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A Case for Video Game Remakes
The MTV Games site has up a talk with Morgan Grey, the producer on the recent title Tomb Raider: Anniversary. Anniversary is a remake of the now-classic original Tomb Raider title and (perhaps not unsurprisingly) Grey makes an argument to Stephen Totilo that game remakes are a way of preserving gamer culture. "'We have all witnessed remakes of movies that have been modernized for us to digest that came out 50 years ago before we were born,' he said as a point of comparison. If games are to achieve the same timelessness, the classics need to be easily accessible. But anyone who has tried to play certain 3-D gaming classics from even just five years ago -- let alone tried to get someone who didn't play them at the time to put up with outdated controls, graphics or camera-work -- know that it's hard to appreciate them." Grey goes on to point out that this is less true of 2D titles; he's primarily talking about 3D games here. Any titles you'd like to see remade, like Anniversary, or even re-envisioned ala Prince of Persia?
Bards Tale, Wasteland, Ultima 4 and 5 would be cool. Some of the old TSR gold box games. all they would need to do is art and sound, the game/story/etc are all done. Mech Warrior too. man the list could go on and on
Video Games don't need to get remade.
Let's take Super Mario Brothers. Now let's improve the graphics, the sound, tweak the controls to better fit today's control schemes, and what do you get?
Super Mario Brothers 3. Or Super Mario World. Or Mario 64. Or... you get the point.
Unlike movies, where sequels usually just continue the storyline from what came before, video game sequels (should, at least) add new stuff, improvements, updates, etc. If you want the 'Tomb Raider' experience, you play the most recent one. If you want the 'Civilization' experience, you play Civ 4. If you want a good FPS on your X-Box 360, you play the latest remake of Halo... they call it Halo 3.
And so on and so forth.
Of course someone who has made 800 versions of one crappy game for the last 15 years would encourage a world where game remakes are popular. Tomb Raider games are TERRIBLE. The only redeeming quality is polyogonal tits and that's only a purchase-worthy game quality if you're ten years old.
I'd settle for certain gameboy games getting redone as SuperNES-quality sidescrollers. Metroid II tops the list. I'd like to play a lot of them, but just wouldn't be able to put up with the graphics. Unfortunately, when these things get remade they tend to wind up no the newer Nintendo handheld. That was OK when it was the GBA, as I could use a gameboy player (did that for Metroid Zero Mission). But I wonder if I'll ever play DS games due to lack of a good way to play them on a TV.
How about Duke Nukem? :P
Wing Commander
Ultima IV-VII
Autoduel
Grim Fandango (Residual should take care of this)
Bionic Commando
Combat (on XBox Live!)
Mail Order Monsters (what's the last fighting game you remember that included tactical nuclear weapons?)
Archon
I'd like to Tales of Phantasia get a full blown remake a la the Tales of Destiny Remake
Oooo... I'd almost love to see some of the classic Lucasfilm Games (NOT LucasArts..).... Zak McCraken for instance. Maybe also some of the ole' Sierra games like the Space Quest series.... And maybe a side of Search For the King for simple nostalgia sakes. ....Of course, Have to do the Sierra games with their original Typing interfaces since point-and-grope (oops... not LSL) interfaces take the intelligence outa the play requirements. Still think LucasFilm was the only company to ever do a useable Point-n-click interface in a graphic adventure...
I just had this discussion last weekend with a friend of mine about how I'd love to see an update of the X-Wing and Tie Fighter games to include a 3D engine. Definitely something I think alot of geeks (especially) would buy. Of course though, it would be yet ANOTHER way that George Lucas would get me to part with some of my money.
On the DS. Make it happen. Now.
#1 on my wish list- X-COM: Enemy Unknown (or X-COM: UFO Defense, depending on location).
I have a few, but number one would be Syndicate.
Azural - instrumentals
Man, remember that old 8-bit game? It'd be great if it was remade in 3D! Perhaps with some cell shading or maybe link would live and fight in a darker world. One can only hope...
Wing Commander 1,2,3...after that it got silly...just the stuff killing the Cats.
X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, don't mess with a good thing too much just bring the Graphics up to date.
Star Wars Pod Racer, this was a fun distraction game, but it never really worked past Win 98.
Magic Carpet 1,2
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Books aren't remade. It's not like someone sits around says "Hey, a Tale of Two Cities would be great... but let's set it in the middle east instead of Europe!" Obviously authors are inspired by each other, and that's fine, but you don't get wholesale remakes.
