HD remaster of the first Croc title will be released for “all the current consoles and PC". There’s no specific release date beyond “2024” at the moment.
Here’s an article with additional info and screen shots. Main points:
- HD graphics keeping the original art style
- updated controls
- digital museum containing development assets, design documents, concept art and more
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I played the original countless times as a kid! It was a great platformer hindered by the tank controls, which unfortunately led me to prefer Spyro. If there ever was a game in need of a remaster (as opposed to a remake), it’s this one. Update the controls, and the game itself is still a lot of fun.
I’ve seen a lot of comments about the controls and I don’t really get it. I’ve played through both games about two years ago, I think, and didn’t have any problems with either of them. Maybe I’m just used to the jank due to playing a lot of older games but I remember both titles playing fine.
I’m curious how they’ll modernize the controls. The little gameplay present in this teaser looks pretty close to the original and I don’t think they talked about this in detail. Whatever they’ll do I just hope it’ll allow people to play and enjoy this little gem. It deserves it.
Tank controls have been pretty universally despised for many years now. Basically since we got analogue sticks, tank controls never really made sense.
Stuff like the Grim Fandango and RE1 remasters were offering alternate non-tank controls back in 2015 and there’s probably earlier examples too
Ah, I thought people had some specific issues besides the game having tank controls. Fair enough.
I’m not going to begrudge someone for not liking a control scheme (unless their only reason is not wanting to learn how to play differently) but I do think some people dislike it without even giving it a fair shake. The thing is, these games were designed with this control scheme in mind and switching to a modern one can be detrimental to the experience (compare playing REmake with and without tank controls, the latter makes navigation and avoiding enemies much easier).
Oh well, everyone has their own dislikes.
Edit: I read a bit more and apparently the game always had an option to play with some kind of “modern” controls when using a controller with sticks? I’m guessing they’ll probably polish those.
I started playing during the PS1 era when tank controls were the norm. I have no qualms with tank controls in other kind of games. To use your example, I genuinely think that REmake is a lot better with tank controls; modern controls conflict with fixed camera angles, because you may turn a corner and suddenly left becomes right, and the control scheme is clearly not designed with that in mind.
But in a platform game with very precise platforming sequences, tank controls and unresponsive camera were horrible. It made playing it frustrating to the point that, despite playing it a lot, I never actually finished the game, because I would always give up somewhere through the game. The farthest I went into Croc 2 was the fourth world (still don’t know how many there are), and iirc third world in Croc 1. As opposed to Spyro and Crash which I replayed dozens of times from beginning to end.
I won’t say that my experience is universal and I can definitely see people enjoying the control scheme, but I gave it a lot more than a fair shake and it never convinced me. I always had the impression that the game was fighting me and genuinely wanted me to fail.
Can’t say I share your experience with either game but I can understand it doesn’t work for everyone. Personally, I can’t really imaging playing this, Kao the Kangaroo or old Tomb Raider titles without tank controls for example.
To be clear, your comment is exactly what I meant - you tried and don’t like it, that’s absolutely fine. There’s plenty of games I couldn’t get into due to controls or mechanics so I feel you. On the other hand, I met people who refuse to even try to engage with certain mechanics and that’s what I’m not a fan of. I’m all for remakes/remasters/rereleases updating things to let more people enjoy the old thing and hope this will be the case with Croc. And hey, even if they change something in a way I don’t like, there’s always* the classic version.
* Though not always an official way to get it.
I like the idea of the digital museum. Would be nice if remakes of games would include stuff like that about the original. If the remake isnt faithful to the original (faithful like the Resident Evil remake from 2002 was faithful, or something like Metroid Prime Remastered but an actual remake), then at the very least remakes should include a copy of the original game playable on the same device, either as a port or via emulation.
at the very least remakes should include a copy of the original game playable on the same device, either as a port or via emulation.
I’d love to see developers and publishers start to do this. Though I am interested in Tomb Raider and how they handle the graphic toggling, which seems like a half-way point to what you’re describing.
As much as I like this idea I don’t think many publishers would look at it and said anything other than “yeah, not worth the money”. We probably have a higher chance for the classic versions landing on GoG than being added as a freebie to a remake - they want you to play the new shiny thing, not the old one after all (that and no need to provide support to the old version).
Yes, but emulation is a very easy work around. There are even some open source emulators that allow commercial use without credit required and only require source code to stay open and post any changes made to the source code online. For most games, the default emulator will run like 90% of games perfectly fine and if proprietary code for porting to consoles is an issue, a compatibility layer can be written that isn’t open source can work around that.
Whats I am saying is, its such a low effort thing to do that shows the company honors and values their legacy content.
I totally agree. I just don’t have much expectations towards big publishers anymore, I guess. Not many approach the topic of remakes/remasters from the point of view of celebrating their history unfortunately. Heck, we had multiple instances of publishers removing the old versions from sale just to push people to the new one.
Low effort or not, companies (and many players to be honest) rarely care about their legacy.
I remember this well from my childhood, so it was nice to see that trailer. I love how they seem to have barely changed anything except higher res textures and models. I’ll be looking at getting this when its out.
LOL 1 and 2 is abandonware and you can play for free. Runs fine on modern PCs. I have finished it last year.
