I’m not quite sure precisely what it is about the remake of Knightmare that makes me cringe so horribly. But I know it lies somewhere in the Bermunda Triangle between the awkward pauses of its adult competitor-adventurers, who are playing a game for children; the terrible CGI, hoary performances and scripts of its actor-presenters; and the entire crusty, bizarre make-believe of Knightmare’s setup.
Maybe I fear for what a new generation of viewers might think of the crap we used to watch – and love – when we were kids. Maybe I’m ashamed of the knee-jerk enthusiasm so many displayed on the news that Knightmare was coming back. Maybe I’m angry that money has been pissed away on something so useless and obviously destined to fail, and not been invested in proper videogame-based programming. Quite how TV production companies have failed to notice the incredible popularity of YouTubers and streamers is beyond me, but then, maybe they’ve given up the fight to appeal to the new generation of youth and will continue to try to entertain me, along with all the other restlessly nostalgic 30-something luddites.
It’s probably all of those things. But here’s the real worry: the 90s revivalism of which Knightmare is part is everywhere today. There’s The Bitmap Brothers’ evidently meticulous upcoming remake of The Chaos Engine. There’s Wayforward’s evidently meticulous upcoming remake of DuckTales.
There’s the rising specter of The Pickford Brothers’ Plok, too, which has just re-emerged as a webcomic that surely means it’s about to return full-formed as a brand old game. I admit I’d entirely forgotten the mid-90s SNES original. Team 17 released Superfrog HD on PSN yesterday, another remake which seems to have proven that fondly remembered platformers rarely stand up in modern hands. The less said about Dizzy the better (and not just because it was an 80s game).
The number of great British developers embroiled in all this is, frankly, depressing. We’re a nation that has a propensity to look back too much, but it’s a tragedy that these developers, whose design and art talent engrossed and inspired a generation of players, want to double down on their old reputations, even as PS4 and Xbox One begin to open a new chapter in videogame history. You might see these little games as harmlessly colorful distractions, the world marginally better for their reappearances, but they still take much time and money to convert, upgrade, publish and market, resources that aren’t going into developing new properties and ideas.
And yet, I suppose you also can’t blame these developers for feeling frustration with coming up with new games and trying to raise the interest of a public that can be incredibly hard to excite with anything less than familiar. You can feel for The Pickford Brothers, for instance, whose last game was the characterful and polished (though somewhat enigmatic) puzzler Magnetic Billiards, which was brimming with ideas but took four years to develop and hardly set the App Store buzzing.
But still, falling back to the old so faithfully seems the wrong path, one that only leads to a slowly deflating market of ageing gamers who seem destined, as we have with Knightmare, to end up reeling from the dissonance between their fond memories and their HD remakes.
There is, however, a far better path, which manages to cash in on nostalgia while actually doing something constructive with it. 5 Players Studios’ Satellite Reign takes the classic Syndicate template, so callously left to rot by EA, and looks set to update it with modern visual standards and a more dynamic simulated city. Its Kickstarter campaign was successfully funded last week, comfortably exceeding its £350,000 target by over £100,000, proving a general market for a game that genuinely feels worth pushing back into the limelight, just as XCOM: Enemy Unknown did last year.
Look also to Shadowrun Returns, another Kickstarter alumni, which on the surface hasn’t done an awful lot to update the SNES original in its essential form, but allows the simple, modular nature of its environments and text-based dialogue and exposition to provide players with the chance to make their own scenarios. And to Star Citizen, a spiritual successor to Wing Commander: Privateer which should be set in a far more organic and player-driven open universe.
But perhaps the most inspiring current example of 90s revivalism is Gone Home, The Fullbright Company’s subtle and atmospheric exploration game set in the period. OK, that’s maybe a cheap joke, but it’s at least a game with its design eye on the future and something to say about the age we now seem so set on idealizing. Knightmare only makes it look ridiculous.