I wouldnt mind seeing Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link remade as a 3D Zelda. Its currently the most unappreciated of all the series titles. A Rebirth as a 3-D hack'n'slasher could be very cool.
You wouldn't even need new technology to do these -- I'd love to see them implemented in Bioware's Infinity Engine. The Baldur's Gate II version of the engine runs well today, even on Vista. All the core game mechanics, spells, character and creature models are taken care of. You'd have to translate all the writing and scripting, and then the hard part would be creating artwork for all the different game areas.
I don't necessarily need some of my old favorites remade, but I'd like to see them fixed so I can play them again. I have too many games that won't run on current operating systems, or where the last patch never made it out of the development before the company folded. Feel free to make a sequel, but I'd like to see them include a fully-patched version of the original game as well.
That's one game i'd love to see remade. Westwood's engine had so much potential. If the engine was open, we would see tons of custom made adventures and dungeons.
There's a guy making an EOB2 remake, but he's working all alone, and I doubt he'll ever get it finished.
The original nintendo version, mis-named and all. No gaming experience has ever equaled the first time i played Dragon Warrior. Do it up in 3D like the current Zelda offerings but keep the story, map and bosses as is. Sweet!
We willna be fooled again!
Sierra remade some of their original successful adventure games to take advantage of what was then new technology (Space Quest I, King's Quest I, LS Larry 1). In my opinion they were okay, but I still preferred the original release. The ambiguity of the text commands left some mystery as to what could be done in the game, and the blockiness of the "old" graphics left some things to the imagination. It was a nice middle ground between text-based and a clear cartoonish picture.
Seriously, Don't take anything I say seriously.
I would be great to play Starcraft 1 with SC2-like graphics. I can see it now:
Greater than 640*480 resolution
3D Graphics
Lips synched with audio.
and maybe a few SC2 goodies in StarEdit.
Wing Commander X-Wing or Tie-Fighter Quake
Pong.
Give us a choice of paddle color. White or Grey?
Smash TV. In the form of a FPS. Big money, big prizes? I LOVE it!
Master of Orion
I still play it all the time.
Out of the box it should play _exactly_ like the old game with shiny new graphics. Maybe fix the last remaining bugs (combat teleporters, ancient derelict event etc) but leave the gameplay unchanged. However, (big however), make the game as mod-able as possible (something like civ 4 maybe). Make it so we can add races, technologies, spacehip graphics as required, and you would have the ultimate game for me.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Now some formats like shooters are general enough that you don't really need remakes, just updates to the idea. If the story is good enough, a sequel would be justified.
Some games are pretty much perfect as-is and do not need sequels, just graphic updates. Chess is good enough but I don't think anybody would argue about buying an update for prettier graphics once a decade. Similarly, there was some legitimate fun with VGA remakes of classic arcade games like VGA Joust. I also remember an aquatic-themed Pac-Man remake that has stunning 800x600 graphics and was a real joy to play. The Dreamcast version of Soul Caliber was fighting game perfection. Any changes made to it could only make it worse -- I would be more than happy to pay for a graphics update on a newer gaming system and leave it at that. Other games I would love to see remade with mostly a graphics update are X-Com and Syndicate. They were great!
Oddly enough, there are some games that simply should not be adapted into something other than it is. The two that come to mind are Mario and Sonic. They are both 2D platformers. There is simply no call for making them 3D, it ruins the feel of the game. Sonic on the DS has 3D elements but they're all rendered for a 2D presentation, just like the original games -- you only move in two dimensions. That game is a frickin' blast but also proves I really suck at Sonic. The 3D version makes control of that blue blur even more difficult and much death results. Sonic was 2D and should have remained 2D. Mario 64 likewise did not feel very Mario-ish.
There are exceptions to this rule. GTA started out as a top-down 2D game and was even better in 3D.
Given today's sequelitis, the only games truly in need of a remake are the ones that have been essentially forgotten. We're still getting Final Fantasies but Ultima is dead. Wing Commander croaked at Prophecy and we're very unlikely to see another. In such cases, it's probably just simpler to create a brand new game and let it be known that it's a spiritual successor such as Freelancer for WC, Armed Assault for Flashpoint, Strategic Commander for Total Annihilation, etc.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
That said, I can't think of a single game that I would like remade. It's difficult to think of movies that deserve a respectful remake. There are several franchises that I would like to see new installations for however. Battletoads, Dinosaurs For Hire, and Rock 'n' Roll Racing all jump to mind.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
It was called "Archon Ultra". Though the raw power of the units got changed in that version, so it's not a 1:1 remake.
cronotrigger; ff7 (but this time truly for PC. half-assed playstation ports need not apply)
There's definitely some good shooters from the 90's that would be ripe for a remake:
Strife
Greed
Realms of the Haunting
These were all sort of sleepers - but had really cool environments and atmoshpere. Strife and Realms of the Haunting were especially good. Damn - I wonder if Realms of the Haunting will run under wine? Greed gets points for coming up with a story that let you play the role of a cow headed space pirate.
