REMAKES FEATURE - February 2000
| Some people just don’t get it, do they? In recent
years, there’s been a growing trend of re-animating the rotted zombie corpses of
long-gone videogames from the dawn of videogame time, presumably in an attempt to appeal
to the nostalgia market. But the blundering fools responsible just keep on missing the
whole point of nostalgia, and insist on completely re-writing the "updated"
versions until they bear no resemblance of any kind to the original game whose name they
proudly carry. Doh! What we *really* want, of course, is perfect little bonsai versions of the original games - exact copies that we can carry around in our trousers, so that girls will say "Is that a complete 1980s arcade in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?" (Or if you’re a girl 80s arcade nostalgic, then so that – oh, who are we trying to kid?) Anyway, the kind of games we’re talking about are games like the legendary, no-introduction-required Pac-Man (20 years young this year), or the almost-as-legendary 1986 jungle shoot-‘em-up Ikari Warriors, both of which – by astonishing coincidence – are available for the Neo Geo Pocket Colour. The flawless NGPC conversion of Pac-Man has been wowing Neo owners since the machine’s launch, and a just-as-perfect version of Ikari Warriors (though it’s been renamed Ikari Returns, just to confuse the bejesus out of everyone) will be showing up any second now, you mark our words. Rush out and buy it, and if it’s not the best game you play this year, we faithfully promise to give you twice your money back.* But whatever the future holds for old arcade games, one thing is for sure. So that’s alright then. * No we don’t. |
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