Home Gaming Tim Schafer has a vision for Day Of The Tentacle Remastered

Tim Schafer has a vision for Day Of The Tentacle Remastered

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Day of the tentacle (2)

Remasters are the new HD collections of video games. Just more…remastery. The Last Of Us, Tomb Raider and Sleeping Dogs all got a Remaster this year. But those were games built with assets that could be upgraded. Games that were barely a year or two old. Next year however, we’re getting a remaster of a games that is over twenty years old. But don’t expect Day Of The Tentacle to be too remastered in the end.

“We just knew that [Day of the Tentacle] was a game that we wanted to see again and have new people see it who hadn’t seen it before,” Double Fine founder Tim Schafer said in a Polygon interview. “We had a lot of fun with [Grim Fandango Remastered] but when we first started, I thought ‘No one’s going to care about old games.’ But they had such a passionate response to it.

It’s just really nice to revisit them and to remember those games and what was good about them and learn from them again. As you work on these games, you remember little things… you were a different person when you made those games. It’s interesting to revisit that and revisit an old version of yourself too.

Day of the tentacle (1)

Right now, it’s still early days for Day Of The Tentacle Remastered, with Double Fine busy working on how to keep the 2D visuals true to the Chuck Jones source. “We’ll add a couple pixels here and there,” Schafer explained. “We’re not going to go 3D.” According to Schafer, getting the rights to remake Day Of The Tentacle was nothing short of a “miracle”, as the ownership of LucasArts games is split between several companies. “There were just some people at Disney, Sony and Lucasfilm that care about these games,” Schafer said.

They’re old enough that some of these people who are executives played them when they were kids. I’ve been really impressed with the fact that these kind of deals have come together because there’s so many reasons for this deal not to happen. There’s so many parties involved and so many people who could’ve said no, that it really took a passionate drive by people in the right places to escort it through the process.

That’s two LucasArts games getting remastered then, as Day Of The Tentacle will be joined by an HDier Grim Fandango as well. Could another classic, Full Throttle be far behind? Schafer would happily revisit that game, and more. “I feel strongly about all those games,” Schafer said.

I care about them and I want to take care of them. I want to preserve them. A lot of them, the fans have had to preserve them. Grim Fandango, for years was pretty much preserved by fans, who wrote emulators. It’s like my old car, I want to keep it running. You can’t just let it sit in the garage. I would love to revisit them all just to give them some love. Keep them happy and healthy. Grim was not healthy and happy – it was pretty much lost to the world. You could only pirate it or buy it on eBay.

Tentacle

As for development time, Day Of The Tentacle won’t spend forever being fiddled around with. ”

It’s more of a question of finding a team to enhance it and then talking about what the scope is and what special features we’ll have,” Schafer said. “Like with Grim we have that commentary. I was involved with that, but that game is being handled by crack remasterers. I had my list of a couple things I wanted to see specifically improved. But mostly we have these genius engineers go in and try to figure out how to make these old assets dance and sing again.

“There’re smarter people than me working on it.”

I’m kinda looking forward to it. I actually owned the original game once. Or a box of many, many 1.44 stiffy disks. What makes this even weirder, is that this was in 2007. Yes, I’m slow with updating my technology.

Last Updated: December 9, 2014

5 Comments

  1. Nee genugtig I’m still too knorrig about the previous article to post a meaningful comment here

    Reply

  2. Deano

    December 9, 2014 at 14:47

    One of my favorite games of all time!
    I wonder if they will go to the future first to see if its a success and then back into the past to change things….

    Reply

  3. Alien Emperor Trevor

    December 9, 2014 at 15:05

    The world needs more funny games. They’re a nice change of pace.

    Reply

  4. HairyEwok

    December 9, 2014 at 15:07

    Seeing the tentacle I keep imagining it yelling in a plankton voice from spongebob THE WORLD!

    Reply

  5. WitWolfy

    December 9, 2014 at 15:17

    If it looks anything like they curse of Monkey island I can die happy.

    Reply

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