Sam “Serious” Stone is back, and he’s “as big, bold, and bad as he ever was!” Yup, Serious Sam’s debut adventure, The First Encounter, is on its way to PC and Xbox Live Arcade, complete with a bit of high definition spit and polish.

Developed by Croteam - the guys behind the original - using their proprietary Serious Engine 3, the game dubbed Serious Sam HD is a re-imagining of the award-winning 2001 shooter. Roman Ribaric, CEO of Croteam said, “The fans of Sam have never gone away and have been lobbying us hard to do this, so we are really excited to be able to confirm that Sam will be back as big, bold and bad as he ever was and we are really stoked about introducing Sam to new gamers as well as his loyal fans.”

Taking place in various ancient civilisations, the original Serious Sam was seriously bonkers. Looks like the “re-imagining” has done little to change this, with the devs promising that the game stays true to its source material. That means subtle goes out the window and in comes a ton of crazy enemies, outrageous weapons and massive bosses. We’re glad the man with “nipples like pencil erasers” is back.

While the press release omits release date and pricing details, Eurogamer are reporting a “late summer” release on XBLA (1200 Microsoft Points), while Eurogamer Germany point towards a Fall 2009 PC ship date.

The first screenshots of the game have been released to accompany the announcement, check them out below.