Earlier this month, Vancouver, Washington-based developer Night Dive Studios announced a remastered edition of the 1997 dinosaur hunting shooter, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. This new rendition – titled Turok Returns – uses the PC version of the game as a base and introduces an entirely new visual engine to implement a slew of graphic enhancements, including an improved draw distance and less reliance on distance fog over the original game. Night Dive released a trailer for Turok Returns today, which showcases some of these visual tweaks.
Night Dive Studios was founded in 2012 by Stephen Kick, and focuses on developing enhanced versions of classic PC games. The company began its rise to notability when it acquired the license for System Shock 2 in 2013, which had previously been caught in a legal deadlock between Electronic Arts and Meadowbrook Insurance Group (the entity that acquired the assets of System Shock developer Looking Glass Studios after their closure). Night Dive Studios then remastered System Shock 2 and re-released it on Steam and Good Old Games, much to delight of fans of the series.
Night Dive has since gone on to acquire, remaster, and re-release other classic PC titles such as I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, The 7th Guest, Bad Mojo, and several entries in the Wizardry series. In 2014, they attempted to re-release the rare cult classic The Operative: No One Lives Forever, but the studio could not forge an agreement between the license’s three shareholders: Activision, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. Currently, Night Dive is developing an entire remake of the first System Shock from the ground up. They are also working with OtherSide Entertainment to produce a third entry in the cyberpunk horror series.
Turok Returns releases this Thursday on Steam.