Rare Replay is softening old games' controls for modern gamers

Rare Replay is an unabashed celebration of the old, a 30 game, 10,000 Gamerscore rundown of the storied UK developer's greatest (non-licensed) achievements - but that doesn't mean it has to play like that fiddly collection of legally iffy ROMs I definitely don't have tucked away on a hard drive somewhere.

Talking to Official Xbox Magazine, Art director Peter Hentze explained that, in the process of mastering every game to run perfectly on new-gen hardware, Rare's engineers cast an eye over how each one would feel to a player in 2015 - and that sometimes means altering how they control to account for tastes and traditions that have appeared since the games' release.

"Our designers have looked at the control systems for certain games, such as Jet Force Gemini, and where possible they’re going to try and make things more accessible for modern gamers", explains Hentze. "They’ve treated them all on an individual basis and done what they can to make sure the players don’t get frustrated and get the best experience possible."

With any luck, that should make for a delicious mix of nostalgia, without the pang of remembering how weird old games actually were to play. We'll find out soon enough - Rare Replay is out next Tuesday, August 4th.

The latest issue of Official Xbox Magazine, with Star Wars: Battlefront on the cover, is out in the UK this Friday, July 31. Download it here or subscribe to future issues.

Joe Skrebels
Joe first fell in love with games when a copy of The Lion King on SNES became his stepfather in 1994. When the cartridge left his mother in 2001, he turned to his priest - a limited edition crystal Xbox - for guidance. And now he's here.