Nightdive Studios has made a name for itself remastering classic games for modern hardware. From the System Shock to Turok franchises, and a few others in between, Nightdive has proven itself adept at tapping into nostalgia and making what's old into something new.
Now it seems that Nightdive has its sights set on a classic first-person shooter from the Doom era. Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick recently tweeted an image that seems to show part of UI elements of 1996's Powerslave.
Better known as Exhumed in Europe, Powerslave first arrived on the Sega Saturn back in 1996 courtesy of Lobotomy Software. It then quickly found its way to the PlayStation 1 and PC for MS-DOS. Much like Doom, it was a sprite-based sprite-based 3D-shooter, but instead of killing demons from Hell, you took on the role of a soldier attempting to stop an alien invasion. Only the aliens' invasion plan involved stealing the mummy of King Ramses in order to resurrect the ancient Pharaoh to steal his power and rule the world.
It’s all a bit convoluted. Making this even more confusing was how the PC and console versions of the game have massive differences. On PC, each level is laid out in a linear fashion, but on console, you can go back to earlier levels to find unlockables in a very Metroidvania style. The levels, weapons, UI elements, enemies, and even endings are all different between the two versions. They even use different engines, with the console version powered by Lobotomy Software's SlaveDriver engine while the PC version used the Build engine licensed from 3D Realms.
As pointed out by PCGamesN, Nightdive's Samuel "Kaiser" Villarreal released his own unofficial remake called Powerslave EX, which might serve as a starting point for a more official remaster.
Nothing is official yet, but we might not have to wait long for Nightdive to make an announcement. 3D Realms will host Realms Deep next month, which seems like the perfect time to announce a remastered retro shooter.