Likely Normal

There’s something deeply ironic about firing up a remastered version of a game from your childhood, only to discover it now requires more storage space than your entire middle school computer lab could handle. We’ve reached peak absurdity in game preservation, where classic titles keep getting re-released in increasingly bloated forms – like a nostalgic sweater that somehow grows ten sizes each time you take it out of storage. Remember when you could fit a dozen PS1 games on a memory card smaller than a Post-It note? Now the definitive edition of those same games comes with a 50GB install that includes 4K textures for every individual polygon.

This phenomenon follows an immutable law of modern gaming physics: the older a game gets, the more digital real estate it demands. Take Skyrim – a game that’s been ported to everything from refrigerators to pregnancy tests. What started as a reasonably sized 6GB adventure in 2011 has somehow swollen to a 50GB behemoth in its latest iteration, despite containing essentially the same content. At this rate, the 2030 Skyrim: Anniversary Deluxe Diamond Edition will require its own dedicated SSD just to render the enhanced bread physics. The same alchemy transforms compact classics into storage hogs – the original Resident Evil 4 fit neatly on a 1.5GB GameCube disc, while its 2023 remake eats up 60GB like it’s training for a competitive eating tournament.

What exactly fills all this space? Mostly the gaming equivalent of empty calories: uncompressed audio files for sound effects that were charmingly lo-fi in their original 8-bit form, texture packs that make blocky PS2 characters look like they’ve been dipped in wax, and enough behind-the-scenes documentary footage to make the Criterion Collection blush. Modern development tools seem to treat retro games like a college student packing for spring break – just throw everything in haphazardly and hope it fits. The result? A Crash Bandicoot remake that’s somehow larger than the entire original trilogy combined, or a GTA trilogy “upgrade” that bloats three simple PS2 games into a 50GB storage crisis.

As we march toward a future where the original Super Mario Bros. will inevitably get a 300GB Ultimate Immersive Experience edition complete with ray-traced question blocks and a real-time physics engine for Mario’s mustache, perhaps we should pause to ask: is this progress, or just digital hoarding? Our hard drives weep under the weight of these so-called optimized versions, while emulators prove daily that the originals could run on a calculator. Yet we keep buying them, caught in an endless cycle of nostalgia and storage management. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to delete some family photos to make room for the 150GB Final Fantasy VII remake – because nothing says preserving gaming history like requiring a NASA supercomputer to relive it.