is this really a win for klonoa? namco puppeteering his corpse with the prospect of future games that may not deliver or even get made? i'd rather this series die if this is the quality we can expect from it.

nevermind the obnoxious practice of holding series' hostage like this, it's deeply upsetting that the only compromise we get is a butchered representation of what came before. because god forbid people play old playstation games that "look dated" next to other games releasing today despite there not being a good way to experience how the original games were presented to begin with. you'd think more people would push back against this; especially considering the cries for more klonoa content from those who grew up with this series, but to my surprise basically everyone seems to be eating this up no questions asked. every few years this happens, an old series gets a spark of life in miserable fashion and sometimes it leads to something greater, but even with the best outcome i think its a bad precedent to set. sure crash bandicoot 4 crushed all expectations and is in the running for best game in the entire series, but it rubs me the wrong way that it came as a result of scrubbing away the hard work done by the original developers back in the late 90's.

i understand that much of this stems from publishers more than developers (it's not like they've been very forward thinking when it comes to the preservation of old games to begin with) but when companies demand stringent deadlines with no regard to quality control of course the product will come out half baked, no matter how much love was behind the wheel of it. i don't have a bird's eye view on the development of this project, but i can't imagine it was enjoyable or flexible to work under. even if their hearts were in the right place, theres no chance they had the tools needed to really do this series the justice it deserves.

no matter the circumstances though, this is what we're left with. a botched collection of beloved titles that, for the foreseeable future, is the only way to comfortably play these for most people. i'm not upset that it's overpriced or not stuffed with extraneous crap to justify the cost, i'm upset that this is the standard for preservation the industry is setting for itself. who cares about the game's legacy and how it impacted people, just slap a name on it to excite fans looking for to rekindle memories of better days gone by.

best case scenario we get a new sequel out of this collection and it really delivers on fan expectations, but is that really the lesson to be learned here? treat the past as a frivolous step to success so we can move onto the next new shiny thing? i can't help but feel deeply cynical over the industry if this is how we think we should celebrate the past. klonoa deserved better