Two Immortal Games Revived (And Released Across Platforms) In The New Millennium

In this day and age, new games are released perhaps every minute of every day. Their topics and formats are incredibly diverse, ranging from role-playing titles and shooters to puzzles, table games like blackjack, and new takes on classic formats, having everything covered. But there are some games that stood the test of time, that have proven to be valuable enough to be played even decades after their first emergence and decline. Many of these were reworked to appeal to modern-day audiences while keeping their original atmosphere (and looks) and are now playable on a variety of platforms.

One of the most eloquent examples is the “Monkey Island” series, launched in 1990 by Lucasfilm Games. In it, players get to join Guybrush Threepwood on his quest to become a pirate. It wasn’t the best-looking game of all time but it compensated with its humor and gameplay. The original game was released on floppy disk in 1990 and on CD-ROM two years later, covering every popular platform at the time, from MS-DOS to Amiga. A year later, it spawned a sequel along with two more in the coming years, and seemingly forgotten for almost a decade. In 2009, though, it received the “Special Edition” treatment, being released on the iPhone, Windows, and Xbox 360, followed by a PlayStation 3, Mac OS X, and iPad version a year later. Today, the series is all but dead (thanks to the untimely demise of Telltale Games) but its legacy lives on.

Although it wasn’t a major commercial success, System Shock 2 was one of the best games of its time. Released in the summer of 1999, it reaped all the accolades available at the time, ranging from several “Game of the Year” awards, almost all the stars it could get from various gaming publications and was credited with shaping the future of the horror FPS genre. Alas, it only sold less than 60,000 copies, so the developer ended support for it in 2000 when the developer Looking Glass Studios went down. Ultimately, Night Dive Studios secured the rights to the game and re-released it through GOG.com in 2013, including a Mac OS X and Linux release of the title. Today, the company is working on both a remake of the first System Shock game, set to be released in 2020, and a sequel to System Shock 2 with a release date yet to be announced. It is very likely that both titles will be launched on as many platforms as possible, covering everything from gaming consoles to Mac OS X, perhaps even iOS and Android.