I have a few thoughts here, so bear with me as I wander from topic to topic...
Tegyrius (Clayton) and Eddie are both correct when they say that the Cold War setting isn't much of a drawcard for many gamers these days. Okay, I'm not doing market research on it or anything but I'm involved with RPGs, console games & computer games and participating in a few blogs/forums that deal with all three of them and with a range of participant ages. I base my statements on the comments made by people in those forums and some of them are not big thinkers (when you have 20-yr olds thinking that if the apocalypse comes then they should stockpile bottlecaps because obviously that will be useful as a form of money...)
The games that are produced by people with big budgets obviously will get more fans and those companies tend to focus on fantasy or horror genres so the big RPGs these days are obviously fantasy or horror, military sims are still a niche market just like post-apoc games are.
The military and post-apoc genres don't sell RPGs as well as fantasy does even when they do have a big budget. It doesn't matter how good your game might be, the market for those types of games is too small for most big publishers to bother with these days.
While a Cold War setting is an interesting aside for some console/computer gamers, it's largely irrelevant to their game play - most of them just want to "blow shit up". When it comes to console games, there is a very strong tendency to choose old (as in a generation past or more) enemies because they aren't seen as potentially offensive or politically incorrect - hence why many games feature Nazis, easy to hate so therefore nobody will object to the game player destroying them in the hundreds.
It's the same reason why zombies feature in so many movies this decade, they're a faceless enemy and thereby
1. avoid the labels the media uses to demonize any current enemy we may have and
2. avoids offending anyone from the relevant group if the game treats them in a derogatory manner. We've all heard someone somewhere say that because the terrorists are Muslim, then all Muslims are terrorists - which is a patently absurd statement for many reasons but the "little thinkers" like their sound bites.
What does all that really mean? That console games are driven by the 'best formula' for making money, money gets put into flashy graphics and sexy guns because they draw the crowd - offend nobody but appeal to everybody. If they made Twilight: 2000 as a computer game these days, they'd remove everything that makes the RPG interesting and it would be just the same as every other 'shooter' military game out there because of that mentality.
Story telling is an aside in most console & computer games because at the end of the day "BOOM - headshot" is more interesting for many players than the actual background (except in the most general terms). You won't appeal to many younger gamers unless you can draw them in with something that appears relevant to
their idea of entertainment as it is today.
As for education, it is the cure to many ills but most corporations don't like people being too well educated because then they might make an
informed choice instead of just buying the crap that the corps want to sell you. Governments avoid education for exactly the same reason but in the sense that they don't want people making an informed vote.
And finally my waffling comes to end...
It sounds to me that some of you are talking about Aftermath... build your own end of the world and then play through the ruins.
Ultimately, a remake of Twilight: 2000 is not going to be commercially successful, not because the Cold War will or won't sell but because the game itself is based in the two genres that are just not big sellers with today's audience.