Image: bitobit
As we recently reported, Commodore (not that one, the other one) has just remade Taito’s iconic 1988 platformer The NewZealand Story for Steam, and now that the game is available, we’re seeing some early impressions hit the web – and they’re far from promising.
Ant / Tepidsnake has given an excellent breakdown of where the remake goes wrong, and it’s quite a depressing thread.
“This is more a case of a game that’s imitating an old game but with almost no understanding of how that old game works or what’s good about it,” begins the thread, before picking apart issues with collision detection, maps that haven’t been changed to take into account new mechanics, missing elements from stages, hazards which blend with background detail and much, much more. Even the much-hyped new content fails to hit the mark.
hi, i played the newzealand story untold adventure on steam, the remake of taito’s 1988 classic arcade platformer, it’s very bad!! i was gonna save this for a stream but it’s too much of a downer
so here’s a thread of things that are bad about it
— Ant (@tepidsnake.bsky.social) 2026-02-28T10:11:30.940Z
“I know it’s vague, but this remake is just soulless, not a soulful bone in its body,” adds Ant / Tepidsnake.
The NewZealand Story Untold Adventure is available now on Steam. It currently has four user reviews, three of which are positive, while Tepidsnake’s is the only negative review at the time of writing.
Let us know if your viewpoint is more positive by posting a comment below.
Damien has been writing professionally about tech and video games since 2007 and oversees all of Hookshot Media’s sites from an editorial perspective. He’s also the editor of Time Extension, the network’s newest site, which – paradoxically – is all about gaming’s past glories.