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Resurrecting Old Games, What Works?
There has definitely been a resurgence of old games being made new again through various methods. Unfortunately, any time you reinvent an old classic you risk either alienating the original audience or not making it appealing enough for the a new audience. "Capcom has been at the forefront of the recent remake boom, re-imagining a number of their classic titles as downloadable games. Bionic Commando, for example, was given a high-definition 2.5D makeover, and a rockin' remixed soundtrack with Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Capcom also re-released a new version of Street Fighter II on the way, with the lengthy new title Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Interestingly, both games are coming out near new entries in their respective franchises: Street Fighter IV and Bionic Commando. But the question remains, how do you decided what games will still appeal to the current gaming audience? " What games can be counted amongst the success stories, and which can be chalked up as utter failures?
I don't know if there are any fans of the classic game Crossfire here, but I'd love to know if this reimagining of the game does it justice*. I've tried a few clones (notably SDL Crossfire, GridBlaster, and Gridfire), but none of them were very satisfying. In fact, most of them made changes that I felt were distateful to anyone who enjoyed the original. (Or maybe I was the only one who played with keyboard controls? Hmm...)
Anyway, try it out and let me know what you think. And if you have a Wii, give it a go there. It's tons of fun with two controllers. :)
* Warning: This is still a beta. If you want to save high score, you need to be logged into the website. Sound is not yet there. Internet Explorer is not supported due to its lack of Canvas support. And did I mention that it's 100% Javascript? :-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The best: Tyson's Punch-out, Mario Bros, and Contra
SecurityPub.com
it's a conundrum;
Anything with a strong amount of Nostalgia for it is going to suffer from the fans who still play it proclaiming "they changed it, now it sucks" - See: Fallout 3, or any remake of Master of Magic ever done.
At the same time, some really great work has been done with remaking old games. I, for one, LIKED fighting the Enclave alongside a Giant mecha that spewed anti-communist propaganda.
My son will easily say - wow, you're right dad - Megaman rocks. cha-ching for Nintendo Wii. He came into the gaming scene after the "progression of graphics", so he easily yawns as 4 extra FPS or slightly enhanced visuals - he wants playability. Caught them playing pac-man on one of those joysticks that plugs into the TV. He laughed at the graphics, but they kept right on playing for an hour or so.
meh
They should rerelease Tank but with a quad laser (the bullets are enormous) to make it more up to date.
I've never really played the original version of geometry wars, but the re-done version on the xbox360 was awesome, the music and effects were great.. and it was free! well ok I died for the first few months before the demo timer ran out hehe..
now someone please remake H.E.R.O. :)
Pfft, I'm holding out for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix-Remix.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
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It seems that a lot of the success of a resurrection of an old game depends on the gameplay (how it transitions to modern graphics, modern controls, modern gameplay expectations) and on the nostalgia associated with the game.
As an example of the latter, I would actually likely dislike a remake of The Secret of Monkey Island (MI 1).
Gameplay seems to be important though. Some of the classic games relied on gameplay, whilst others relied on story, etc. It doesn't seem like the gameplay from 1990 always transitions well into modern games. The culture of the gamer has shifted, as have the expectations. Graphics alone can almost make a game successful these days, although not completely; whereas back in 1990, graphics seemed to play a small role. Sure, it did to some extent, but I think it was less "realistic graphics" that was of interest back then(Commander Keen != realistic, even a classic like Loom wasn't realistic, although it was certainly colorful and "pretty").
As for successes that I have personally played, I think the continuation of Prince of Persia appears to have done fairly well.
There are only a few recent games that I have any lasting nostalgic impressions about, but there are quite a few old games that do. One reason is personal taste, of course, but I think games in the past had to rely on something else than games typically do now. Of course, everyone has heard this 500x, but that's ok. :)
One game that I wish WAS remade with more modern engines was Baldur's Gate. I loved the game (granted, it was my first CRPG, a genre I have since come to really enjoy more than any other), the story, the characters, etc... but I think if it were remade and put into even the Aurora 2 engine, it would do alright as a remake.
