Graphics, eh? They’re good aren’t they. Check out those follicles. Sometimes they’re not, though, and they don’t need to be. While the industry continues to obsess over fidelity, video game demakes offer a fascinating alternative. What if we take your favourite games and travel back in time, and you don’t have to kiss your mum or anything? Imagining new games on older systems is always fun, and we’re fit to bursting with amazing demakes like these.
Half-Life: Gamma Burst
While everyone waits for an official Half-Life 3 that seemingly will never come, some developers have taken it upon themselves to start remastering and remaking old games. Just look at Black Mesa for example, while other projects that are still in development like Peer Review and FUBAR aim to remake different Half-Life spin-offs and expansions. I would say look at Hunt Down the Freeman, but you shouldn’t do that.
What’s rarer though are the Half-Life demakes, and what might be one of the most ambitious Half-Life demakes of all time happens to be one of the most recent, as Half-Life: Gamma Burst turns Valve’s FPS into a top-down Game Boy Color game.
Developed by Rolo Maisso, a developer from Uruguay, Half-Life: Gamma Burst is currently a demake of the Hazard Course section of the original game. However, this is a project still in development, and there’s a promise that the whole campaign will be converted to this style, which certainly would be impressive. Seeing the characters, enemies and overall environment converted to Game Boy Color authentic colours and sprites is definitely a bit of a trip, but fortunately this is a faithful reimagining while taking a huge swing.
If the idea of seeing what a handheld Half-Life game would’ve looked like before the days of the Steam Deck and others, Gamme Burst should be speaking to you like the Green Goblin mask right now. Just be warned, there’s an alarm going half the time and it’s a bit annoying, but it doesn’t cross the border of ruining it.
The Border Lands
Ordinarily, the process of demaking a game is reserved for the truly independent developers out there; the hobbyists making their first project, or the professionals looking to expand their skillset in their spare time. Sometimes though, the bigger studios get stuck in as well, and one of the earliest examples of a bigger studio creating a demake is Gearbox with The Border Lands.
Yes, it’s intentionally spelled differently, as much as Google wants to autocorrect it to one word. No wonder there’s been a bunch of video essays on YouTube about how this is a forgotten Borderlands game, though it has since been “disappeared” off the internet faster than a Randy Pitchford USB stick.
The Border Lands was an official, browser-based demake of Borderlands 2, released online in August 2012, about a month before BL2 dropped, after which The Border Lands was removed from the internet. Fortunately, services like Flashpoint Archive or Flash Museum have managed to preserve the game for people hoping to play it nearly 15 years later. Essentially Smash TV but with the Borderlands classic of procedurally generated guns, you play as one of the four core characters from Borderlands 2 as they fight through hordes of enemies across several screens.
As games go, The Border Lands is about as basic as it gets, but it’s undeniably a cool bit of promotion for an at the time upcoming game. Still, we can do a bit better, I reckon.
Devolver Bootleg
You know what’s better than a demake of one game? Obviously it’s demakes of eight games. You want nine games? Don’t be absurd.
Devolver Bootleg is an eight-in-one compilation of what they describe as pirated versions of their successful published games. In reality, the developers decided to have a bit of fun with their own property and create demakes for a laugh, and we’re all about it. Each game imagines what they would be like on previous generation consoles, which in the case of Downwell feels a bit ridiculous considering it was a one-bit game already. Replacing the main character’s gun shoes with one giant, oversized gunboot a la Super Mario Bros. 3 is one hell of a change though.
Some of the games are more straight-laced demakes, with Enter The Gun Dungeon, Hotline Milwaukee and Ape Out Jr. playing out like NES versions of Enter The Gungeon, Hotline Miami and Ape out respectively. Others are a bit more outlandish, with 3D martial arts Soulslike Absolver turned into Super Absolver Mini: Turbo Fighting Championship that wouldn’t look out of place on the Neo Geo Pocket.
Rounding out the collection are demakes of Gato Roboto, Pikuniku and Luftrausers, titled Catsylvania (very good), PikuBiku Ball Stars and Luftrousers, each of which takes their core game and adds some twists in new and interesting ways. Collections like this are why Devolver developed the reputation they did in the 2010s.
Disco Elysium: Game Boy Edition
I think we can all agree that Disco Elysium is one of the most complicated and mechanically rich RPGs ever made. You never saw Cloud Strife die from a heart attack. So the idea of trying to demake something like that sounds like the type of thinking that’d get you confined to a sanatorium back in the day. It’s a fool’s errand, surely?
