GOG wants to revive more classic Japanese games on PC: ‘Working with Japanese partners often requires demonstrating both technical capability and cultural understanding’

They may not officially be called Good Old Games any more, but GOG still sells plenty of games that are both old and good alongside new releases like Hollow Knight: Silksong. Speaking to Automaton, senior PR rep Piotr Gnyp emphasized that by saying, “GOG has been doing this for well over a decade, and we’re constantly reaching out to secure iconic games. Sometimes, it takes years. Diablo came to GOG after almost a decade of conversations. Preservation often means knocking on the same doors again and again, hearing ‘no’ most of the time, until one day, it’s finally a ‘yes.'”

That paid off with GOG eventually getting to re-release a handful of Japanese games that were difficult to get hold of in the west like Silent Hill 4: The Room, some of the early Metal Gears, and the OG Castlevanias and Contras. Capcom eventually agreed to let GOG re-release Dino Crisis and the first three Resident Evils, though it took “time, persistence, and trust-building,” Gnyp says. A re-release of Breath of Fire 4 earlier this year was one of the stand-outs of GOG’s preservation initiative launched in late 2024.

“Working with Japanese partners often requires demonstrating both technical capability and cultural understanding. In this case, Capcom treated these launches as full new releases, so we followed a complete QA and certification process, just like we would for a brand-new game.”

Gnyp went on to say that, while sometimes a game’s creators or an external partner is involved at this stage, “in most cases, it’s GOG handling the porting and compatibility work.” Games in the GOG Preservation Program get some extra care and attention, whether they’re packaged with fan-made mods or otherwise altered to run on modern operating systems, have controller support, and generally embrace the modern world.

“Our internal tech team analyzes each game,” Gnyp said, “builds custom wrappers or tools when needed, and thoroughly tests the result. That’s how we make sure the experience is authentic but also practical for today’s players.”

Not every game that makes it to GOG gets to be preserved forever. The first two Warcraft games were pulled by Blizzard, as were Adult Swim games like Westerado and Fist Puncher. Sometimes GOG has to remove a game from sale when it’s delisted for a rights issue and sometimes it’s because the publisher wants to sell it on their own storefront, but recently there’s been a more censorious group trying to get games removed from sale. GOG responded by giving 13 horny games away for free.

“At GOG,” Gnyp said, “as a platform devoted to Good Old Games and videogame preservation, we see it as a game preservation issue. Every year, many games are disappearing, for various reasons. Every game that disappears from distribution is potentially lost to game preservation efforts. It is particularly worrying when games are potentially vanishing due to external pressure.”