I have a few tips for anyone trying to revive an old game. First and foremost, don't screw up the controls. Don't try to recreate robotron for example on a console with only 1 directional control (gameboy sp, i'm looking at you)
Also, rather than a old version and a new souped-up version of an old game, I'd rather see 1 game that starts out looking like the old one, but with 100 little options that would allow you to customize the game. Extra visual enhancements would be great, like tempest on the jaguar, but make them optional. And what about more options? Xevious with 50 solvalous would be nice for example. Or speed ups/slow downs. Or new levels for an old game. New weapons. Be creative. Provide more options. Don't just churn out crap and hope to milk us old guys.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Yet you still find time to post on ol' Slashdot.
You're right, that is a bad analogy.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
But the question remains, how do you decided[sic] what games will still appeal to the current gaming audience?
I would guess the same way you'd do any market research. Come up with ideas, run them past your target market, have them fill out surveys and see which ones are most likely to be well received.
The whole "resurrecting an old game" idea is really nothing but marketing anyways. Old games ran on 6502s or 68000s. Today's processors are orders of magnitude better. The only thing these new games have in common with their old counterparts is the name. And since that's the case, it's not really a special case. Only thing you'll most likely get is a slight marketing boost from people seeing a familiar name.
So I'd have to say "nothing unusual".
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I haven't used Windows for anything but office stuff for quite a long time. I use Linux and some Mac OS most of the time. But I would LOVE to be able to play the X-Wing games again... such fond memories. And now I'm older and can afford to spend money on it instead of just copying it from somewhere. So yeah, I would actually buy it this time. I remember pre-broadband-internet days when I bought a second phone line just so I could play games like that and Doom and stuff with my brother across town. Those were good times.
Cause, you know, Slashdot is not meant for pandering your goods, subby.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is setting Xbox Live download records left and right, despite containing zero new mechanics. It's clear that a straightforward improvement to graphics and sound, a big marketing campaign, and minor gameplay tweaks has really paid off for Capcom. There is one important caveat here: Capcom's successes are all existing popular franchises. 1942 Joint Strike and Commando 3 didn't do nearly as well as Mega Man and Street Fighter.
If you're going for a 'change as little as possible' angle, try and improve the interface of some part of the game. Give it a decent level select so people can try different parts whenever. (If in doubt, look up Perfect Dark's level select rules.)
That's basically the story behind the 'two D-pad scrolling method', level select, 'shoulder pause', 'frame advance' and zoom features in Lemmings DS.
Make it so that people can focus on the game rather than battling against the keyboard for what they need to do. (Remember the DOS version of D/GENERATION?)
Just look at how wonderful Temptest 2000 on the jaguar was. It was perfect. All other versions of Tempest just fail at how pretty and wonderful the Jaguar version was. I.E. Tempest on Xbox live sucks. The new Version of Warlords on Xbox live is pretty fun and good. Must have Download if you have an Xblocks 360.
Who has time for games?
I do! I'm rich as hell! Suck it!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
someone has to keep up the tradition though, right?
I would LOVE remastered versions of Ultima IV-VI in DS form.. I think they would be perfect for it.
The story's icon inspires me: Pac Man should be revived as a first person eater!
why do people have kids if they can't afford them?
Flash isn't a bad platform for retro titles. It's powerful enough to handle 2d graphics and there are no publishers to hold you back. I feel there is still a lot of invovation that can be done with older genres.
The Game Conference is a good example - a roguelike that takes the genre in a new direction.
Pac-Man World has to be one of the worst failures. And it illustrates what I hate about these updates---that the designers try to reimagine the game from scratch.
Change the graphics, not the gameplay. When designers follow this rule, the game succeeds. (See Super Mario World and A Link to the Past.) When designers disregard this rule, the game fails. (See Spy Hunter.) None of the best games became classics because players really loved the names of the characters. We loved the gameplay. The new Street Fighter II downloadable game is perfectly executed, because the gameplay is what I loved as a kid but with new graphics that take advantage of modern systems' capabilities.
To utilize modern consoles' other capabilities, you need to write new gameplay. That's why Grand Theft Auto 3 was such a blockbuster---because they started from scratch, asking what the system was capable of. (And don't get me started on how that innovation has been squandered. Free-roaming games rock. Why is every decent mech or air-combat simulator saddled with some dull storyline that I have to ignore to get to the fun stuff? And why is there still no game where I can free-roam through the Star Trek universe, discovering random species or picking fights with Borg?)
Well, this actually isn't an old game (by the definition you gave - old games are games that are more than 12 years old :\ ) but I saw on a forum that it's abandonware because (by the forum poster):
Just Google for 'Dungeon Keeper 2 download' (sans quotes) because I don't want my comment to be removed because of abuse.
