This year has been a big year for remakes of old-skool gaming franchises. The announcements of brand new Street Fighter, Prince of Persia and Bionic Commando games has driven many a weathered gamer into a feverish frenzy of glee. Or something to that extent.

The thing is, the games I’m referring to are not Street Fighter IV, Prince of Persia’s cel-shaded return, or even next year’s 3D re-imagination of the original Bionic Commando. I’m talking about the remakes of the original classics which hit the PlayStation Network and Xbox LIVE earlier this year, all of which have been pretty sweet to play.

Hit the jump to see why they’re part of our Top 100 Moments of 2008.

Let’s look at Bionic Commando Rearmed, an HD remake of the NES original. It plays like any old side-scrolling shooter but the gimmick here is that your character – one Nathan “Rad” Spencer – has a bionic arm which contains a nice big grappling hook for, y’know, grappling things. We even got pretty excited way back in January.

While you can merrily charge from left-to-right and blow everyone away in what is unarguably a brightly-colored bout of good old-fashioned shooter fun, you can use said arm to leap about the levels, grab things to throw at people and – after a few upgrades – throw the people themselves. What’s more, it’s set to an ace soundtrack which keeps everything that little bit merry as you go around blowing people up (and one of the songs is called One Man, One Bionic Arm; that’s a game-making feature in itself).

Rearmed is a fantastic old-fashioned side-scroller and the critics agreed, with IGN delivering a whopping 9.4 in their review. As if to confirm that, yes, this game did indeed rock, it only went and sold 130,000 copies in its first week of sale, which is nothing short of unbelievable considering it’s a digital download title.

Rearmed isn’t the only side-scrolling remake that hit the various download stores this year. Hit up page two to read about the other one, and the other retro game that’s doing the rounds with an HD comeback.

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