I'd like to see System Shock DS.
-- Chapman's Observation #1: Nothing is ever simple
Looking at responses, a big factor would be how good the storyline was. Was the storyline really good enough to bring back to modern audiences?
Now, look at games like Pool of Radiance and the direct sequels. By the standards of the time, and even today, the storylines work well enough to bring them back. Because the size of the areas were so small by the standards of today, the levels would need to be redesigned to make them worth playing again. The entire city where Pool of Radiance was played in, if taken directly into a modern engine, would be the size of just one area of a modern game. The storyline would not need to be touched, but the scale of things would need to be re-worked to make things seem interesting.
There are some games that would be nice to see. Betrayal at Krondor would make for a great re-make because it was so story driven that with a new engine it could be brought in without needing a lot of new features. There have been some remakes out there done by the community, like FreeCiv and free Sim City clones that were close enough to the original to keep the feel of the original.
There were some great games like Starflight 1 and 2, Alien Legacy(many people have never heard of it), Dungeon Master, and many others that really were different.
Then, you have games that were a lot of fun that many people have never paid much attention to. Populous: The Beginning was a real time strategy game that did what other RTS games just refused to do, deviate from the design of Warcraft 2. The difference in Pop: TB was that instead of just dumping resources into making units from nothing, your people would reproduce(as long as there was housing), and then you would have them train and turn into the unit you wanted them to become. The sad thing is that DirectX support was a bit too weak to let me continue playing without feeling that the game was running in software emulation mode.
Why not just use ScummVM? As the name suggests, it supports pretty much every LucasArts/Films SCUMM adventure, from MM1 to Curse of Monkey Island (GF and Escape from MI were non-SCUMM), but it also supports Sierra AGI games and others. Pretty much everything you asked for is covered by ScummVM, so long as you can find a copy of the game to play.
Master of Magic!
Apparently there was one made. It's called "Mystic Ark".
Insert Sig Here
> Grey goes on to point out that this is less true of 2D titles; he's primarily talking about 3D games here.
Not necessarily. While this may be true of things like tetris or a block-bustout or pong type game, neither Lode Runner nor Pitfall seemed too good in their more modern reincarnations. They had lost their charm somehow.
And things like Quake also lost their charm in versions II, to say nothing of III and IV.
I have my own ideas on Quake -> Quake II. The management went the wrong way in many decisions.
- They got rid of rocket jumping as an abomination, then added it back in, as a hack, rather than as a natural result of a good physics.
- The rocket launcher's launch was whiney instead of a good powerful pop.
- The grenade launcher launched a glowing sweet potato, rather than a cool grenade with dual glowing red rings around it.
- Furthermore, they, wrongly, listened to some whiney players who, get this, didn't want it bouncing around so they could have more accurate placement. Great. Instead of launching a wild metal thing bouncing around g'donk-g'donk-g'donk-g'donk, now it ejected a cross between a sweet potato and a turd that plopped there.
- The cool grappling hook was now a motorized, mechanical monstrosity with a whiney motor.
- Evil witch symbol pentagram of protection changed to a shield to, presumably, avoid complaints by Christian groups. The less said about this bastardization the better.
Half of that's sound effects. What part of Trent Reznor-knew-what-he-was-doing didn't you guys get?!?!?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It was basically a game of colonising the planets of the Solar System, the planetary moons also, and mining them to produce ships, weapons and new technology. All the while, a race of evil types were plotting their revenge against you.
The nice thing was that it was very well paced. You started off manually flying shuttles from the Earth to your moonbase bringing up ores to your Moon factory - and just as it started to get repetitive, you developed an autopilot and could then program the shuttle to carry on automatically.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I personally can't wait for Street Fighter 2 HD, here's a graphic comparison of Akuma. I don't even have a PS2 or XBox and am excited about this release.
It seems like a lot of franchises are going dead due to the passing of the rights from one developer to another. This is why some sequels that fans are hoping for go unmade. I suspect the same would be true for remakes.