So in my opinion if they are abandoned (or they don't have to), the OSS approach works. Look what happened to WarZone2100 which was released in 2004 as open source :)
[insert lame sig here]
We need Desert Bus resurrected. Only this time, in full 3D, rendering the entire trip at once, requiring a ton of RAM and video power in addition to six hours of time for the trip from Tuscon to Vegas.
Plus a more photorealistic bug splattering on the windshield after five hours.
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
And you know hell is rich, since that's where all the lawyers end up....
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
I really wish someone would bring back Demon Stalkers, a top-view labyrinth game with 100 levels (similar in style to Gauntlet but much simpler and more enjoyable IMO) The original is by Micro Forte. The beauty and fun of this game is in the simplicity of its structure. It should be ridiculously easy to implement this game with everything that modern computing offers. Back in the day it probably required highly optimized machine code. As I said the structure of this game is very simple. The level is a grid where the spaces between grid "cells" can contain wall, door, or space. There are only five monster types. Each level may contain only two of the five types. There are several color schemes that determine how the level is drawn. And there are several object types that you might find in a level, such as keys to open doors, food to recover from monster damage, stairs and chutes to go between the levels, scrolls containing a short programmable message (up to three distinct messages per level on any number of scrolls), etc. But in this simplicity there is something beautiful which you cannot find in complicated games like, say, Nethack.
Who saw the topic and thought "Goblin Jumper Cables" ??? God.
I want Capt Keene and Leasure Suit Larry on my iPhone. They were written for iPhone resolution (CGA = Crap Grapic Adaptor) in the days of 12MHz i386 with 640k and no HD, so there should be no problem with performance!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Sucks to be you. Try living within your means next time.
Could I get some decent Shoot Em Ups for the 360 please? I would love a remake of Blazing Lazers. Maybe the best game ever made?
I would really like to see more classic console games ported to XBLA, but it looks like they are trying to get away from that. Would love to see Blaster Master and maybe a Rygar remake...
Breast milk is not only cheaper than similac's artificial version, it is undeniably better. You want your baby to be smart, right? Then get it on the tits, asap (it's not too late).
I feel you on all the rest though.
Changa hates change.
How about a hardcore update of Duke Nukem 3d?
I have heard somewhere that it might result in resurrection a few days later. Not tried is myself though.... but there is this old indian graveyard too.
Pinball 2000 was one way that did not work and part of that has do with the default settings
No replays by default WTF!
No ball saver in the first few rom vers.
The games had a little to much of hit the center screen.
The playfield felt smaller.
The lack of a combo plunger on SWEP1.
RFM was the better of the 2 games and did have some real funny bill Clinton jokes in it.
...is playable on SCUMMVM
Releasing games is a great strategy. A) The legwork is done. B) You can shine it up. C) Customers who missed it the first time get another crack at it.
This works very well for games that were great for a reason. Chrono Trigger DS is my current fav. game. I never got to play it on the SNES, but the DS version is simply awesome... even if the graphics are pretty old school.
Likewise, Super Mario World DS, while not truly a remake, shows how the old formula can easily work in the modern generation.
I've also enjoyed Final Fantasy games on the DS. Stuff I never got to play on the NES because RPG's never appealed to me then.
Should companies do it? Yeah. For what games? Games that were obviously good for a reason. Final Fantasy 7 comes to mind. They could completely remake the game with higher quality graphics and cut-screens (using the models from the movies) and I'm sure it'd sell like hotcakes on all the systems... if they didn't have a lock-in with Sony.
Needless to say, I've benefited greatly from being able to play timeless classics again, for the first time. =P
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
M.U.L.E.?
Considering how often it was called a revolutionary game, it's surprising that there's only been a couple remakes, with none of them working on modern hardware and internet aware. :-(
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I'm personally looking forward to this:
http://www.wcsaga.com/
you can do a little of that in the Silent Hill series which is fun....
"If for any reason you're not satisfied with our service, I hate you."
Give it to me. Or give me Vagrant Story 1 at a higher resolution. That game was godly.
They took an exciting RPG full of puzzles and mazes and monsters based on the D&D 2.0 rules with great music and special effects and turned it into a parody of itself.
