This Game Will Make You Nostalgic For An RPG That Doesn't Exist

Welcome back to Remastered! This week, I'm excited to share my thoughts on The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time and my interview with one of the developers behind it. Plus, I preview Kidbash: Super Legends, a new retro-themed roguelike launching next year! If you enjoy what you read, consider subscribing to Remastered for free or supporting me on Ko-fi so I have some extra funds for Summer Game Fest this year (more on that at the end of the newsletter).

“This is the greatest RPG of all time. Trust me, if you could play the rest of it, you would know.”

No game has been a better fit for this newsletter than The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time. Launching on Steam later today, almost everything you need to know about The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time is right there in the title. Seemingly a remake of a beloved RPG, it quickly reveals itself to be a Tunic or Inscryption-like puzzle box critiquing the game industry’s current obsession with nostalgia and retro throwbacks.  

It’s a clever game that feels relevant in this era of endless franchise exploitation, critical reassessment of classic games, and nostalgia-bait. Ahead of the game’s release, I spoke to Lucas Immanuel, who took on many roles throughout its development and appears in the fake documentary incorporated into the game. You can’t lampoon something you don’t really understand, and I do believe that Immanuel showed an understanding and reverence for how people feel about retro RPGs, then and now. 

When completing a capstone college course about game development, Lucas Immanuel got a piece of advice that was pretty obvious: Don’t make a 100-hour RPG. While Lucas would understand that advice, it also spawned another idea as he replayed Chrono Trigger. “How can I make a 100-hour RPG without making a 100-hour RPG?” Immanuel recalls asking himself.

That’s when the idea for The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time emerged. Even then, Immanuel admits that its puzzle game nature didn’t fully coalesce at first, until he came to the understanding that “returning to a save file is kind of like coming to a crime scene”- you’re working backward to figure out what you’ve already done in a classic game, and what you need to do next.

Immanuel and co. gave themselves an even deeper crash course in this feeling by going back and playing the final dungeons in many classic RPGs. From Dragon Quest to Final Fantasy to Earthbound, Immanuel’s crash course in retro RPG endings was enlightening. He said, “The earlier the RPG, honestly, the easier it was because there weren’t these layers of complexity and twists.” 

Those complexities and twists from the latter games, reflective of his struggle to learn the Materia system when playing the end of Final Fantasy VII for the first time, are what The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time is mostly inspired by. Because he played so many classic games, Immanuel could create a pastiche that he believes is representative of a beloved era of RPGs, rather than just copying a specific one:

"The real thing that was interesting about revisiting all these RPGs, and the thing that really made it into the final product, was us trying to make this almost Nowhereland USA of RPGs, in the same way that certain surreal movies will try to use technology from all different eras. Obviously, the protagonist of our game might share a little bit of resemblance with Chrono, but there were a lot of elements of the game we made so that it’s vaguely SNES era, vaguely 90s, but you can’t really place exactly what it is or where it is or which RPGs it actually relates to….That lets us commentate more directly on the idea of remaking RPGs when it’s not remaking Chrono Trigger specifically, it’s remaking “the greatest RPG of all time."

And commentate The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time does. While I won’t spoil the game for you – it’s worth playing blind like Outer Wilds or Tunic – it does directly grapple with important concepts like what it means to be a highly-acclaimed classic RPG, and how gamers in the modern day can understand the importance of these classic retro games at the time of release. 

Immanuel likened the game to the Tenacious D song Tribute: “This is the greatest RPG of all time. Trust me, if you could play the rest of it, you would know,” he joked. Still, Immanuel stressed that he wanted The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time to go beyond parody. Within its surrealist concept, the game still takes itself seriously. A lot of effort went into creating an art style inspired by HD-2D games, its combo-centric RPG battle gameplay, and a believable game manual for players to piece together as they play through. 

The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time also intentionally leans into the glitches and exploits that can be found in older games. Many times, the game will make you think outside the box of what’s possible within the RPG, or encourage you to walk out of bounds to progress. There was some frustration here, as it could be hard for playtesters to determine whether a bug was intentional or not, but Immanuel sees the game as paying homage to classic retro game glitches as much as the RPG genre itself:

"In the same way that the game is kind of a Nowhereland USA of RPGS, it’s a Nowhereland USA of RPGs breaking as well. The game takes a very broad view of what a video game glitch is like. We almost treat it in the same way that certain fantasy stories treat magic, where glitches happen in whatever way means the plot happens. It allows us to do some very interesting subversions of the way people treat RPGs."

