There are tons of remasters and remakes out there right now with more coming, some very well justified and others feeling like completely unnecessary cash grabs. In an interview with VGC, Atari boss Wade Rosen talked a bit about remasters and also took the opportunity to name-drop games he would like to breathe new life into, and we think many of you will nod in agreement:
"If we ever had a chance to work on Panzer Dragoon Saga or Ogre Battle or Snatcher or something like that... I mean, I don't know if it would do well, but I'd probably push it through and make sure we did it just because I would love to work on one of those."
Panzer Dragoon Saga is often considered the best game released for Sega's Saturn console, and unlike its two shooter predecessors, it was a pure role-playing game with side quests, turn-based combat, and levelling. It was developed as a dream project and completely lacked mainstream focus, and giving it a second chance would be a cultural achievement of the highest order, as tragically few people have played it.
Ogre Battle, on the other hand, was big in the 90s and offered a more strategic role-playing approach. There are five games in the series, none of which were published in Europe when they were first released (but have since been included in collections, subscription services, and re-releases). Finally, we have Snatcher, a cyberpunk adventure developed by Hideo Kojima himself. It was initially released only in Japan in 1988 for consoles that were barely even available in Europe (MSX2 and PC-8801), but was later ported to Mega-CD, followed by PlayStation and Saturn.
All of these titles are masterpieces, highly interesting, and virtually unknown to most people - so let's hope Rosen gets his way. However, he is aware that these cannot be solely passion projects; they also need to release more commercially viable titles:
"But it all has to be in a balance. If this company just became like 'what games does Wade want to work on?', we would not be around too long."
An example of what he means is the upcoming Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection (which we have a brand new preview of here). Here, he says, passion and potential commercial success come together:
"Where you can, the end goal is always to try and do something that is both something we genuinely have a lot of passion about and has a lot of commercial viability. I think a good example of that would be Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection, right? People have joined and applied to be a part of Digital Eclipse to work on that series. That is not something that we reluctantly took on, people are so excited about that. And yeah, we think that's going to have a really strong commercial viability to it."
A difficult balancing act, in other words, or as he himself says:
"If you're only numbers-driven, it crushes the spirit of the company. If you're only passion-driven, well, you often don't have a company."
Regardless, we're keeping our fingers crossed for remasters of Panzer Dragoon Saga, Ogre Battle, and Snatcher, it's really time for more people to enjoy these.