A heavy dose of nostalgia has hit the gaming world. Now that the remastered editions of Heretic and Hexen have come out, the players are going berserk. The creator of hype about gaming and everything in between, Geoff Keighley, took to Twitter to nearly 30 years ago reminisce about his very first world-premiere reveal for Hexen II back in 1996. It has been about 30 years, hasn’t it? With so many demons to kill, time just flies.
Anyway, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of Nightdive Studios, those who basically made remasters chic (Props for System Shock), doing the remasters. And by the way, they are available RIGHT NOW on Xbox Game Pass. There’s no waiting period, no pre-ordering. It’s just about putting dents in this record of demon-slaying.
People in reply found this to be the only reason for this happening after Microsoft-Activision Blizzard merger. KennyBoi95 blatantly put, “Marty Stratton confirmed it wouldn’t have happened otherwise,” he bestoweth worthy goodness on the corporate kerfuffle.
The hype is REALLY enormous. Jonathan Murphy (a.k.a. Ecchiking800) shouted, “Wait, they finally got a remaster?! About time, I’m so hyped 😎.” Meanwhile, another Tyler Durden (definitely not the one) was already feeling nostalgic, expressing that he remembered playing these games on his ancient 486 DX 66 PC. That’s vintage gaming cred, for sure.
Gotta talk about Game Pass love. One voice after another, starting with Old RPG Gamer, was basically screaming, “Yo, it’s on Game Pass RIGHT NOW.” Then, the Portuguese speakers also joined in: “pq não fala que ta no Gamepass?” (Translation: “Why not say it’s on GamePass?”). Chill down, fam—it is actually there.
Nightdive has redefined the mash remake-key, which Austin Suther aka platysaur perfectly captured: “Absolute classics, and it’s even better that Nightdive remastered them.” Tyler Bowler (BowlersReviews) added: “Remastering old games with new graphics is a slice of genius!” Couldn’t have said it better!
Other people were hoping for even more. Heidi (Waszul_) cries out, “Hopefully they bring back King’s Field with fast and updated graphics.” Hey Nightdive, you hear that?
But the best part? It’s not just a lazy port. These are full-fledged remasters, which means better visuals, smoother gameplay, and no random crashes as you remember from your Windows 95 days. NuFrontier summed it up: “I really do remember playing Hexen on my Windows 95 PC… quite an eye-opener.” Now, a whole new generation is going to learn why these games are really great.
If you’ve got Game Pass, go ahead and relive the glory days. If not, well, it’s 2024, and that just can’t be an excuse. Grab a controller, summon some dark magic, and let’s pretend it’s 1996 all over again.
And hey, Nightdive… what’s next? The masses demand answers. At least more remasters.