I approach Remastered similar to how Immanuel approached The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time. When revisiting an older game like Rage, I want to better understand what it can tell us about the video game industry today. When I play something new, like Bubsy 4D or Pragmata, that harkens back to older titles and inspires a feeling of nostalgia, I want to interrogate why they do so and how they make players feel that way. 

No classic game is completely perfect, yet those retro titles gain the “classic” label through the meaning they imprint onto others. The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time explores what that means for RPGs in a year when Dragon Quest VII Reimagined and Gothic 1 Remake will be some of the genre’s biggest releases, and I want to continue that mission for the nostalgia-focused game industry at large. Through that, we can achieve a deeper understanding of what makes a classic and why we love the games we do.

What's Old Is News

Kidbash: Super Legend preview, Dragon Quest XII: Beyond Dreams, and More

• Dragon Quest XII was re-revealed, now with the subtitle of Beyond Dreams. It has no re-release window, but a Switch 2 port of Dragon Quest XI and a new Dragon Quest Monsters game will arrive before it.
• Rebellion has re-released the Empire Earth strategy game series on Steam.
• Red Art Games announced and launched the Gobliiins Collection, bringing back some cult-classic European puzzle-adventure games. 
• Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 got a demo and a new trailer. I played it early and interviewed the game’s developers, so you should check out that preview on Polygon.
• Similarly, you should read my interview with the developers of Serious Sam: Shatterverse to learn more about how Behaviour Interactive is reviving that series as a co-op roguelike shooter.
• Mina the Hollower reviews dropped, and it’s the highest-rated game of the year on Metacritic and OpenCritic. I wasn’t able to get code for this one early (not for lack of trying), but I will be buying and playing it at launch. 
• A remake of Rayman Legends has leaked, per Insider Gaming.
• Valve is raising the price of the Steam Deck, so hopefully you already have one to emulate the retro games you want to. 

In addition to The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time and Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, I also played a preview build for Authentic Remixes and Fat Raccoon’s Kidbash: Super Legend.

Like The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time, this platformer roguelike also plays with our nostalgia for retro games (and how they can sometimes glitch out on us). I played as Kidbash, a character styled after retro game heroes like Mega Man, who awakens in a world of forgotten game characters. Riddled with amnesia and occasionally glitching out, Kidbash agrees to help defend a village and fight the monsters that suddenly appeared alongside him. There’s clearly a more insidious, deeper mystery here, and I hope it has some interesting things to say about nostalgia just like The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time.

Kidbash fighting off hordes of monsters takes the form of action-platforming roguelike runs where I could jump, dash, slash, and shoot my way through rooms filled with enemies and platforming challenges. Along the way, I gained currency, weapon upgrades, and new combat abilities. None of that is too shocking or innovative, but a mechanic inspired by Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards lets you combine weapons to make a more powerful one, which felt novel and gave me a reason to be more aggressive in combat.

Kidbash: Super Legend’s greatest strength is its presentation. A lot of small flourishes feed into the retro feel, such as ability upgrades taking the form of game cartridges. It also has beautiful claymation-like visuals that remind me of Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, which is a surprisingly good fit for the character designs that are clearly inspired by chibi-like retro game characters.

It’s definitely now one of my most anticipated games of 2027, and I think it’s great that a publisher who revived the Acclaim brand decided to support it. The game will launch for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S next year. 

Before I wrap up this week’s newsletter, I also wanted to give you all a heads-up about what to expect in June. Between June 4 and June 9, I’ll be in Los Angeles and attending Summer Game Fest for my fifth year in a row. While I will be covering games for Polygon and Noisy Pixel there, I will also be seeing and writing about several titles for Remastered.

Generally, I do want to keep Remastered on its weekly cadence. That said, the embargoes surrounding covered games may impact when I can publish things. I will still publish at least one Remastered newsletter each week in June, but they might not always arrive at 11 a.m. ET on Thursday. If anything, you may get more than one newsletter each week.

TLDR: Expect a lot of previews and interviews from Summer Game Fest in Remastered next month, although the time of publishing may be impacted by embargoes. Subscribe so you don't miss out, and consider supporting me on Ko-fi!