Jak and Daxter was a legacy franchise that never found its way out of the sixth generation. PlayStation has been strictly selective on which IPs to greenlight for the PlayStation 5, giving no spotlight for one of the major platformers in the past due to its lack of interest, despite some developers wanting to support the franchise.
Sanzaru Games was a studio that used to revitalize older PlayStation franchises for the market, such as Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. Travis Howe was a senior animator who revealed previous plans to remake Jak and Daxter with a video of an early build of remake. He brought his team together in a meeting to finalize a proposal for PlayStation in the latter half of 2019, which never earned approval.
The video was made to portray the earliest moment in the game when Jak and Daxter came upon the vat of Dark Eco. The remade video followed its PS2 counterpart scene with greater visual improvements, along with smaller, realistic details to make the characters more expressive and fluid, especially Daxter. Its presentation could imply a more faithful game design with enhanced graphics, more similar to Crash N Sane Trilogy than Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
Even though Sanzaru Games was shut down in early 2026 by Meta, Travis wishes for his post to spread more awareness to fans to influence enough interest for PlayStation to take notice.
“Although the remaster wasn’t to be, I’m really proud of how it came together!; (Btw, if you still want a remake, like and share and let’s get the word out)”