Now you play The Bard and instead of a real RPG it is a fake RPG ala a choose your own adventure.
The Amiga, Atari ST, and Apple //gs versions of the games had the best sound and graphics and are the only versions of the entire Bard's Tale version that are enjoyable enough to run via emulators. The PC version used 16 color CGA or Tandy/EGA graphics, and the Mac version was made black and white and then they didn't make any more Mac versions like Bard's Tale II or even a color version when the Macintosh II came out.
There have been failed attempts at making a FOSS version of it, and usually it is a clone of the Bard's Tale construction Set. People used to make their own Bard's Tale games via the BTCS for the PC once Bard's Tale II or III started to support VGA graphics and sound cards (no more beeping speaker, finally real sound for the PC version of Bard's Tale).
If I were to remake Bard's Tale I would keep it close to the original, but with better graphics and sound and new music. Plus the rules would be based on D&D 3.5 or something more modern. Plus I would add in more classes like Ninja, Cleric, and some new Magic classes as well as new spells from the D&D book of spells. I'd have the native version of the game that runs on Windows XP/Vista, Windows 9X, Mac OSX, Linux, and Java for systems not supported as long as they have a Java runtime they can run it, which means cell phone versions, etc.
Nothing was ever as fun as leveling up your characters at the guild, after fighting monsters in a maze and trying to get one of your team to a temple to get healed before that poison kills him or her, while still in a maze and still fighting monsters.
The PC Version had a big cheat, hitting the "Z" button gave you a Stone Golem in the friendly monster slot of your team, six player characters and one NPC usually a monster. That monster snare spell did come in handy as well as those spells that summoned undead monsters to fight with you as well. The monster snare steals one of the enemy monsters and makes it your ally. Fighting fire with fire.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Note: I do NOT want to load WINE or any other required-to-work with other operating system process or application on my Linux box. Either it runs in Linux or I simply do NOT want to play it. Why emulate another operating system and slow my system down...no thank you, I would rather not play that game.
I really loved the way Apache (and Apache II - Helicopter game on the MacIntosh II and MacIntosh IISE computers) and Battlezone (DOS) games made you feel like you were flying through the screen. Always wanted to be surrounded by monitors that would give me a 360 degree view as I flew around. One day....
War/Empire, the version I am thinking of is the really old original one from the IBM mainframe / TSO user days. It was far from fancy, just a pixel and a 50/50 shot at winning any battle. However apply that to multiple planets via the internet and a game server and wow...I played one where you had clans and cities that you built online in a world with my sons last Christmas, it was fun...and granted we used my Asus Eee PC to play it, so the operating system, graphics adapter, sound, etc... did not matter.
Anyone else know of some games for Linux where you fly a tank (i.e. like BattleZone), fly a plane or jet or helicopter (i.e. like Apache and Apache II) and it actually feels like you are flying visually...those are the ones I like!
The peer around a corner and shoot games bore me. But let me fly a vehicle and okay, lets go...lol. Any for Linux?
Is your Internet Throttled? Install DD-Wrt, OpenWRT or Tomato to learn the truth! Google: 1Gbps/1Gbps: 5 Communities
I really really really miss the Desert/Jungle/Nuclear/Whatever Strike series of games.
Why oh why has there been nothing even remotely similar in years! It's the type of game you could pick up and play without having to commit hours and hours, it was great for some quick, fun action, but the series seems to have been completely dropped.
I'd love for a company remake anything even remotely similar. I'd guess there's a lot of old classics like these out there just gagging to be remade.
I don't think there's a shortage of classics that could be remade that don't even have to be faithful to the originals, just something similar as in this example. The real problem seems to be that gaming has converged onto a few very tight specific genres- RTS, RPG, FPS and Sport and hardly anyone dares venture even slightly outside the defined rules for creating a game within these boundaries.
Maybe gamers like me, who would like something like the Desert strike series games put into a rather nice modern form are just too much of a niche market to bother with.
Picture the Mushroomy Kingdom level from the new Smash Brothers Brawl as the graphics for the actual game play of the original Super Mario Brothers. Same exact game, still 2D, same controls, but re-done with awesome new graphics. That is the one retro area that I think has been completely unexplored.
No need to make things 3D or mess up the controls, but games like Mega Man 9 could have taken more advantage of newer graphics while still keeping the old-school feel to it.
