atmosphere, well-designed puzzles and faction action as you move around in dark valley and fight monsters like werewolves, vampires and skeletons. Regarded as one of the spiritual ancestors of popular action RPGs like Diablo, Veil of Darkness is an excellent icon of the gaming past.


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Star General

A turn-based strategy where you take control of The Fleet (humans), the Khalians, or five other races as you battle for control of the local cluster with your fleet and conquer enemy planets with your group troops. Build research centers to obtain better ships, use your racial special unit to gain advantage on the ground or in space.


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The Summoning

A single-character fantasy role-playing adventure, set inside a huge labyrinth with 40 different levels and hordes of mean monsters. Use steel, magic and wit to fight, cast and puzzle your way through the evil that lies within. Struggle to survive and grow strong enough to fight and defeat Shadow Weaver, the villain responsible for the evil spreading across the land.


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Dark Legions

An action strategy game in which you will pitch your forces against that of an enemy in a game board. When two pieces collide, they will be transferred to another board on which they will fight for survival. In the beginning of the game you will buy your forces with a predefined number of credits, and be able to purchase any of the 16 characters along with various kinds of traps and even rings to upgrade your creatures.


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There’s a certain magic only to be found in classics and you will for sure find it in these SNEG titles – wishlist them now so you won’t miss their release or any special offer.
 

Fargus

Arcane
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
2,349
Location
Moscow
That actually got me all excited. I love the second game and think its underrated and always wanted to play the first.
 

Fargus

Arcane
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
2,349
Location
Moscow
That actually got me all excited. I love the second game and think its underrated and always wanted to play the first.

The second is the shit one. Darkness 1 is the great one.

I cant compare since i never got the chance to play the first one, because i couldnt be arsed to play fps on a console even when i had one. But i enjoyed the second game. The action was good, story too and gritty atmosphere. Could have been longer though and without unnecessary cliffhanger for ending.
 

ferratilis

Magister
Joined
Oct 23, 2019
Messages
2,224
I tried The Darkness 1 on Xbox, but couldn't stomach the controls. However, in what little I played, Starbreeze's DNA was evident, in atmosphere, animations, gameplay, physics etc. It's a shame that such a game is trapped on that shitty platform, a remaster would be great. The second game is a fun shooter, don't get me wrong, but the first one has a special charm.
 

Fargus

Arcane
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
2,349
Location
Moscow
There are lots of interesting shooters undeservingly rotting on consoles and largely forgotten when they can be ported and remastered a bit for pc where people actually appreciate fps games. Like Killzone series or Darkwatch. Etc.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ni...ing-for-dark-forces-and-remaking-system-shock

Nightdive Studios on a big 2023: acquired by Atari, begging for Dark Forces, and remaking System Shock​

"We knew whatever we wanted to do next was going to be even better"

"I was looking up our Wikipedia page to see what happened this year," says Nightdive Studios' CEO Stephen Kick as we sit down to chat. That might seem like an odd thing to say about your own company's activities. But when you look at what Nightdive have done in the last twelve months, it's less surprising. In March, Nightdive announced they were being acquired by Atari in a deal worth $10 million. In May, they released their long-anticipated remake of System Shock, in development for eight years. July brought Rise Of The Triad: Ludicrous Edition, while August saw the release of Quake 2 Remastered, and a remaster of Turok 3 arrived at the end of November. Nightdive are currently working on an overhaul of Star Wars: Dark Forces, due out in 2024.

In short, it's been a busy year for the remastering maestros. In the wider context of 2023, which has been simultaneously a banner games and a deeply worrying year for the people making them, I wanted to know how Nightdive view the last twelve months, and what the audience response to these projects means for the studio's future.

That latter point is perhaps most relevant to System Shock, which is both Nightdive's most ambitious project so far, and the most divergent from the company's other work. It's designed by a different team from the KEX Engine remasters, and uses different technology, namely Unreal Engine 4. Of everything Nightdive released this year, System Shock's success or failure seemed to have the biggest implications for the studio's future. With that in mind, what was its reception like?

