A couple thoughts on bringing old games to new hardware…

In 2006, the Jak and Daxter series got its fifth installment: Daxter. It was the first game in the franchise to be developed by someone other than Naughty Dog (though Ready at Dawn’s founders did include Naughty Dog alumni). It was the series’ first midquel, taking place during the time skip at the beginning of Jak II. It was the series’ first game to be on the PSP instead of the PS2, and it was the first game to star Daxter as the main playable character instead of Jak.

Those last two factors go together. In 2006, handheld games were smaller and lesser than console ones. The limits of technology meant that to gain portability, you had to give up scope and scale and graphical fidelity and even some controls (handhelds always had fewer buttons, and it wasn’t until the Vita in 2011 that a handheld came out with dual analog sticks). The PSP was in some ways perceived as the PS2’s more-compact and less-powerful sidekick, so going from PS2 to PSP was like going from Jak to Daxter, and it made sense to embrace that in the game’s design and premise.