That being said, I'd love a System Shock 1 remake. I just recently replayed the game on modern hardware and was stunned by how well it had held up graphically for a 13 year old title. And the story and gameplay is great. I think remakes are useful only when there is a storyline worth preserving (more like movies in that regard)
Trust me... Know about ScummVM... and it's a good compromise for what we have available now. But part of the issue is finding those old Lucasfilm games. Don't know about you... but when was the last time you saw a legit copy of Zak McCrakken you could buy? Or even Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Either the Adventure... or the Action game...) And then, there is the forgotten treasure from them which I would LOVE to see remade in this day and age. Loom
I also liked Racing Destruction Set. I'm still waiting for a new racing game that involves being able to make all sorts of tracks in all sorts of gravity. Just the thought of flying off the track at the right angle to get further ahead in the game or even on a faster track has alure to a certain degree of us. And if that doesn't settle it, imagine allowing you to upload your tracks onto the net, and voting to show the best tracks. Not even counting netplay racing vs each other. Is there even a netplay racing game everyone plays yet?
God spoke to me.
Remakes have already been done by fans... Some are really impressive.
http://www.agdinteractive.com/ (King Quest 1 and 2)
Rygar? Mike Tyson's punchout? (yes, w/ tyson) 1st metal gear, too.
-%cleversaying%
Because the idea of a remake isn't to play the exact same game over again on a more modern platform. The idea is to take the opportunity to avail yourself of the capabilities of modern hardware, which usually means improved graphics and sound along with minor tweaks and bug fixes, but might also mean the addition of new content or reworked game mechanics while retaining the "spirit" of the original.
I would definitely pay good money for a modernized Quake I.
Quake I is still one of the most fun and 'arcadey' feeling 3D shooters. I actually just reinstalled it a week or so ago and I've been having a blast. Nothing I've played since it came out has equaled it in terms of its tight feel and pure arcade style fun. No other game has ever quite captured the awesome feel of its rocket- and grenade-jumping, nor the ridiculously fun turning-in air Mario-style control. Not to mention the beefy and raw sound effects.
Painkiller almost recaptured what Quake I had, but it was unfortunately a bug-riddled rush job.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the arcade version for NES. Those old two dimensional side-scrollers were great, and there's really something to be said for the simplicity.
Oh, and while we're at it, bring back the Konami Code.
... but I would love to see updated versions of Xenogears and Vagrant Story. I know FFXII was close to vagrant story, but there was a great deal of custimazation in it that I miss. The near endless gameplay did carry over well, but it wasn't the same feel. Xenogears on the otherhand was probably my first PS1 RPG. It had an amazingly overcomplicated story line, but I loved the battle system, and charicter interactions. Xenogears was probably one of the most in depth stories i've dealt with outisde of a novel.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
Metroid Zero Mission was the original Metroid remade for the GBA. Graphics were greatly enhancedm, maps changed a bit as did the game play, but the story stayed the same. This is a great example of a classic game remade for the next generation consoles (granted GBA is old news now). I'd like to see a remake of Chrono Trigger. There was once a fan made remake in progress, but Square shut them down (see Chrono Trigger Resurection http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/). -Dom
LOOM
Now THIS was a classic game, with the unique interface of using sound and music to interact with the objects around you. I seem to recall hearing that the game unfortunately was stuck in some sort of legal licensing limbo between Lucas* Games and the old defunct Microprose, which is why we haven't even seen the impressive Multimedia-PC version since it's original release.
Why can't I relive the adventures of Bobbin Threadbare?!
I second on the bad example. One thing I'd be interested in seeing is a remake of games with the same basic controls, but a lot of extra levels... or a level editor and let the community do the work. For games like Super Mario Bros. have the same controls, just make 50 more levels. New tracks for car racing games, etc. I used to love playing the Need for Speed series but got tired of the same old tracks.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Just update the graphics, fix the rule loopholes, and give a rip about the userbase etc... That would be a remake I would like to see.
Shogo because I can't get the damn thing to play well on XP, and my Voodoo3 is no longer functioning - so my win98 box is lacking a card.
Blood because the sequel was such a disappointment.
I didn't want to leave this blank.
Put your sig in the sig, so most of us can turn it off. Your sig makes you sound stupid and makes me want to block you. Ididot.
Cheers,
AC
Ghosts'n Goblins
Shinobi
Twin Cobra
R-Type
DoDonPachi
Bubble Bobble
Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara
Rygar
Xain'd Sleena (Solar Warrior)
All of those are available through emulation, but actual remakes I have not seen. Sure, there's a version of Bubble Bobble with better graphics, but it doesn't have the same levels as the original so it can't really be seen as a remake. Of course, the remakes would have to keep the difficulty level of the original, I wouldn't want to play a Ghosts'n Goblins remake that didn't make you tear your hair out in frustration, it just wouldn't be the same!
