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by giblet 3743 days ago
Also, Grim Fandango http://www.grimremastered.com/ and Full Throttle "Coming Soon" http://www.doublefine.com/games
4 comments

Grim Fandango is deservedly loved, but Full Throttle has a special place in my heart.

First, because it was one of the first "talkie" adventure games I legally owned -- I think it came as a demo game with the Soundblaster card? -- and also because of the cartoon art style and post-apocalyptic biker gangs theme. And the voice-overs. I really, really would love to see a sequel done in glorious 2D. 3D would ruin it for me; the style was everything in this game.

Ah yes, The Gone Jackals. After finishing Full Throttle and being so smitten by that tune I resolved to find a copy of their album 'Bone to Pick'. As a 12 year old kid it took me some time to figure out where to buy it but definitely worth the time and pocket money spent!

An underrated album and still very much worth a listen.

I utterly adored Full Throttle. As a kid, it was the first adventure game I was able to complete without a guide.
Grim Fandango is 75% off on Steam right now too. http://store.steampowered.com/app/316790/
Grim Fandango Remastered is in the current mobile bundle too.
TBH Grim Fandango Remastered does not differ much from the original one. Often you couldn't even tell the difference.
The intent behind the remakes of Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, and Full Throttle comes from a spirit of preservationism more than anything. The idea was to make these games easily purchasable and playable by modern audiences while keeping as much of the original games intact as possible. So you get things like cleaner audio, uprezzed graphics, simplified controls, and so-on, but nothing that radically changes the games.
As someone who has the original game CDs and played through each of those games at least 10 times over the years, the BEST part of these remasters, IMO, is the added developer commentary. I really, really enjoyed playing through the Monkey Island and Grim Fandango remakes and hearing Tim and crew's thoughts, remembrances, jokes, etc around the development and production of the games, the music, the characters, etc. Really added something new and special to the playthroughs of games that I know like the back of my hand, like old friends.
Graphics aside, the revamped input options alone justify the remaster IMO. They got a lot of things right with the original but tank controls were not one of them.
eh... after a while you get used to it :)

I still wish the graphics were better, it looks like Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle don't have much improvement in graphics department, so I'm afraid Full Throttle will be similar disappointment to me.

Comparing that to remakes of Secret of the Monkey Island[1] or Bionic Commando Rearmed[2] (different genre) it looks poor. It feels like LucasArt (and actually Disney) are simply going for making easy money on people who are nostalgic about these games with as little investment as they can.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb_FaGcmTPM

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj8HzKJZEV4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY3OczxXBks

The Monkey Island remakes destroyed the original art style. I like the more cautious path they took for Day of the Tentacle.
It was certainly different, but I wouldn't say the original art style was 'destroyed' due to the fact the at any time in the game you can switch back to the original style. It's not exactly destroyed if its RIGHT THERE.

I think with DotT there is less room for that kind of art upheaval though, because, frankly, the art already looks good. It still holds up very well today, expecially if you run in SCUMMVM in turn on some graphics filters.

Oh, that's not what I meant by `destroyed'. (And I think you knew.)