Remastering a classic game is less about rebuilding it from scratch and more about understanding how players remember it. That tension—between preservation and modernization—sits at the core of Nightdive Studios’ work, from restoring cult classics to integrating community-made content into official releases.

For the team, the goal isn’t to reinvent these games, but to refine them in a way that feels invisible. That often means studying original assets, collaborating with modders, and carefully deciding what to change—and what to leave untouched. It’s a production challenge as much as a technical one, requiring coordination across art, engineering, and community pipelines.

We spoke with Grover Wimberly, Producer and Project Manager at Nightdive, about how the studio approaches remasters, why community involvement is essential, and how projects like the upcoming Sin Reloaded reflect Nightdive’s long-term philosophy.

First, can you introduce yourself and your background?

Grover Wimberly: My name is Grover Wimberley, and I’m a producer and project manager at Nightdive.

Before working at Nightdive—and still on the side—I’m also an indie game developer. I make my own indie games, mostly biology-themed games.

Working at Nightdive and Atari fulfills two different creative outlets. At Nightdive, I get to work on really great IPs—games with long histories and established fan bases. With indie development, I get to scratch that creative itch and build whatever I want.

With remasters, you have to be very careful to preserve the integrity of the original game, whereas with indie games you have a lot more freedom.

How do you balance modernizing a game while preserving how players remember it?

Grover Wimberly: That’s always been Nightdive’s motto—to make sure that when you play the game, it feels like how you remember it. If we drastically change too many things, it starts to blur the line between a remaster and a remake.

I have to give a lot of credit to our art team. They’re world-class. They study the original material very closely, including assets that we sometimes include in things like the Vault. They do everything they can to preserve the integrity of the original experience while still upgrading the visuals.

I’ll use Sin Reloaded as an example. When the trailer went live, some people said, ‘Wow, this looks exactly the same.’ But when you actually compare it, you see that textures, posters, and environments have all been improved.

I almost take that as a compliment. If people can’t immediately tell how much better it looks, it means their memory is aligning with what they’re seeing.

How do you decide which games to remaster?

Grover Wimberly: When it comes to genre, nothing is really off the table.

We’ve done a lot of work with boomer shooters, and we’ll continue to do that as long as we can. But there’s also interest within the team to work on other genres and collaborate with different publishers and developers.

At the same time, there are practical considerations. What rights can we acquire? What source code is available? How willing is the original community to work with us?

We also look at things like mods or gameplay improvements that already exist. Sometimes there are community-made changes that improve the game, and we can bring those creators in to help.

And of course, we have to consider scope—how long the project will take and what’s realistically achievable.

How does community feedback influence your decisions?

Grover Wimberly: Community feedback is very important to us.

We actually have a ‘request and vote’ channel on the Nightdive Discord where people can submit games they want to see remastered. They have to provide context—you can’t just say ‘remaster this’—and then people vote using reactions.

I check that every Friday, and I also get trend reports from it. If a game is consistently requested, I’ll pass that along internally and say, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of interest in this.’

Who knows where that leads, but it’s definitely part of the conversation.

Why is the modding community such an integral part of Nightdive’s work?

Grover Wimberly: A lot of people at Nightdive came from the modding community—especially the Doom community. They’ve spent years working on levels, mods, and improvements to classic games.

Who better to remaster these games than people who have already been working on them?

They’re passionate, and they understand what works. They also bring ideas from adjacent games—like quality-of-life features—that can improve the experience.

We’ve also started integrating modded content directly into our releases. For example, Death Wish was created by someone in the community, and we brought them in so it could become part of the official experience.

We did something similar with Killing Time: Resurrected. Originally, we planned to include the 3DO levels, but we had to cut them to meet our release deadline.

Later, a modding team approached us and said they had remastered those levels. We brought that to management, got approval, and brought developers back onto the project to integrate that content.

That’s something we want to continue doing—working directly with modders and bringing their work into official releases.

For developers looking to break into the industry, what advice would you give?

Grover Wimberly: If you’re a modder, you can absolutely get into the industry.

A lot of people start by creating mods or levels, and those projects can lead directly to opportunities. Some people have worked on mods that eventually became part of official releases.

For me personally, I got into the industry through indie game development.

The key is to keep creating and keep working on what you’re passionate about.”

Is there anything upcoming you’d like to highlight?

Grover Wimberly: Please look forward to Sin Reloaded coming to modern consoles later this year in 2026.

We originally announced it several years ago in collaboration with 3D Realms, but it was put on hold for quite some time.

We’re very happy to have brought it back, and we’re excited to finally release it.

We made a conscious decision not to say ‘coming soon’ in the trailer—we wanted to be clear that it’s actually releasing this year.

Grover Wimberly, Producer and Project Manager at Nightdive

Interview conducted by David Jagneaux

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