Morphing Software
Why didn't anyone buy this game? Was it the super deformed artwork? I thought it was excellent, I would love to see the sequel. The remixed levels & boss battles with additional abilities, and the level editor was excellent. Exactly what a remake should be.
Twinstiq, game news
I'd love to see the original US release of dragon warrior remade with polished graphics but retaining its old world charm.
We willna be fooled again!
A game that clearly needs to be remade, it was one of Bullfrog's classic and epic games, that with modern graphics, would be a true hit.
When I read the title of this article, I thought it would discuss playing actual old games in Wine or Mame or some other emulated environment, and debate which ones were worthy of that effort. Sadly, instead it's merely hype for "new" old stuff that publishers want to foist on us to make more money with even less effort than usual.
I think the article that I expected to read would have been more interesting.
The one made for C64 & IBM PC back around late 1980's. You could play as any character in the game, and attempt to become Shogun by attacking, befriending (bowing like a crazy man, but not too much or others will lose respect for you), and trading items for respect/honor. The graphics stank, but the game could easily have a transition to 3D without any harm. Becoming Shogun as a peasant was super tough, and possible only via the trading items route.
The first game was the only good game in the series. Terror from the deep, apocalypse, afterlight, aftershock just never reached the same level.
It's also disheartening to see a sequel with worse graphics than the original(not talking resolution, just weapon, suits design - artist stuff).
If they get a strike on this one and it sucks, the fans will come back at them with more power than they can possibly imagine >:(
Syndicate Wars was enough to make most Syndicate fans shudder.
and for the love of jebus, get the same music artist in, those atmospheric moody tunes were 1/3 of the game.
I'm looking forwards to the recently announced bubble bobble for wii that it actually stopped me selling my dusty wii off during the sillyseason. I'm hoping ( like a poster above made the point) that they DONT FUCK with the control system OR the perspective, I hope they extend, and even emb race a little. ;)
One of my best friends is a lawyer. He is a very good man. He is a public defender.
ROM Check Fail
There is another way to design games, with all the textures and tiles procedurally generated, instead of bitmaps. The games can auto adjust to any hardware.
One of the benefits of this kind of programming is that the a procedure to draw a tree is much smaller than a texture map of the tree. And you can randomly vary every tree that you draw so that no two trees are ever the same.
Wiki article on Procedural Generation.
Enjoy
They made one, Space HoRSE. They even delayed the release to add internet multi.
It was pretty faithful, and got tepid reviews for--mostly--not really enhancing the gameplay much. It didn't sell well.
The Street Fighter II HD update looks great, and is as much fun as I remember, but I wish that they'd also improved the resolution of the animation by adding more frames.
I would love to see a remake of Master of Orion 2. The third one was such a huge disappointment, but the 2nd one absorbed days of my time in a row....
It's only paranoia if your wrong...
I picked up an old pentium 1 laptop a while back strictly to play all my old DOS games on. A quick install of 98SE and I'm in retro heaven.
How you prevent blatant spelling mistakes in your summary?
Sword of the Samurai (Microprose). Imagine what could be done with it now. Anyone else remember this one?
I think there are two types of resurrection I can stand. 1. Keep the game exactly as is. Make it a direct port. Something akin to the Virtual Console games. 2. Overhaul it to a point where you've added lots of new stuff and new fixes. I'm thinking something along the lines of Final Fantasy remakes here. Like the PSP FFT re-vamp. Increase the things that made the game great. Re-dos where a game is taken and warped into something else never really work for me. "Games keep getting worse, the older you get."
anyone?
AGD Interactive just remade Sierra's classic Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire.
It's VGA point-and-click instead of EGA parser, and it's got a number of things missing from the original (like the Saurus repair shop) and quite a few easter eggs.
The graphics are better, but only the level of "better" that Sierra themselves did when updating their own games to VGA in the early '90s. They maintained compatibility, so you can still import your character from QfG1, and still export to one of the later games in the series at the end.
Soylens viridis homines es
Nintendo did a genius thing, rereleasing games from older consoles via the Wii Shop Channel. Or even playing old ROMs or LucasArts SCUMM using emulators via the Wii Homebrew Channel.
What I want is a Sierra emulator for the Wii, so I can play all the old classic point-and-click games. If they can port ScummVM, surely they can do something for Sierra.