Tell that to Canadian developer Colin Brannan though, who decided in 2020 to experiment with Game Boy Studio, the engine used to create a lot of homebrew GB games, creating the Disco Elysium demake as a result. Some people decided to learn a new hobby, take up baking or something else during the height of the pandemic, but good old Colin decided to scale down one of the most ambitious RPGs of all time, and do you want to hear the craziest part? It works pretty well.
Like a lot of demakes, Disco Elysium: Game Boy Edition was never intended to tackle the entire game, but instead serve as a vertical slice of what could be done with the Game Boy Engine. Naturally, Disco Elysium: GB Edition focuses on the opening and some key events and quests within the game, while aspects like the Skills and Thoughts Cabinet have been scaled back immensely, but this is still Disco Elysium despite the cuts and lack of colour. You can strip so much back, and still find that recognisable core that made the game a smash hit success in the first place.
If you want more info about it, Colin’s personal blog/portfolio website has a bit of a breakdown about the challenges and changes made in order to create this demake, which is pretty interesting in its own right. I’d kill for some of that talent.
Retrokill
If you go and search for this right now, you might think we’re talking about someone’s Roblox demo that’s heavily inspired by Ultrakill. We’re not, as we’re over 30 and if we mention that platform again we may get put on some kind of list.
Instead, we’re referring to the 2D platformer take on Ultrakill that’s available on Itch.io and developed by the user Pedroleum. Again, this isn’t the full game, but the full Prelude chapter and two bonus levels have been fully adapted into this formula, and what’s more impressive is how much of the original game is captured.
Instead of just feeling like a game where a pixelated version of V1 has to stomp on an enemy’s head in order to progress, Retrokill includes plenty of the weapons, enemy types and bosses introduced in those first few levels. There’s even the Ultrakill classic style meter in the corner of the screen for players who want to add some extra hype in their runs. Those S ranks aren’t going to hit themselves, and it’s remarkable how easily Ultrakill lends itself to a run and gun 2D platformer.
It’s practically a run and gun 3D platformer anyway, so I suppose it’s not that much more of a leap. It feels like the project might end here, with Pedroleum moving on to bigger work, but what’s on offer here alone is a good indication of his future. Here’s one for the past.
Watch_Dogs 1985
The Watch Dogs series feels like one of the biggest what ifs in gaming, specifically “what if it was actually good?” Don’t get us wrong, Watch Dogs 2 is a lot of fun, but that pre-release hype for the first one made people believe that Ubisoft were cooking a genuine world-beater. The end result wasn’t up that standard, but clearly there’s still fans of the franchise knocking about.
Just look at Watch Dogs 1985, a Commodore 64 inspired demake of the series that imagines what the game would be like way before Nirvana, when there was music still on MTV. As far as demakes go, Watch Dogs 1985 is about as faithful as it can be to the source material, while also respecting the platform it’s trying to create a demake for.
Developed by Cursed Bootleg Inc, Watch Dogs 1985 is a 2D platformer, meaning you’ve got to collect hearts to restore health instead of taking cover behind a corner. Despite those constraints though, this game still allows you to hack various gadgets to distract cops and gain the upper hand, hijack and drive cars, explore buildings and essentially explore one big long street of a city.
It’s a loose recreation, which is by Cursed Bootleg’s own admission, but the proof is here that people can create compelling open world experiences in this day and age on a retro console. Sure, it’s Commodore 64 inspired, so good luck actually getting it to run on a proper console, but the thought is there.
Bio Evil 4
The release of Resident Evil 4 marked a massive change in the gameplay and tone of the RE series. Originally a survival horror game, Resident Evil 4 introduced an over the shoulder camera and an enhanced focus on action over straight horror, turning the series into what felt like much more of a shooter focused affair. A shoot ‘em up going from 3D to 2D isn’t exactly the craziest thing in the world, and it seems like Thomas McCloskey and Emma Robinson agreed when they created Bio Evil 4 a few years back to much acclaim from both RE fans and various outlets.
Reframing Leon’s attempts at rescuing Ashley and suplexing Spaniards as a 2D run and gun shooter in line with the NES, Bio Evil 4 only features two levels and a boss fight, so don’t expect to be fighting Regeneradors and whatnot. There’s the village/countryside, a mansion section, then a fight against Dr Salvador, and that’s your lot, but in that short space of time, you’ll experience a shoot ‘em up so exquisite, you’ll wonder why Capcom didn’t commission a full length version.
