Some of you may remember a dinky demake of Left 4 Dead that Alec posted about at the tail-end of the previous decade. The chap behind it, Eric Ruth, clearly loves nothing more than making retro-pixel-tributes because he’s done a few more as well. There’s one about electronic rackets (not to be confused with Pong, which was electronic racquets) and another starring some gaudy green space marine. You know of what I speak. His upcoming project is another Valve-inspired title though, and it looks like a lot of fun. It’s Team Fortress 2 Arcade: a sidescrolling beat/shoot ‘em up. Here’s an interview and some gameplay footage captured on film by piki geek.



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The jollity of it all may well disguise rubbish gameplay but I found Pixel Force: Left 4 Dead entertaining enough for the short while it lasted. This seems more like a TF2 style Streets of Rage than an actual attempt to remake TF2 in a retro format, but that’s no problem because that already exists.

One of the reasons Valve’s games suit these sort of japes is the fact they’re already stuffed full of character. I like the idea of demakes but they are often unfinished or uninteresting. Besides which, plenty of games would be indistinguishable from one another if you gave them this sort of treatment. One game that would work though? Silent Hill 2. Good job someone did that a while ago then.