Soylens viridis homines es
I think one of the best examples of this topic has to be the Exile project, which has successfully created a cross-platform, open source, modern-day engine to play Origin Software's classic Ultima VII and Ultima VII:Serpent Isle games.
In a similar vein is the Pentagram project, which aims to make a similar engine (and repeat the same daunting reverse-engineering task) for Ultima VIII. If you are an Ultima fan, and *haven't* heard of these projects, go and download them right now. :)
I know Marathon is out there with the Aleph One project, but I would LOVE to see a complete 3D remake of the Marathon Trilogy, maybe using the Halo Engine or something that would equally capture the amazing environments and atmosphere of those games.
Keep the original game play style (i.e. interacting with the AIs via terminals... give them voices if necessary, but don't let them talk to you while you are battling through until you reach a terminal) and keep the story, since it was one of the best, most intricate stories ever in a game. But revamp the graphics and make the environments completely 3D.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Adventure of course.
How many hours have you spent playing Infocom games like the "Zork" series and "The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy"? No graphics, just text adventures with great stories and puzzles that required a good imagination.
I wonder how something like that would fare these days if you added something like a more complex language interpretation algorithm?
Or what if there were an "audio book" version of such games where the only way to interact would be to issue commands via microphone?
Titles such as the "Harry Potter" series would probably do quite well by providing a new way to interact with the game.
Any chance for a remake of the old Amiga classic Moonstone? And don't forget the gore option.
The game play on the original was just too good....and really...I dunno if you were to even keep the original play and controllers...if you only updated the graphics...if that would even detract from the game?
I still think it is pretty much the perfect arcade game...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The de evolution could just be the new evolution in gaming the days. I agree wit the acknowledgment that great graphics, are these days, a dime a dozen. Especially since it's also more of either great graphics or playability via story line or interaction. Now with advancements achieved, I personally would like see the gaming industry look back at some of these older great games that paved the way for gaming industry leaders today. Take the Mega Man X series for the SNES as an example. For the time the graphics we're simple and graceful. And the replay value was phenomenal. Take the advancements we have now and continue with the series using the very same engine, keeping the graphics the same and creating these very games with longer stories and longer game time.
You don't need to do much to the graphics of an old game--if it was reasonably detailed to begin with (SNES and beyond) just "rez up" the sprites or 3d models so that they look sharp and crystal clear in HD. That's what the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix did, it works. Honestly, that's all Katamari Damacy would need if ported to a modern console.
Sound you can probably do even less if it was just beeps and boops. Just keep the beeps and boops. If there was actual recorded sound, rerecord or remaster it so that it sounds clearer, don't play with it.
As for the controls/gameplay, keep the basics the same, but if there were quirks that were clearly because of the limitations of the hardware, take them out. If Goldeneye was being remade, why force people to use one thumbstick instead of two? Why have laser pellets disappear after 2 inches or have enemies respawn simply because the console didn't remember they died? That might result in some games being easier, but I'd rather play a challenge that was designed as a challenge, not a hurdle that was put up because the console it was first programmed for had 10KB of RAM.
What about reissuing some old games simply because they won't run on modern PCs? I don't mean console-to-console ports I mean cases where a game ran on Glide or DirectX 3 or whatever and won't even install anymore.
I've got a few games like Machines, Independence War/Independence War 2, Little Big Adventure and Battle Isle 4 and the last time I played these gems was back in the 20th century. I'd KILL to see someone rewrite them so they'll run on my Quad-Core powered twin-linked HD4870 8Gb gamer rig with its 2Tb storage and 40 inch plasma widescreen!
What about Command and Conquer 3 being promoted by Westwood making CnC Red Alert free? It seems like an interesting compromise, hype the new by offering the old for free. Of course, most people would probably have the original already.
Robotron X, aka Robotron 64. I have that disc and the key issue was that it was all flash and no substance. Just a quick port of the original mechanics to a 3D playing field. Spice it up with a bit of rainbow colored graphics and the result is... boring. Very boring.
It was a perfect example of how oldies are cloned in an almost cargo-cult fashion. All the elements appear to be there, but the core gameplay somehow ends up missing. The result is a lifeless husk that looks like it should be fun, but isn't.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Use your google-fu and look up some of the stories told by the late Dani Bunten about attempts to re-do M.U.L.E.
