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How Should Games Be Remade For A New Market?
Thanks to GamerDad for its editorial discussing some of the problems of videogame remakes. The author, having recently played Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for GameCube ahead of playing the original, comments "I never really came to grips with that game either until I played the VR missions in [the original Metal Gear Solid" He goes on to point out: "Never assume that the audience for your remake is the same as the audience for the original. Hollywood has been remaking a lot of old movies and TV shows in the last few years but they're certainly not expecting audiences to know those plots inside and out to the point of leaving out crucial bits. That's kind of the situation I think Silicon Knights and Konami got in with leaving out the VR missions (or something similar) in Twin Snakes." But he concludes by arguing that 'what makes a remake most worthwhile is when time is spent reworking the game to make things 'different'." So exactly how reverent should a remake be?
Actually, there were about 40 VR missions in the original MGS, but they certainly weren't as replayable as the actual "VR Missions" disc.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
If I told you about Mary, but left out the Little Lamb, do I even have the right to call it the same story? Adding content is one thing, so long as it fits the premise of the game (like the extra dungons in the Link's Awakening and Link to the Past remakes)
I'll admit there are things they can just take out (like the blue staff from Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, or fourty or so player characters from Chrono Cross), but they never take out the useless/pointless junk. They take out important things, change defining bits of dialog (Square showed great wisdom in not fixing the "You spoony bard!" mistranslation, or they'd have rabid fanboys burning their homes in the night), remove great plot insights, entire sections of the game sometimes, and usually cover it up by adding some completely random and unrelated bonus level that makes no sense in the overall game.
As for the sports titles, they fit the term sequel much better. If you think of it in sports terms, each title works like a season, which follows the previous title/season in the series.
Although, in sports themselves, each season is more of a patch to the previous season (same graphics, same engine, same effects, just shuffled some players around and added/dropped a few), with the occasional expansion pack (like the down line, puck highlighting, or a new brand of jersey).
Titles that absolutely borked it? Final Fantasy 4-6. Bad mode-7 emulation, hideous loading times, and tinny audio. FF5 even got a hideous translation out of it.
Damn right. But at least having paid for the remakes I feel more comfortable about playing the SNES originals on my PC - including the vastly superior RPGe translation of FF5.
Glad to see him mention the desire for an X-Com remake. I still don't understand why they don't do something like this - surely it would sell well with all the people who loved it the first time around, and would love to see it redone even better.
Remove the bugs that never got fixed (the difficulty bug, for example, or the base defense missions with sealed off sections). Enhance it in GOOD ways (ie not making it real-time or some inanity like that), with even the options to play it with all the enhancements off, making it just a fancier looking and bug-free version of the original, and you'd make many gamers happy.
I'm still suprised we haven't had enough fans of the game get together and code up a freeware clone of the game.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
A great example of a bad remake is the new 3d Castlevania for ps2 a lot of people got the impression that the problem was the leap to 3d, but the actual problem was the "return to form" castlevania evolved with each title to the awarded new Castlevania:SOTN format that we got in the PSX (multiple weapons, inventories, metroid style replayable non linear levels,etc) and the gba remakes, unfortunately they ignored that and tried the same format of the original castlevania, obviously the result is something that is considered dull by today standards: one weapon, no inventory, linear levels. (The same happened to TMNT but for sanity's sake lets not go to there)
Curiously enough Ninja Gaiden ( a remake of a much simpler in form game) decided to use a format similar to SOTN (inventory, several weapons, replayable non linear levels) while keeping some of the elements that made the series famous (extreme dificulty, teathrical cutscenes, over dramatic story) the result is a game that is considered very varied and well done by today standards.
I dont know, maybe the trick for a good remake is to add the "commodities" current games have with the "flavor" old games used to have.
Anyway I wouldnt call twin snakes "a remake" is more likely a port from the PSX version. And taking that into account it should had the features the original had. The vr missions were a "side game" you could do if you got stuck in the main game.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
To stay strictly on talking remakes and not sequels, here are the characteristics I prefer in remakes:
1) Same software, better hardware. Like, Gameboy Advance Namco games, it's best if the better hardware has an advantage over it's previous incarnation, but sometimes it's just a matter of availability.
2) Cheaper. Activision Classics series are games that wouldn't be worth much today, so they cram a lot of them on one cart.
3) Better Sound and Graphics. All of the incarnations of Lunar: Silver Star Story keep messing with these, to good effect.
4) Expanded gameplay, footage, levels, level editor. Old game with bonus modes, a new ability, interstitials, levels beyond the end, or unlimited play on a previously limited game.
5) Availability. Releasing unreleased games, finished or not. Bloody Freeway for Activision? Maybe Thrill Kill will come out legitimately?
Things I don't like:
1) Bad emulation. Sometimes emulators run a bit fast, a bit slow, or totally different AI. Atari Anniversary collection on Dreamcast emulated rasters poorly.
2) Inappropriate Content. Fighting games on Gameboy are almost always bad because of integrated controller with too few buttons. Another example is Japanese Dance Dance Revolution games on Gameboy Color.
And of course, I only have myself to blame if the game isn't as fun as I remembered.