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?

Comments

I would say pretty close.

[Anonymous Coward]

Games are very different from movies/TV shows. Alot of times what makes a game is the look and feel of the game, not the story. For a perfect example of this look at the quake series. Eventually they just had a paragraph on the inside cover of the cd booklet that said something like "uh, there are monsters, you have a badass gun. get to it."

The trick is to preserve those traits that make the game. A perfect example is the mario bros. series transition to 3D. Its completely different, but still has the same surreal characters and platform jumping fun factor that made all its predecessors great.

An example of a game changing too much is civ 3. I LOVED civ2, and I suppose all I was really looking for was an add on pack for civ 2 when I bought civ 3. I loved certain aspects of it, the expanded diplomacy, culture, and automated workers for example, but they made certain aspects of the game so tedious (like defending borders). In general, the game just lost alot for me, it felt like I was playing a game like civ 2, but something very different and not belonging to the series.

Sometimes remakes just completely miss the boat though. I saw the remake of the original final fantasy, which was essentially the same game w/ updtated graphics and sound, but they just totally missed it. The 8 bit graphics and sound are part of what made that game so great. I completely lost the nostalgic aspect of playing it.

When is a Remake not a Remake?

[iainl]

When its a Sequel. Most Hollywood "remakes" of previously Hollywood films (with the clear and obvious exception of Gus Van Sandt's Psycho) are just retelling the same basic plot as the original, but doing it in a very different way.

In the game world, however, if it isn't practically exactly the same game with maybe updated graphics (if you're lucky), then it'll get called a sequel anyway. By the above Hollywood logic, every EA soccer game since about '99 should be called a remake, and the same pretty much goes for every other Sports series and half the FPS games as well. There is more difference between New Dawn Of The Dead and Dawn Of The Dead Classic than there is between any Crazy Taxi release, for instance.

My take...

[Firehawke]

Well, I'd have to say that Twin Snakes ALMOST got it right. It's good enough to be a worthy successor, but it definitely has a few oddities. The complete lack of VR missions was completely incomprehensible, for one thing, and the seemingly random framerate stutters are irritating, but the _massive_ AI improvement, graphical touchups, and ability to use MGS2 moves really does add to the game.

Now, if only they'd redo the first two Metal Gear games in that style.. it'd be nice to see a real US release of MG2: Solid Snake.

Another example of how to do it right would be the Mario All-Stars SNES title, with the graphics and audio completely reworked but the underlying game engines left alone.

One that really DIDN'T quite stand up as well is the Rockman Complete Works. The first three games in the set didn't really add ANYTHING worthwhile at all. The latter three at least have remixed music as an option, but the games really could have used a graphic overhaul. Since a compressed, parial ROM image has been discovered on the discs in question, it's pretty obvious they chose to go with a partial emulation with the audio as XA streams.

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.

Sequel Bonus

[robbway]

One of the nicest things to find in a sequel/remake is when the original game is included, like on Metroid. In these cases the game is emulated, and that's usually fine as long as it was play tested.

So I typically like remakes with the originals, and sequels with the originals. One game that shows this is Pokemon Coliseum. The battles mimic the Gameboy, except with 3D characters and special effects worthy of Gamecube. It's a shame with this game, as it was with Pokemon Stadium (N64), that they simply didn't emulate the Pokemon Sapphire/Ruby in 3D with the same Pokemon models. Yes, the graphics would have square borders around areas, but it'd be a nice twist on the game play.

A Core Idea

[miyako]

I think Capcom set the bar miles higher than it had been before with their remake of Resident Evil for gamecube.
The thing is, I don't think this had nearly as much to do with the graphical and audio improvements as one would think, nor the added secrets or changed puzzles.
The difference between the RE remake and a number of other remakes is the feeling of "This is how it was intended to be the first time".
Although a movie and not a game, I am going to contrast this with the recent Dawn of the Dead remake because it is fresh in my memory.
The original Resident Evil was an early PS game, and suffered from lack of horsepower when it was released, and still managed to convey the atmosphere of sheer terror. When the remake was done for the gamecube, Capcom took this core idea of terror and re-invented it on the new technology.
They took things they had learned from the sequals to Resident Evil (and the bigger budget) and used those to enhance the game.
What Capcom did was to take the seed idea and build a new game around it.
In the new Dawn of the Dead, instead of a feeling of "this is how it was intended to be the first time", one simply gets the feeling "this is exactly what I'm proud of Romero for NOT making".
Instead of taking a core idea, a few elements of sheer terror and building a new game/movie around those elements, the director chose to take the most obvious elements and wrap them around a completely different set of core ideas.
In Movies, Games, hell even software revisions, this is the primary difference between a good remake and a shit remake.
A good remake will put a new UI (for lack of a better term) over an existing Kernel (again for a lack of a better term), whereas a shit remake attempts to transfer the old UI onto a new Kernel.
Another good analogy would be, a good remake is putting a tie-dye candy shell on M&Ms, a bad remake is putting M&M shells around peices of catfood.
Unfortunately the latter is much more common due to the idea that "this time around we can do it better" without giving thought to the fact that by changing things at the heart of a game, for every bad thing thats fixed by new experiences, a good thing is potentially lost because the original developers "didn't know $foo was a bad idea when they implimented it and it turned out to be awesome" but the new developers "know better".

New Original Ideas.. and cars. ...strange mix...

[Roman_(ajvvs)]

The concept of new original ideas isn't dead, it's the absence of new original ideas in successful implementations that's the problem.

I'm suddenly reminded of concept cars in the auto industry. Designers are given leeway and resources to design and build a concept car to try out new ideas, to expand the horizon of thinking. Most cars disappear into obscurity and are expected to do so, but elements of these innovative creations show up in what you and I (want to) drive around today.

Something else that came to mind is the PT cruiser. a 'throwback' design that parallels to a certain extent remakes of classic games. Another example is the new VW beetle. Both cars with very old designs, which have been updated for the new times with a mixture of instantly recognizable traits and new technology. There are really only two or three major car companies in the world, but the industry is structured to promote innovation in defined areas and in structured ways.

Rather than looking at standard manufacturing or business processes for ways to develop great games, why not look at something like the car industry? I'm not suggesting mimicking the industry is the answer, but you have to admit that there are things car makers have learnt, which games makers can apply to their creations.