Rockstar's original Red Dead Redemption can seem rather humble next to the rootin' tootin' excellence of Red Dead Redemption 2, but it looms larger in my memory, albeit not for the best reasons. The original Xbox 360/PS3 game launched with a tidal wave of bugs, some of them game-ending. One particular collection of technical gremlins trapped me on a farm during the prologue. Having sat through some cutscenes, I found myself at the centre of a strange spacetime distortion redolent of the other world in Neil Gaiman's Coraline. If I tried to leave the farm the simulation slowly broke down, with movement consisting of weird fragmentary teleports.
I saw a distant rider stop-starting through a canyon with his own hat darting through the air behind him. I followed the man for as long as I could, before tumbling through the terrain into uncreated space. Proper Lynchian stuff. Red Dead Redemption 2 had its share of bugs and glitches, but none of them quite as captivating as this. Still, it would have been nice to see the world beyond the farm, and that was my first thought when Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar announced a new Red Dead Redemption port, for release on 17th August. Sadly, however, the port appears to be PS4 and Switch-only for the moment, though a PC release might happen if the stars align.