"It was a complete surprise," Kick says. "We had gotten some mock review scores from a couple of different sources, and we were kind of aiming around the seven to low eights… just based off the fact that we were creating a remake of an old game that was trying to stay as faithful to the source material as possible." But the reception to System Shock's faithfulness ended up being much more positive. "What we found upon receiving our actual review scores is those elements were greatly appreciated by the critics and by the fans alike. And it was almost like a return to form, like 'oh yeah, this is what games used to be like, and this is why we love them so much. Why aren't they like this anymore?'"

System Shock wasn't just well received by fans and newcomers either, it was also celebrated by the game's original creators. "One of the things that really amazed me was getting very positive feedback from Paul Neurath and from Warren Spector," says Larry Kuperman, Nightdive's business director. "We had shown them builds, but you never know how people are going to feel until it's truly final. And the praise from them, some of which has been delivered publicly [and] some privately. It just really blew me away."

Although the general reaction was very positive, there were a few elements of the remake that didn't go down so well. Foremost among these was the game's final encounter, which diverges heavily in mechanics to the rest of the game, stripping players of the agency they'd enjoyed up to that point. Nightdive have taken those criticisms on board, applying them to a major update intended to launch on PC alongside the game's console release. "The ending has been completely reworked based on feedback from the fans." Kick says.

A screenshot of the System Shock remake, showing a metal corridor bathed in red light and in the foreground two zombie-like enemies rushing toward the player.The hacker wields a big hammer and goes toe to toe with a large robot in the System Shock remake.The well-received System Shock Remake | Image credit: Nightdive Studios

"We've had a sufficient amount of time to go back and fix bugs and improve the user experience, look at all the feedback and apply that to the big update that's coming." As for when that update will land, that depends on the console release, which Nightdive says is down to the remake's publisher, Prime Matter. "We're not holding it back. We're working with our publisher, still going through the cert process," Kuperman says. "That release is not 100% under our control."

Overall, though, in terms of pleasing fans and honouring the game's legacy, System Shock was an undeniable success. But it was a long, hard road getting to that point, especially compared to Nightdive's bread-and-butter business in the remastering space. Given the stress and the risks involved, is Nightdive likely to do something like this again? Kick confirms that, not only is he interested in pursuing similar projects, it's already happening. "The Shock team has been hard at work on the next thing," he says. "We decided we had spent so much time over the years building that team and had gelled so well, that we knew whatever we wanted to do next was going to be even better than System Shock remake. And so they're in the process of working on that now." Kick doesn’t reveal what that project might be, but it wouldn't be surprising if it related to the studio's other major news story of the year.

Nightdive's acquisition by Atari came as a big surprise, and to anyone with a passing knowledge of Atari's business in recent years, the news wasn't exactly comforting. The last decade of Atari's history has been a miserable tale of sell-offs, bankruptcy and greenlighting terrible entries in some of its most illustrious franchises, like Asteroids, Alone In The Dark, and Rollercoaster Tycoon.

All of this has severely damaged Atari's brand. But it wasn't the brand that attracted Nightdive to Atari, it was the company's new CEO, Wade Rosen. "We had a historical relationship with Wade Rosen that predated his becoming CEO of Atari," Kuperman explains. Like Nightdive, Rosen has an expressed passion for retro games, and is keen to change Atari's modern perception, demonstrated through project like the well-received Atari 50. "It just seemed natural for us to join forces there," Kuperman adds.

Battling a Flesh Eater in Turok 3: Shadow Of Oblivion remasteredA screen from Nightdive's Turok 3 remaster | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Nightdive Studios

The acquisition has meant some changes in how Nightdive operate, but this mostly revolves around the nuts and bolts of running a business. "Now we have legal in-house. We have finance teams. Some of the stuff that kept us from doing more creative things have been taken off our plates," Kuperman says. In terms of Nightdive's modus operandi, he stresses that Atari's message to use at acquisition was keep on doing what you have been doing, only bigger and with more support."

None of this stopped fans and followers of Nightdive from fretting about the company's future anyway. But six months on, does Nightdive reckon these concerns have been allayed? Kuperman relates a story of one follower doomposting at Nightdive on social media. "[They] posted that how tragic it was that they would never see great games [remastered] like Quake 2 and Turok 3. It took all my forbearance not to respond back and say 'Wanna bet?'"

