Grim Fandango retrospective video features Tim Schafer, nostalgia

Following this week's huge news that Double Fine is releasing a remastered version of the classic adventure game Grim Fandango —and the rage-inducing news that it's coming first to PS4—Double Fine has released a great retrospective video looking back at the game.

—and the rage-inducing news that it's coming first to PS4—Double Fine has released a great retrospective video looking back at the game. In it, developer Tim Schafer and others talk about their roles in development, the game's reception, and how the team started to bicker during crunch time.

“There are stories about when you die, in Mexican folklore, you're buried with a bag of gold on your chest and another bag hidden in the coffin,” Schafer says in the video. “so the spirits wouldn't steal the bag of gold… This idea that you'd have to worry about thieves in the afterlife was so interesting to me… I was also really getting into film noir at the time.” The combination of afterlife crime and film noir fit so perfectly, he says, that it “sparked idea after idea after idea.” “With Grim, it was like a firehouse we couldn't turn off, such an explosion of ideas and creativity.”

Grim Fandango was one of the last great 90s-era adventure games, but its relatively weak sales became an example in the industry of why adventure games were a thing of the past. That hasn't stopped us from still loving it, though, and fans continue to support the game with unofficial patches and updates. Double Fine says they plan to work with the community to bring some of those official updates into the remastered version coming to release.

Catch up on all of our E3 coverage here.