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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from even just five years ago -- let alone tried to get someone who didn't play them at the time to put up with outdated controls, graphics or camera-work -- know that it's hard to appreciate them."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.
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
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.
#1 on my wish list- X-COM: Enemy Unknown (or X-COM: UFO Defense, depending on location).
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...
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.
http://freesynd.sourceforge.net/
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.
Pong.
Give us a choice of paddle color. White or Grey?
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
You rang?
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)
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