Players

Squidge

Jay

The B

Russell

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Show Notes

We jumped directly into part two of our discussion with The B

here’s a link to part one, in case you missed it

by discussing how some of Acclaim’s properties seemed to keep going after the death of the company. As part of that discussion, we ended up listing a large number of Acclaim’s greatest hits, too:

  • Mortal Kombat
  • Alien 3 (on the Mega Drive/Genesis)
  • WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game
  • Mortal Kombat & Mortal Kombat 2
  • Turok

But what’s important about that, is that we noticed that Nightdive have finagled the rights to a lot of the Acclaim games from the mid to late 90s

coincidence?

But Jay really wanted to know where they got the original source code for Shadow Man from. Seriously, the content in the remaster has not just been upscaled, there are whole sections that were originally cut from the game, but put back in for the remaster.

it’s safe to say that Jay is a fan

And this brought to Jay’s mind the story of how the original source code for Prince of Persia for the Apple II was found on a series of 5.25 inch floppy discs, in someone’s garage. Jay also brought up that the original source code for Crash Bandicoot is also on GitHub, but it has since been taken down.

Then Squidge comes up with a new segment

What Should Nightdive Remaster Next?

And what an idea it was. A round-robin style discussion on which games Nightdive should take a whack at next. Squidge started us of with the (unfortunately difficult) The Operative: No One Lives Forever

or NOLF, as it’s sometimes known

Why might it be unfortunately difficult to remaster? Because no one really knows for sure who owns the rights to it - as is the case with a lot of video games from the 90s.

Squidge's Avatar Squidge:

So Agent Archer is a Disney princess, now?

The B then gets us all excited about a NOLF remaster by telling us that Nightdive Studios had filed trademarks for a number of different NOLF related terms. Monolith even hinted at something in a tweet back in 2018, too:

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Firefox users will need to click through. This is an issue with the official Twitter JavaScript library and the tracking that they use

But The B then destroys our hopes by telling us that the trademarks were filed in 2014, and that Nigthdive have done nothing with them since.

and the link above actually states that they have expired, too

Jay mentioned that he’s a member of the official Nightdive Studios discord server

and The B interrupted him to say:

TheB's Avatar TheB:

Get one of the developers at Nightdive on the podcast, man

We’ll say this: we haven’t ruled out contacting the folks at Nightdive. And if anyone from Nightdive are reading this: get in touch, we’d love to chat with you!

The reason Jay brought up the Discord server is because someone there had said:

What if Nightdive got hold of Nightmare Creatures

And everyone agreed that a remaster of Nightmare Creatures would be a wonderful thing.

And Jay’s second pick was Dino Crisis:

Jay's Avatar Jay:

Can you imagine? You take Dino Crisis, but build it in the RE Engine.

And whilst this isn’t a Nightdive thing, we’re convinced that this could be a thing. Even though Dino Crisis Sux is a thing on Twitter, we remained convinced that Capcom must by eyeing this up.

time to have Alex Aniel back on the show?

Is it a coincidence that (at the time of recording) the soundtracks for both of the Dino Crisis games

no, there aren’t any other DC games. Just like how there are only three Indiana Jones movies, and 4 (at a push) Star Wars movies

were uploaded to Steam? We think not!

And with the recent success of the Resident Evil franchise, and the 25th anniversary this year, it would be silly for Capcom not to do something with the Dino Crisis series. But The B then makes us all feel old:

TheB's Avatar TheB:

There are no children on Earth who were born before the PS2. Because the PS2 is 18 years old.

Yeah, just sit in that for a moment.

The B was unable to think of anything that he would want Nightdive to remaster; which set us off on a discussion about PC gaming in the 90s. With titles like:

  • Half-Life
  • DOOM
  • Command & Conquer

And the majority of the games from the childhoods of folks our age

well, the ages of Squidge, The B, and Jay

are being remade or revisited. Which is a great thing for us old fogies as we get to revisit them on more modern hardware and operating systems

let’s face it, it’s the OSs which cause the issues most of the time

and great for the younger generations of gamers as they get to see these titles with a more modern sheen.

And Squidge throws in some honourable mentions:

  • Unreal Tournament

Which B points out had a remake recently; however it came out at the same time as Fortnite. Talk about unfortunate timing.

  • Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force

There was some confusion as to whether there was a remaster of this already. But it turns out that there’s a CBS authorised remaster (of sorts) already out there. This, and the Streets of Rage 4 release proves that there is a desire for the older gamers to revisit these beloved, older titles. Another case in point is the (at the time or recording) newly announced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, which is a remake of the TMNT arcade game - one which The B would have mentioned, but it was already getting a remake.

And The B further proved the point by discussing New Pokémon Snap: a sequel to game for the N64 from 1999. That’s over 20 years since the last Snap title, and the Pokémon fans have lapped it up because the Pokémon games are a heck of a lot of wholesome fun. But did New Pokémon Snap come along because of “photo” modes in games now? Or did it come along because Nintendo wanted something which could sell as well as Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

let us know what you think

and the FujiFilm Printer for the Switch looks amazing! Seriously, how cute is this:

A photo of the official Fujifilm printer case which has a body stylised after the design of Pokémon character Pikachu
Seriously, this is so cute

we rounded off the episode with a discussion about just why all of these nostalgic products are coming out, and the fact that we don’t talk about Dungeon Keeper (2014).

Music

Links to the music used in the podcast can be found below. Definitely check them out, because they're amazing tracks by awesome musicians.

All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners. Please see the above list for copyright details pertaining to music used.

Games Covered

We mentioned 42 games in this podcast. In the following order, those games where: