Day of the Tentacle Special Edition announced

Double-Fine Productions has announced that it is bringing well-regarded adventure classics Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango to a new generation with plans for remastered launches on PC and console.

Day of the Tentacle launched in 1993 as a sequel to Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick's Maniac Mansion. While development was driven by a new duo, Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer, Gilbert and Winnick stayed on as writers and the LucasArts game was well-received. Grim Fandago, meanwhile, was pure Schafer, dropping the two-dimensional and hand-drawn visuals of the original SCUMM engine for real-time 3D characters overlaid on pre-rendered backgrounds in a new engine dubbed GrimE. Both games have long since been out of print, but remain popular and frequently head up any list of the top adventure games of all time.

Sony announced that it was working with Double Fine, Schafer's post-LucasArts company, to bring a remastered version of Grim Fandango to consoles as part of its E3 press conference earlier this year. Details were, however, thin on the ground - until now, when the companies have jointly confirmed their plans with a sooner-than-expected launch date of January 2015.

Grim Fandango Remastered is to launch on the 27th of January 2015, Sony announced at its PlayStation Experience event this weekend, on PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Windows, OS X, and Linux. It will be joined later in the year by Day of the Tentacle: Special Edition on the same platforms, with no firm launch date yet announced for the latter title. Both games will feature a revamped version of their respective engines and remastered visuals and audio to boost quality over their original respective DOS and Windows releases.

A brief video demonstrating the new Grim Fandango release is reproduced below.