Ahhh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere... and I thought I saw a two.
100% agree. Scumm support is sketchy, and Loom isn't quite as easy to play without sound. I'd like to see developers hand over game assets/code after 10 years and let the community update it themselves. I'm sure there are plenty of budding game designers who would love to have such a learning experience. Honestly, why must X-wing be tied up with Lucasarts holding it back on the windows 98 platform? Let go luke.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
Sierra rereleased all their original 80's adventure games in the mid 90's with improved graphics.
In the 90's, Lucasarts also rereleased the original xwing and tie fighter games (which were then a few years old) with improved graphics based off later graphics engines.
And again - in the 90's, Mech Warrior 2 was rereleased a few years after its original debut in a Titanium edition to take advantage of new 3D graphics card.
In this decade? Galactic Civilization and Tomb Raider are about all that come to mind...
Why this was done in the 90's, but stopped 00's? To be honest the only reasons I can think of is maybe the transition from floppies to CD encouraged Gold/rereleased editions, or maybe that was the last gasp of game companies owned and operated by the game designers themselves.
Check the forums on abandonia.com - loom CD is out there. Just need to get the binaries from a few different sites, and run them through SCUMMVM. I did it this summer, and even though the game is really short (less than 10 hours gameplay), I had a real blast - the game is still a beautiful work of art -more so with the full music and speech.
I've always wanted to see Daggerfall re-made with better graphics, fewer bugs, and all that sort of thing. Also, games like "DejaVu" would seem to benefit from more interactive environments and less obtuse UI's.
"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
/signed
And throw in X-COM 2. It was pretty much exactly the same game, but with an underwater theme that I enjoyed.
There are a couple of known bugs to both games that people have found. Fix those, update the graphics, and you are good to go.
Why, yes I have been touched by His noodly appendage. And I plan to sue.
Remakes of great movies usually suck (although there have been a few notable exceptions).
But there is a stronger case for remakes of 3D games. There are many early generation 3D games where the game presentation was clearly limited by technology. Many first-generation games are hard to look at due to the pixelation, aliasing, and incorrect perspective transformation of textures. I'd love to play a remake of Panzer Dragoon, for example. Or Doom--or even better, Marathon--with modern 3D graphics.
There is perhaps less reason for remaking 2D games. I don't think that it is possible to improve on Pacman. But there are some exceptions. Some 2D side scrollers would look great with 3D models and lighting effects. And I'd love to see a remake of the original Street Fighter II or Darkstalkers games with higher resolution art and more frames of animation.
Not exact true remakes of MoM and X-com.
Take X-Com 1, add in the controls you got for X-Com2
Mom: rebalance some things, fix the problem of your spell list being selected for you randomly if you go with multiple styles of magic
others:
Rygar, Space Quest series. X-Wing series. geeze. the list goes on and on.
So much creative stuff that *could* be done, but someone still probably holds the copyright for all this somewhere...
(ok, saving self from copyright rant)
Also, for the very obscure:
Text game: A Mind Forever Voyaging.....(question: anyone besides me even recognize this title?)
Yep, an Infocom text adventure game.
But how would you suggest it is remade? There are a number of new interpreter programs that you can load the data files into to play the game in a more modern environment - Frotz & WinFrotz spring to mind, I'm sure there are one or two more.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I may be the only one who has played any of these and would want a remake. But damnit, I never got to finish Universe II before dead floppies took it from me.
For those who never played either of the first two, these were part-space sim, part trader, part interactive fiction, part X-Com style tactical combat (well before X-Com was even a twinkle in anyone's eye.)
The space sim was a 'hard science' simulation, as opposed to a 'fighter combat' simulator. You plotted courses and routes and watched your 'nav screen' to check that other ships weren't attempting to intercept you. Ship to ship combat was handled by missles rather than magic space beam weapons. And if you managed to disable their shields (or they yours) you could send boarding parties over to take control of the ship.
That started the tactical combat, with your squad of marines fighting through randomly generated cooridors attempting to take enough control nodes to shut out the other crew.
If space combat wasn't your thing, you could mine planets. Uninhabited planets were relatively easy to mine, but the best ores were almost always in inhabited planets, leading to a similar combat to the boarding parties, to wipe out the local defences while your mining equipment did it's thing.
