Six Grim Years
Wow! What a dramatic title!
I remember livestreaming Grim Fandango Remastered on the midnight of release. That was six years ago today, all the way back in 2015! It seems both like yesterday and a lifetime ago. I was a barista at the time who had just started working as freelance writer on the side. Grim Fandango was always a favorite of mine but the idea of a remaster? The fact that I could play it again without using something like ResidualVM and that tons of folks would finally get to enjoy the game? That was a great.
And, like... let's be clear for a moment: I'm not saying that Grim Fandango is good because Tim Schafer is my boss. It's just a legit good game and the remaster really did feel like such a work of love. Am I freaked out that was six years ago? Yes. Do I feel strange about my own mortality? Absolutely. That's just how life goes and what I really like about Grim is that its vision of death, pulling from cherished folklore, is ultimately a positive thing. Time passes. Death happens. We get old. No one knows what's gonna happen at the end of the line, right? It's affecting to think about games and art and to imagine how they will last throughout time. A really cool thing about Grim Fandango Remastered is that it shows how people can come together to preserve something that they care about.
But enough sappy stuff. We're here to celebrate and so I want to share with you something I dug up not so long ago as I assumed my role here at Double Fine, part of which involves being something of a shepherd of studio history and other things. It's the Grim Fandango Developer Diaries! Tim wrote these musings decades ago for the game's strategy guide and I'm happy to share them with you.
This gallery represents a small piece of Grim's history as well. Game preservation, an archivist once told me, isn't just about the game. It's also about preserving the context and other media around it. So! I hope you enjoy this little slice of history. As time goes on, we're going to expand our behind the scenes and making of sections with all sorts of things. Interviews, post-mortems, old documents like this, and more. I hope you'll look forward to it.
For now! Let's celebrate Grim Fandango. And if you've never played it, you can literally get it on Xbox Game Pass right now and other places. PS4, Steam. It's easy to play and you should totally play it! Until next time, keep keepin' on.
-Heather
