NEW YORK — Gamers rejoiced today as top heads of the video game industry, in conjunction with every other industry in the world, announced a modern re-release of the cult classic title The Great Depression.
“No matter how much video games advance, it’s always fun to go back and revisit the classics,” said Shuntaro Furukawa, President of Nintendo. “Nintendo is proud to be one of the many companies involved in bringing this remake of The Great Depression to life. We’ve already enjoyed seeing the discussion by fans about the upcoming Switch 2 version of The Great Depression, speculating on plot points, when it will release, and how much it will cost.”
Originally released in 1929 for the IBM 301 computer, The Great Depression was a first-person survival game that suffered from a mixed reception.
“It was universally hated,” explained gaming historian Lauren Fruitcake. “The gameplay was completely unforgiving, the way the player had to constantly work to afford food and housing in a world on the brink of collapse. But eventually it came to be appreciated for its in depth storytelling. The average person doesn’t really pick up on it while they’re playing, but the lore was really ahead of its time,” continued Fruitcake. “The whole game is set in a world where rampant overconsumption has created a fragile economy destined to crash, accelerated by a Republican President of the United States enacting major tariffs and crippling global trade, all while the threat of fascism lingers in the future. What a story, especially when you consider that this was over five years before the release of Planescape: Torment.”
While developers have promised the upcoming remake will stay true to the brutal difficulty of the original, a variety of new features are being included for modern audiences.
“We’ve improved the graphics, obviously,” announced Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “This time around everything will be in color. We’re also adding online features to the remake, so you can share your progress with your friends, post screenshots of your playthrough, and desperately beg the entire world for donations to cover basic living expenses … it really adds a new level of depth to the game that wasn’t there before. And for the truly hardcore players who thought the original was too easy, we’ve got a mode where players will have to deal with the accelerating threat of climate change on top of everything else!”
At press time, early work had already begun on a remake of The Great Depression’s sequel about a world war.