Where the first half of Nightdive's year was dominated by these two major events, the second half has seen the studio on more familiar footing. July saw Nightdive work with FPS publishing icon Apogee, and the progenitors of the retro-shooter revival New Blood Entertainment, on Rise Of The Triad: Ludicrous Edition. "That was a lot of fun. Everybody needs to play a game that's just silly every once in a while," Kuperman says. "It really does capture the zeitgeist of its time."

Following Nightdive's work with Bethesda on remasters of Doom 64 and Quake, August saw the release of Quake 2 Remastered, featuring a technical overhaul by Nightdive and a new campaign developed by MachineGames. But Quake 2 Remastered isn't purely business as usual. "There was two really important behind Quake 2 which has influenced Nightdive going forward," Kick says. One of these is the addition of the Vault. "It's supplemental material from the history of id Software and the Quake franchise, basically anything we could find…so that there was some contextual materials for people to look at and enjoy."

In a firefight with the Strogg in Quake 2's remasterShooting a big enemy Strogg in the Quake 2 remasterThe Quake 2 remaster | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/id Software/Bethesda Softworks/Nightdive Studios/

The other was a technique Nightdive experimented with in the Quake remaster, namely editing the game's 3D models to make them smoother and more sharply defined. "If you had never played the game before, you wouldn't notice anything. But if you had, you could recognise that the silhouettes are a little bit more defined, and there's a little higher texel density in the textures that really make them pop. And it was almost like playing it for the first time again. So we pushed that a lot further with Quake 2."

Nightdive adopted this approach with their remaster of Turok 3, for which - alongside the addition of things like widescreen and HD support - Nightdive's artists redrew the game's textures from scratch. "This is something I've always wanted to do, aside from just making the game playable and including all the features that make it enjoyable," Kick says. "Now we've truly hit that next step in our evolution as a company where we can make the game look good too."

The strength of Nightdive's year is demonstrated by the fact their next project is a remaster of Star War: Dark Forces. Like System Shock 2, Dark Forces is one of those clarifying games of Kick's childhood "I remember being a kid and going into computer city with my family…trying to sneak a copy of Doom shareware into the shopping cart and getting as far as the checkout conveyor before my mom saw it." Kick says. "Instead they're like, well, there's a Star Wars game over there. How about that?"

Dark Forces might not seem that different from other projects Nightdive has done, but the crucial element to consider is who owns Star Wars now, and what it took to get permission to remaster this LucasArts classic. "It was years of begging on our part," Kuperman says. Kick doesn't believe Disney ever "doubted our abilities", but that "it took a while for our gravitas to reach that level where I think they truly felt comfortable engaging with us."

An art asset for the upcoming Star Wars: Dark Forces remaster showing Darth Vader menacing a soldierAn art asset from the upcoming Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster | Image credit: Nightdive Studios

The Dark Forces Remaster is due out early next year. But it's far from the only project Nightdive are working on for 2024: Kuperman says they have five games slated for next year. Nightdive won't reveal what those projects are, but Kuperman says that "if fans look at what we've done so far, and accept the reason for our working relationship with Atari is to do more of the same, they'll be able to deduce, or at least speculate, on what some of those projects might be."

Nightdive's prospects for the future look bright, which is a relief to hear in a year that has been beset by so much grim news of losses, layoffs, and studio shutdowns. Kuperman puts Nightdive's own successes down to not over-scoping, not pursuing growth too fast and too hard. "We ran our company lean and mean" Kuperman says. "The projects that we did were all cash positive for us." But that hasn't made it easier to witness the human cost of the post-pandemic slowdown, to see so many peers used and then cast aside by larger studios and publishers. "It really hurts me when I see the number of people that are being laid off in what has been a banner year for the game industry," he says.

"For a lot of the big companies, they can lay people off, and they'll be able to hire people back, either new people are lower wages or the same people at lower wages… if games are art, then the people that make them are artists. And we deserve to be treated better than that."
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
12,859
Then the terminator music is appropriate.
 

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