The whole demake looks like an unholy cross between Ghosts ‘n Goblins and Metal Slug, and that’s the type of blend we want more of actually. Unfortunately, we never seemed to get the version 0.3 that was promised, but the version that’s available is still worth your time and attention.
Dino Strike
From one Capcom survival horror series to another, we’re still waiting for some kind of proper Dino Crisis remake over here. If they can remake the Resident Evil series as modern survival horror titles, they can give us just one Dino Crisis, as a treat. None of this Exoprimal guff, just some honest to goodness classic Capcom dino blasting.
In the meantime though, fans have been keeping the love for the Dino Crisis series alive through various means, and yes, one of them is a demake. Specifically, a demake in the style of ZX Spectrum, so if any of you Spectrumheads have been waiting for a mention, today’s your lucky day.
Remember to take your glucosamine tablets today, ok?
Developed by Ben James, Dino Strike follows all the usual hallmarks of a Dino Crisis game, with Regina wandering around a facility infested with dinosaurs, collecting key cards in order to advance deeper into the jaws of danger.
There isn’t really much of an objective or story to follow here, just get Regina past the obstacles in as fast a time as possible, but it’s interesting to see the ideas and mechanics of Dino Crisis applied to something that looks like classic UK Teletext. There’s a certain simplicity to the colours and spritework of the ZX Spectrum that Dino Strike absolutely nails, and hey, the game is pretty fun too, as long as you’re all good with the presentation. Perhaps you should make an odyssey to play it.
Mario 2Dyssey
Perhaps the most infamous candidate for ROM racks, demakes and other fan-developed content not named Pokemon, Super Mario demakes might seem a bit reductive on paper. We don’t need to see what Mario would look like on the NES or SNES and so on, because we grew up playing those games anyway.
Where the interesting part lies is in demaking 3D Mario games specifically, taking mechanics, level design and more that worked in the third dimension and applying it to a 2D demake. There’s a couple of examples already on Itch.io, including a Luigi focused 8-bit demake of Super Mario 64, or a New Super Mario Bros. Wii Demake with playable Waluigi, but perhaps the best of the bunch is Mario 2Dyssey. Yes, the name is a bit forced, but credit to them for taking the big swing on a bad pun.
Developed by Haitam, an independent game developer who goes by the pseudonym SimpleTeam, Mario 2Dyssey is exactly what it sounds like: a 2D spin on the Nintendo Switch masterpiece that is Super Mario Odyssey, designed to look like games from the 16-bit era. Much like other demakes, Mario 2Dyssey is a demo more than a full release, containing 2D versions of the first two worlds, Cap Kingdom and Cascade Kingdom. Still, even with just a small amount of content, this demake includes Cappy, the T-Rex and the boss fight with Madame Broode, so you’ve got a lot of platforming action to sink your teeth into.
If you want more like this though, the mysterious Mariofan235 released Super Mario Odyssey: Seashine Island not too long ago, offering similar gameplay albeit with a whole new level.
Hollow Knight: Silksong Demastered
Demakes have been around for years already, but if you want confirmation that they’re going to be around for a long time to come, Hollow Knight: Silksong Demastered should do the trick.
Released for the Itch.io Demake Jam of 2026, developer Nekodot made a bold choice to demake a game that a) was, at least in video game release terms, pretty fresh compared to other demake targets, and b) was already a 2D game but with hand-drawn graphics instead of sprite work. How much different could a NES-style Silksong Demastered be without diluting the formula too much? Somehow, Nekodot manages to strike the perfect balance.
A demake of the first area of the game, Moss Grotto, complete with collectibles to find, enemies to discover and a boss fight against Moss Mother to look forward to, Hollow Knight: Silksong Demastered fully captures what makes Team Cherry’s Metroidvania special on just a fraction of the hardware. Granted, playing this version of the game might feel a bit clunkier than modern Hollow Knight, but somehow this still feels like it fits in that world.
Unfortunately for us when getting footage, we couldn’t manage to slash upwards due to compatibility issues with controllers, but don’t let that stop you from experiencing a modern classic in a new-old way. It feels a lot like the game that made me want to cry a lot, and the developers should be pretty proud.
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