Between preservation and nostalgic fantasy. Approaches tofanmade remasters

The aim of this paper is to present issues related to alternative forms of game remastering through community modifications.Remasters and remakes are a popular element of contemporary digital game publishing, studied from the perspectives of nostalgia and platform studies (Brown 2024; Neill Hoch 2020).However, I propose to extend these perspectives to include the previously under-researched role of game mods as one form of game remastering.A form that is all the more important as an alternative to the industry practices and carries different meanings.The return of games in the form of remasters is inextricably linked to game consoles.Platforms with pre-defined hardware configurations have kept games in time, which had to be adapted to their capabilities, usually limited in relation to the PC version.It is console users who benefit most from them, through technical upgrades or, in some cases, simply the possibility of running the game on a new generation of hardware.