And if you were a non-violent person, you could dock at almost at any planet, pickup a huge variety of goods and attempt to make a profit off it. Each planet had it's own set of legal and illegal goods, as well as a 'sophistication' level that determined what they would be interested in.
The IF story is where I eventually got stuck, you play an undercover agent in a Cold War-esque standoff between two planetary alliances (you are on the "democratic" side of course). I got to a point where I couldn't get anything else to happen and lacking the era of easyily found walkthroughs, never figured out what I missed.
But even then, it was still fun wandering the cosmos blasting ships and making a buck.
Ya, I've seen that you could get it to run thru ScummVM. The problem is that Lucas is traditionally VERY active in removing any abandonware it's produced from sites. There's also just the whole complexity factor, and part of this idea of remakes is to make a game accessable to people who've never played the game before. Can you honestly think of anybody who would go thru all the trouble of tracking down the binaries, and the audio, in order to run it thru ScummVM, when they have never heard of the game.......And maybe haven't even experienced any of Ron Gilbert's classic work?
Anachronox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronox I feel like the only person that liked this game, but I'm TOLD there's a small but fiercely loyal cult following... somewhere...
;-)
System Shock 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock_2 - oh wait, they already did that - it's called Bioshock.
Seven Cities of Gold is a classic. Like Pirates! (a great remake), it is open ended and has great core gameplay. I spent months playing SCoG as a kid. With updated graphics & sound, it would be great. Add in a few tweaks like a scenario editor and online gameplay, and it would be awesome.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
X-COM is one game I would dearly love to see remade. I almost lost hope, seeing how everyone keeps failing, but I finally figured out why. They keep fixing what was never broken: the Geoscape. If someone was to remake it by improving graphics all around and AI (very important) in the Battlescape, and leaving the Geoscape the way it used to be--perfect--that would make an ass-kicking game.
How do I know that? Because every other game starts sucking as soon as Geoscape gets more complicated than it used to be. It works as long as it provides a believable progression of technology and resource acquisition. It stops working the moment when someone decides that it should be a challenge to manage. No one ever wanted that. I, at least, was perfectly happy with setting scientists and engineers on autopilot and jumping back into the action, now with better weapons.
... for me is that, old games tend to get stale because you've played newer games. When I go back to Final fantasy 1 for instance for the NES, on console emulators (since NES is no more). I find myself wishing for the same game (same core gameplay) with enhancements to the story and whatnot. I feel that remakes should keep the core game but make the original crappy aspects BETTER, much of final fantasy 1's story is great in the sense of keeping you going from point a to point b, but it is a "skeleton", it's very basic and there to plug gameplay. But the art and atmosphere of the game is pretty awesome and would make for a great immersive world if some writer could add personality to the art style, and the music which had come together nicely for immersion. Not to mention I would love an updated version of four fiends and all the monsters from the original. The artwork was top notch and you can even see it through it's cheezy 8-bitness. The 2D final fantasies from the NES and SNES era have some of the best artists I have ever seen, bar none, for fantasy characters and monsters.
Next I really think some game remakes should be made by fans, especially when companies go defunct or they sit on top of a game property for too long. Gamers should have co-ownership of properties they INVESTED in, and are laying foul for a decade or more because I think if a company's new team is re-making a remake of a classic and do a piss poor job, if they botch the job fans will be right pissed.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Gabriel Knight Sins of the Father was excelent story telling. I think the game would be very well recieved if left exactly the way it was, original sound and game play wise, only replaced with high resolution graphics/backgrounds and cut scenes. Heck, the cut scenes could be acted out now, I don't care if it's real actors or 3D rendering. To explain the dating, simply putting an early 90's date on the Times Picayune paper used in the game, everyone will understand why it's pre-Katrina that way.
The other two games, though not incredibly dated could benefit as well. Maybe re-hiring Tim Curry to do Gabriels voice for the Beast Within?
(Do the Tex Murphy games next!)
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Apparently, my subconscious was speaking without me realizing it, I looked up this very thing several months ago.
;)), and starfox and Wing Commander-themed projects. This makes me want to dig up my joystick all over again. =)
The Emperor's Hammer (a SW gaming fan club) has been working on a total conversion of the Freespace2 Source Code Project to have the XW and T/F missions: http://ia.emperorshammer.net/. It looks like it's in an early alpha state, so sadly I don't expect to see anything from this for a few more years (if it's even active -- I hope so!).
