While the ranks of the best GameCube games are dominated by the family-friendly titles Nintendo is best known for, Nintendo’s purple square was also quietly a killer horror machine. Sure, that’s mostly down to the mostly exclusive Resident Evil games Capcom was pumping out for the system, but there’s one other horror titan on the system, and it was published by Nintendo itself. That is Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem.
But unlike those classic Resident Evil games, Eternal Darkness never got a second chance on another platform, and it’s never been remastered or made available on modern machines. 24 years after launch, however, there’s finally reason to hope. Stephen Kick, studio head for the remaster specialists at Nightdive Studios, was recently asked by a fan if the horror game could make a comeback.
“Eternal Darkness is one of my all-time favorites and it deserves the treatment I know Nightdive Studio is capable of,” Kick says on Twitter (via IGN). “Keep your eye on our Deep Dives,” he adds, pointing to the studio’s YouTube channel.
That’s obviously several steps shy of actually confirming an Eternal Darkness remaster, but it’s the biggest sign of life the game’s had in years. Originally released in 2002, Eternal Darkness was developed by Silicon Knights, a company that went bankrupt a decade ago, and published by Nintendo, a company that’s notoriously protective of even its most neglected properties. The rights situation around Eternal Darkness has never been entirely clear, but it’s been murky enough that no one’s been willing or able to navigate it yet.
That’s despite the game’s monumental reputation among horror aficionados. Eternal Darkness takes place across four different time periods with various protagonists, telling a Lovecraftian tale that spans centuries. Arguably the game’s biggest claim to fame are its Sanity effects. There’s a meter that shows your character’s mental stability, and as it empties, things start getting weird – the game world might start suddenly bleeding, or you might see the fourth wall break with faux CRT TV glitches and similar effects.
There’s still little else like Eternal Darkness, despite an ultimately failed attempt from many of the original developers to Kickstart a spiritual successor in 2013. Here’s hoping we can at least get a fresh taste of the original soon enough.