Atari CEO shares his three dream remasters, including a Hideo Kojima classic
But Wade Rosen says there has to be a balance between passion projects and “commercial viability”
The CEO of Atari has revealed the three games he’d personally love to see getting the remaster treatment.
In an interview with VGC, Wade Rosen was explaining how, when it comes to re-releasing or remastering retro games, there has to be a balance between choosing games that are expected to sell well, and ‘passion projects’ that may not sell so well but have a cult audience who love those particular games.
Citing his own three choices, Rosen told us: “Life’s too short, you know? I’ve got mine too, right? 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.
“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.”
Panzer Dragoon Saga was the third main game in Sega‘s Panzer Dragoon series, and replaced the previous games’ rail shooter gameplay with turn-based battling, free-roaming and other RPG elements. The Saturn title was widely praised but was plagued by a torrid development process, with constant in-fighting and the death of two staff members, which director Yukio Futatsugi attributed to stress.
The critically acclaimed Ogre Battle series started life on the SNES and spanned five tactical RPG and real-time strategy games. The IP is currently owned by Square Enix, making it more likely that a remaster would be developed in-house than handed to Atari‘s studios.
Snatcher, meanwhile, was a cyberpunk graphic adventure written and designed by Hideo Kojima when he was in his 20’s. Released in 1988, the game is considered one of the best cyberpunk games of all time and is considered the starting point of some of the themes that would later be explored in the Metal Gear Solid series.
Rosen explained to VGC that in an ideal world Atari would be releasing games that are both likely to sell a lot of copies and something the team is passionate about, but that sometimes the company has to lean heavier in one of those directions to ensure balance.
He cited Digital Eclipse‘s upcoming Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection as an example of a title that ticks both boxes, while giving Nightdive’s upcoming Outlaws remaster as an example of a game that may not be as likely to sell, but is something the development team really wants to make.
“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,” he tolds us.
“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.
“And then you have other things that are like cult classics – Outlaws, I think, is a great example. I do remain a little cautiously optimistic on that one because even though it wasn’t a game I had played growing up, the response was really positive and people who played it love it, but it’s probably a little bit more passion than like raw numbers-driven decision making on that one, I would say.
“The goal is when you can get them both. But at the very least, I think that’s a part of the give and take in any business. If you go too far in any one direction – if you’re only numbers-driven, it crushes the spirit of the company. If you’re only passion-driven, well, you oftentimes don’t have a company.
“We’re seeing a lot of both of those in the industry right now, and so we try to straddle the line. But we definitely let the team pick a… you know, we all work together and choose jointly what we’re going to work on, but there will definitely be a few like Outlaws that the team kind of throws out and I’m like ‘yeah, let’s give it a swing’.”