Other Freespace2-based projects are listed at the FS2 wiki page, and include Beyond the Red Line (Battlestar Galactica), the babylon Project (three guesses
Nope - definitely not a user friendly experience - but for those in the know - or who check out the Abandonia.com forums on loom - its out there.
There at one point was a DX version of Metroid 2 that at last moment was cancelled apparently at a near completion point. It may not have been Super metroid in Graphics, more like Metroid, but still better then 4 shades of spinach.
System Shock (not 2, original system shock). This game was awesome for the age, and gameplay wise still holds up really well. You have cyber-space, all kinds of mods and weapon types, great story, non-linear gameplay... heck I just loved this game. This one I feel is my fondest memory of that era in video games, in fact it ranks very high on my best games ever list, and it is now nearing the point where is not simply hard to play, but truly unplayable due to OS changes and such. Sadly it won't happen since the rights to the franchise and game are spread all over the place.
C'mon Perry, just change the IRS tax auditing percentage, would ya?
My 229 is all the Sig I need http://thegunwiki.com/
Wish (mostly) granted: Sam & Max
Definitely one of my favorite old time and memorable games that I'd like to see remade is the ancient "Starflight"!
suggestion for a remake of A Mind Forever Voyaging would be as something besides a text game...probably some sort of hybrid. Keep the storyline, then figure it from there. Probably first-person or isometric for when you are 'in simulation'. Figuring up something to for when you are out of the sim and looking through cameras would take a little creativity, but would probably not be too hard. Heck, you could even use real video for the stuff that comes in from the cameras...that could get interesting.
I don't know about anyone else, but if they ever did decide to do that final fantasy 7 remake they did cutscenes for a while ago... they would win the internet.
I'd like to see all 3 kyrandia games (Westwood studios).
Whoohoo for the double post... Also: Maniac Mansion, Commander Keen, Raptor, VGA Planets, Wolfenstein 3D, The entire Hexen series, and Space Quest IV.
One of the funnest games of all time. It now has problems with some usb controllers that have names longer than it expects as it does with my playstation 2 to usb adaptor.
THAT'S what I'd like to see continued/remade/sequeled/whatever! There's just nothing so full of sci-fi, geeky, nerdy fun, as piloting a heavily-armored, thermonuclear-powered, 100 ton walking death machine capable of quickly leveling a city, bristling with lasers, missile launchers, particle-projection cannons, and gauss-rifles, to name but a few. The story lines and the universe were also excellent. There's even a series of well-done sci-fi paperbacks.
I have all the MW3 and MW4/MW4-Mercs series, plus all the commercial and all the user-created expansions and maps/missions/etc that I can find.
The XBox version just didn't hold a candle to the PC versions, IMHO. I still play them fairly regularly. When it comes down to when I'll have to upgrade either/both hardware and OS to something that won't play these games, I'll buy a new PC, and pull this box off-line and keep the HDD imaged just in case, and use it just for these games.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I remade Hamurabi... ^_^
http://games.slashdot.org/~SurturZ/journal/182403
I'd love to see a direct remake of Mechwarrior 1.
In particular, I would really like to see the Commander Keen series remade as a 3D FPS. Because riding that pogo stick and those floating platforms and so forth, combined with the cartooney atmosphere of the Keen series, would at the same time be very cool and yet also very different from the usual FPS experience.
I scarcely ever buy games, that one would tempt me greatly.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
dunno if anybody's said it yet, but i would freaking love it if chrono trigger and chrono cross were redone as a two-disc game with current-gen level 3d graphics. i adore both of those games so much, i can't imagine how awesome they would be in full, real 3d.
-- There, everybody likes a gorilla.
The classic game Another World actually got remade with updated graphics.
You can buy the new game for $9 or download a demo here: http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/
Harald
Sierra's Space Quest I, for instance, was rereleased in 1991 with upgraded graphics and sound and a point-and-click interface instead of the original text interface.
Id Software's Doom was remade (or "reimagined" as they put it) as Doom 3.
Several Valve classics were converted to the Source engine. There is also a project underway to completely reimplement Half-Life on the Source engine with new models and textures (Valve's own Half-Life: Source uses the models, textures and sounds from the original game)
Certain video games are somewhat doomed when it comes to the notion of sequels or remakes.
.hack game that will come out as i never played the what? 4 or 5 games that came before it... I could play the first one if it was remade for the new gen of consoles. It might actually interest me.
People that played the previous games and liked it want the sequels.
People that didn't play the previous games don't want to play the "old game with old graphics" to understand what will happen in the sequel.