Shortly after her sex-change operation, she met a friend who asked "How did it go?" "Not so well. They wanted to put in guns and bombs." The friend: asking about the sex change. Dani: as always, focussed on the game (I think the Sega remake "Son of M.U.L.E.")
I have heard of rumours of patched versions of MULE on Atari emulators that do permit networked play.
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Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
Seriously. I loved that game and at the time it was revolutionary and awesome.
I would love to see a version with newer graphics, even if the gameplay stays the same.
You could import your Sim City cities!
I'm rich as hell! Suck it!
Ok. My price to suck it is $1M
I have a wall full of old games. Probably have more games than anyone within a hundred miles. From the first copy of Wizardry for the Apple ][+ to the entire 'Ultima' series all the way to when 'Lord British' abandoned his customers with 'ultima 9' and went 'online'. Just loved the entire Westwood line until they got stolen by 'EA'. Still play Red Alert..the first one! Favorite of all time is Warzone 2100 from now defunct 'Pumpkin Studios', a Brit outfit the produced it and never made another game. Shame! Then there is 'Redneck Rampage' from Xatrix Entertainment, another small company swallowed up by monopolists never to be seen again. Lot of real play value in those games that is just not in todays market of overhyped resource hungry bloatware for high prices and laden with malware, registrations, activations, limited installs, etc. Point is that I have stopped buying games as no real good game has come out for over six years. All that this present market has shown is a feast of monopolistic avarice that knows no bounds as these oligarchs do battle with each other by dousing the public with a continuous barrage of dross. Monotonous dross for high prices! All that is really doable with the present customer set and view screens has been done. The manufacturers know this, so sex takes the place of play value...like Tomb Raider and GTAx. A tiresome series of first person shooters with top down views is just as tiresome in 'HDCP' and is downright maddening with 'limited installs' (Spore), SecuROM, Sonyworms, CoolWebServer, StarForce, and other malware that require low lever formating of hard drives to get rid of...
Oh! Yeah! Low level formatting is a lost art now and is probably 'illegal' , or at least difficult to do in today's windows' environments where such activities on commoditized machines owned by computer illiterates scared of having to 're-activate' their vista or XP malware. Bottom line is US. Yeah US! We are the fault that these hogs are in the position that they are in...rich as Crossus! If we just stopped buying their junk, say starting on any Tuesday, and stayed stopped, and dug out our old computers, our old operating systems...DOS was fine..it did not spy on you and was YOURS!, period. Dug out our old games and played them...and had FUN for a change. Hey did you ever hear of a game called Crush, Crumble, and Stomp where you played as Godzilla? Let them complain about their 'intelllektyouall proppertty then! when nobody wants it. Let them take their crap and put it where the sun never shines...and keep it there.
Weird that nobody mentioned OpenTTD yet, the Open-Source version of Chris Sawyers "Transport Tycoon Deluxe", creator of Rollercoaster Tycoon.
It's probably more a clone than a remake, because you can play in the exact same way as the original, but you can also enable optional bugfixes and actual game improvements, like working multiplayer support.
There is also Black Mesa, a remake of Half-Life 1 with the newer Source engine. Pretty exciting, too.
I want all of the You Don't Know Jack games redone in HD. I'd take them on PC or console. They would make excellent downloadable content. And yes I've heard the rumor of a new version for Wii. I'll likely own that as well, but playable versions of all of the old content would be epic.
The poster asks for examples of what games have worked and what games haven't. This guy listed concrete examples. How the fuck is that "offtopic"??
1024X768 FTW!
Really though.
That's the next resolution to come down to the ultra-portable devices, so you can keep dev. parity between mobile & monitor.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm currently playing, as in literally, Final Fantasy for PSP. Which is a remake of the original FF on NES. It does a great job I think of tweaking the things that took a lot of time and leaving the rest classical. With graphics updates of course.
*DrugCheese rants*
What brings me back to this game time and time again....no clue. Perhaps I just dont want to work on that legacy code base at the day job.
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
http://wordwarvi.sourceforge.net/ It's at the moment, linux, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD only. Uses portaudio, and gtk mostly, so it should be not too hard to port to Windows if somebody wants to attempt it. It also supports the xbox 360 controller with working rumble effect on linux, so far as I know, the first game on linux to do so (though I might be wrong about that.) A lot of people seem to like it so far. You do need portaudio v. 19, not v. 18. It will compile without audio support, however, you are missing *a lot* if you do that.
