It seems you can hardly move without a remake or Kickstarter-funded ‘reimagining’ being announced at the moment.

First up is news of a remake of old Amiga favourite The Chaos Engine (the DOS version of which we reviewed here). My eyes may be deceiving me, but I don’t see what’s so new about it.

Another remake in the works is of the much-loved (although not-much-played-by-me) Delphine platformer Flashback. Already opinion appears to be divided between “I loved the original and would love a new version with updated graphics!” and “This doesn’t look as good as the original.”

Remakes seem on a bit of a hiding to nothing. If developers change a lot, then people complain that it’s not true to the original. If they don’t change very much, then people ask what the point of it was in the first place.

One remake that’s actually been released is of the first Leisure Suit Larry game, which managed to accrue donations of around $650,000. The response has been mixed: Richard Cobbett on Rock Paper Shotgun considers it rather more charitably than Ellie Gibson on Eurogamer. I think I’ll give it a miss.

This last one isn’t exactly a remake, but I’ll include it anyway:

Yes! Jim Walls will come out of retirement if you’ll only give him $500,000 to make another police adventure. For $19, it had better be an improvement on Blue Force.

There’s an interview on RPS here – it’s mainly to promote the Precinct Kickstarter, but there’s some good stuff on the PQ series too.