Unlike movies where you can watch the prior movies before seeing the newer sequel in an evening, playing the prior games before the sequel could last you several weeks which, depending on how the old games have aged, can be a chore.
For exemple, Halo 3 has just came out. It's story won't really make sense to those who didn't play the first two. In fact, we have reports of people playing it's campaign and saying: "i have no clue what i'm doing here, but i just shoot things".
Going back to play the first Halo is an option. It's not "that" old of a game and yet, if you have seen it recently, it definitely shows it's 6 year old age compared to other, more recent, shooters.
Some people will prefer playing the "other" shooter with a story that makes more sense.
Then the remake can make sense. Redo the old game so that new people can play it and understand the series.
But then, the problem with remakes is that if you already played it, you might not want to play it again (unless it's from pure nostalgia).
You lose customers to the remake and you lose customers to the sequel.
See, as a customer, i am not really inclined to buy the next
This "new" Tomb Raider anniversary doesn't interest me one bit. Even though i played TR1, 2, 3, 4, chronicles, angel of darkness and Legends to death. I must've played through TR1 at least 4 or 5 times back in the day. I don't want to "experience it again". My time is better "devoted" to a newer game.
In a way, certain series have found a way to fight that so that this "catch 22" doesn't apply.
Make a "sequel" that is also a "remake".
For exemple:
Civilization 4 is exactly the same game as the first one. The story doesn't follow from one to the other, yet it's not a "remake", but a "sequel" to the previous ones.
Zelda games also have found a way. With the exception of Link's adventure and Majora's Mask, all Zelda have always been a re-telling of the original games. They are all sequels, yet they never have story continuation. Same deal with Final Fantasies.
Blaster Master
Defender
Contra
Maniac Mansion
Smash TV
Total Annihilation
There was actually a community project that recreated the original Doom using the Doom 3 engine, my buddy did the music for it, and the whole thing turned out awesome.
Anyways, check it out if you are looking for a beautifully remastered version of the original Doom: http://cdoom.d3files.com/
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Most of the games I would like to see have already been remade, like some of Square's old Final Fantasy games and Chrono Trigger.
Of course, what I would really like to see remade are some old Sierra games, such as Space Quest, Kings Quest, Quest for Glory.... Oh, wait....
http://www.agdinteractive.com/
Of course, this is updating many of the old 1980s Sierra games to the engine that was used in the early 90s Sierra games. I would love to see something such as Kings Quest 6 in a fully 3D enviornment. It seems as if the adventure game genera is all but dead, and what a wonderful enviornment to put an adventure game in, a truely 3D world. That does not mean there are not 3D adventure games, but games such as Elder Scrolls Oblivian seem to fall more on RPG than adventure game.
Strangely, Sierra actually tried a couple of adventure games in a fully 3D enviornment, but Kings Quest 8 and Leisure Suite Larry Magnum Cum Lade did not do as well as other games in the series.
Could you imagine Gabriel Knight in 3D? Roaming the streets of New Orleans in full stunning 3D. Wow!
The original Populous actually predates the Warcraft series by a number of years. Also, the Starflight series is right up there with Fallout and Deus Ex as some of my favorite games ever.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Bionic Commando on the Wii. I'd crap myself in delight.
Waiting for Warhammer Online.
I would like to see the old Lucasfim Games BallBlazer with network play instead of split screen.
Others would include:
Magic Carpet - It runs too fast on anything faster than a Pentium 1. You can play the original under DOS Box, but it would still be nice to have with improved textures and resolution.
Terminal Velocity
System Shock 1 with a more modern style FPS interface and updated graphics
I was pointing out that Populous: The Beginning was overlooked by many. Sure the original Populous game was much older, but at the same time was very different from the current RTS games that are modeled after Warcraft 2 rather than trying a different game design.
It would really be great to have an updated version of those classics. But I doubt we'll ever see another decent PC Mech game after MS killed Mechwarrior 5. Which I never understood as Mechwarrior 4 still sells rather well,at least around here. The local stores can't seem to keep the Mechwarrior 4 box set in stock. Every time they get a new shipment it barely lasts a week. I bet a "Mega Box" style edition with a remade Mech 1 & 2 along with the complete 3 & 4 would sell really fast. It wouldn't even take much work,just redo the levels and Mechs using either the Mech 3 or Mech 4 engine.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Nethack, of course!
oh, wait . . .
hawk
Some of us have grown up.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
:-D
Some of us no longer are.
I'm not sure about the training, though. My ex might have been happier were I less civil. I'd put more of the origin on my parents.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...