PS KIND,

PS REWIND,

Remasters, remakes, reboots, and reimaginings: how digging up PlayStation’s past is key to defining its future

They say there’s no school like the old school. And who is ‘the old school’, exactly? Well, just about every PlayStation icon since the birth of Japan’s great grey console giant back in 1994. We’ve seen old friend after old friend return lately, updated for PS4 and keen to remind us of just how excellent they were – and still are. And while there’s certainly been no shortage of new and modern classics lately (The Last Guardian, Horizon Zero Dawn, Persona 5, and Nioh, to name just a few), there’s nothing quite like the nostalgia hit of getting our DualShocks around a loved, celebrated favourite once again. We’ve been spoilt for choice with straight-up, undiluted, glossy, new-lick-o’-graphical-paint remasters and remakes of titles like The Last Of Us, the BioShock trilogy, Resident Evil, Grim Fandango, Borderlands, and Gravity Rush. Same great game, same Ellie-face and bathyspheres – but all coated in a lovely new layer of HD gorgeousness.

But there have also been some impressive reboots of PlayStation faves that have dragged heritage titles kicking and screaming into the 21st century. 2013’s Tomb Raider, for example, saw Lara Croft’s origins retold in a survival context with the series-first addition of multiplayer. It was only last year that we welcomed back a certain fuzzy Galactic Ranger and his metallic mate in Insomniac’s excellent Ratchet & Clank overhaul, complete with new characters, original weapons, and interstellar locales. And let’s not forget the redesigned demons and unbeatable gunplay of new-look Doom (lest it rip apart our craniums like wet bread).

The naysayers might moan that the reworkings and rereleases are a smidge relentless, but to hardcore PlayStation fans who grew up bouncing across Wumpa Island, battling against Shinra, and laying down the funky flow, the upcoming slew of remasters and reboots is an opportunity to reconnect with good pals. (Crash Bandicoot, you old dog!… Er, marsupial. How’ve you been? Come in, come in. Cloud Strife! Good to see you. Could you pop the Buster Sword in the cloakroom, please, before you have someone’s eye out? PaRappa… the toilet’s on the left.)

And devs genuinely care about these games. For Sony executive producer George Weising, helping to remaster tilt-a-world PSP platformer LocoRoco has been a real labour of love. “The secret with this stuff is we’re not just trying to rehash anything,” he stresses. “This is purely love. These games are part of my DNA, and they’re part of our company. And so, we just think they shouldn’t disappear. I think we’re building Noah’s Ark and putting all the beautiful animals onto the boat before it leaves.”

More than that, remasters and reboots aren’t just about rediscovery, they also present the opportunity for someone to play PlayStation’s best titles for the very first time, too. If you never managed to pick up a game on one of the older PlayStation platforms, its convenient PS4 outing might just tempt you – or maybe even one day, your little ones – to try out a piece of gaming history. Weising certainly hopes so.

“For me, it’s not just that I’m bringing it out so we can sell a certain number of copies,” he explains. “For me, we’re bringing it out so that it’s available forever. And it’ll be future-proofed, so it’ll always be part of the conversation, and part of the DNA. So my kids’ kids can play it.

“These may be small, little games from the past or whatever, but there’s a place for this kind of stuff. We want it to be part of the conversation. We want it to live.”

So pop on your rose-tinted specs, lounge in your comfiest chair and join us on a whistle-stop tour of the very best remasters, remakes and reboots set to grace your PS4 (as well as a few crazy franchise reimaginings that probably aren’t…). We’ve covered Crash’s return in our huge hands-on feature back on p50, but we’ve got more WipEout, Final Fantasy, God Of War and Patapon than you can shake a thumbstick at – alongside our most anticipated remasters and your own ‘readers’ reboot’ wishlist. The ‘old school’ is in session.

“REMASTERS ARE AN OPPORTUNITY TO RECONNECT WITH GOOD PALS.”