We’ve had the honor of putting together a 18 minute documentary piece on Sony’s HD re-release of the Jak and Daxter trilogy.  It’s always a treat to go back to Naughty Dog and talk to the people there, and this time around the studio was visited by the founders Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin.  Andy and Jason look back at their time with Naughty Dog and how far the company has come since they departed, all while playing Jak HD in the studios screening room.  Neither had played the game since it’s original release 10 years ago, and seeing it now in HD brought back some powerful memories.

Jak and Daxter return, as crisp and sharp as our memories.

Later on in the segment we take a trip to Mass Media, the studio that handled the HD remastering of the game many considered (Naughty Dog included) impossible to port.  Mass Media has a long history of tackling challenging ports, perhaps most famous for the incredibly rare Starcraft 64.  Naughty Dog didn't just use every trick in the book when they made Jak, they wrote a whole new book with tricks no one had ever seen.  This made for an extremely complex porting process that became the most difficult project MM had ever handled, giving them a whole new perspective on a game they loved when it was originally released and the people who made it.

We love the platformer genre, and we especially love the concept of HD remakes.  Ever since talking with Paddy Burns at 4J studios about their Perfect Dark HD remake for Xbox Live Arcade (during the Minecraft Doc), we’ve salivated over the opportunity to cover the process.  We we’re even able to examine a bit of what made platformer games fun, and why they seem to have all but disappeared on the current generation of hardware.  You’ll also get to hear Naughty Dog talking about what a huge inspiration Mario 64 was, a kind of honesty and admiration for a competitors product you don’t see very often in promotional videos.

This piece premiered on G4.com and was showcased on Attack of the Show, and currently you can watch it on the official PlayStation Blog Youtube channel here.