Not all "timeless classics" will work. Actually, there are a few killers that will make your remake of a timeless classic fail. Mostly, they are already in the reason why it was a classic.
1. Eye candy games fail. If it was a classic because of its revolutionary graphics, it will fail. For obvious reasons, we're now way ahead of it. Remember the days when vector graphics were the craze and we went all nuts for the "stunning 3D graphics" because some lines were drawn and created some sort of illusion that we're dealing with depth? Won't fly. We're now at realistic, multi shaded 3D.
2. "First of their kind" game remakes will fail. Dune2 was a classic. A remake would suck. Dune2 was a classic because it was one of the first well done RTS games. A remake of Civilisation would fail as well. There's now better games of that kind. The same applies for Doom.
So if you turn to games that were classics because of other reasons, your chances to succeed are pretty good.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
well, there are two ways of resurrecting old games: remake and re-imagining. the former may be straight remakes like Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles or Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X, or they can be new installments to an old series following the same formula, like Contra 4 or Bomberman (Portable). but re-imaginings present a completely new/original take on an old franchise. an example of this would be Metroid Prime, which is practically in a different genre from the original 2D platformer. likewise, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time has very different gameplay from its 2D predecessor as well.
both methods of breathing new life into old games have their place. though it's probably harder to create a successful re-imagining. Space Invaders Extreme, for example, is a hugely successful remake of the classic arcade game with updated trippy graphics; whereas Space Invaders: Evolution (Galaxy Beat) is sort of somewhere in between a remake and a re-imagining that attempts to stay true to the original game while adding new depth to it (mixing in elements of a rhythm game).
personally, i prefer games of the in-between route like Space Invaders: Evolution or Atari Classics Evolved. they're not just graphics updates, but also update the gameplay (while keeping the spirit of the original).
The internet MULE is here and there is also a DOS program called Subtrade that changes the rules a bit, makes it less predictable with much better computer players than the rather stupid ones in MULE.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It's interesting to think about this from the backend, really. Think of how rare we get true creativity in games these days, and how much of it just *flowed* from the developers when video games were new. How many old classics are there that were come up with as a truly original idea when you didn't have all the graphics and physics crap we have today...
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
I don't think there is any less creativity in games being created today. It's just that the most creative games don't get consumed by the mainstream public and thus are not exposed by the marketing machines of the major publishers. The games media is getting large enough that it has turned into media like books and film where you usually have to seek out the independent work in order to find the truly creative work.
If you go on sites like Game Tunnel or Kongregate and do some digging around you'll find some real innovation and creativity. The question is whether those games are executed at a quality level that the gaming public demands these days. Back then the playing field was fairly level due to limitations in technology and understanding of game design.
Whats about the great point and click adventures. Sure the jump from 2D to 3D broke their neck....nobody is seeing stuff like Monkey Island, Sam and Max-Hit the road, Fate of Atlantis or I have no mouth but I must scream lately. but those where in my opinion the most entertaining, funny, yet challenging games ever made. For most of of the point and click - games you had to invest a lot of brainpower and creativity (sometimes you had to think like Guybrush Threabwood or Indiana Jones) for. so thous would be the game worth being conserved and remade for the future generation, because after finishing Beneath a Steel Sky or Loom you knew, you had achieved something big!
anyone remember Digger? that was the first game i ever player!
I think games that had an interesting concept but flawed execution should be considered.
Like when Marvel remade the Hulk, that was a good thing, and not something companies should be scared of.
Take the old 'favourite' Diakatana, is the actual concept of an FPS throughout different ages that bad? No I don't think so, its a nice twist on the usual concept. It was utterly flawed and moronically executed the first time around, but a different team could make a decent game out of it.
I also think that people would prefer an 'engine' update rather than a new version of their favourite oldie. Late 80's/Early 90's games would be perfect for this.
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
The remake of Bionic Commando did it perfectly. It didn't *just* have improved graphics. The developers kept the "vibe" of the game and deviated from the original in some important ways. - You could shoot bullets in neutral zones, you didn't have to fight pink enemies dropping through cave walls via parachutes. It gave the ability to shoot your arm straight ahead while in the air even! This was done at the same time the developers were counting the pixels of the old NES game on pause. It keeps the vibe, and improves on awesome mechanics.
I think keeping the vibe is the harder part - but there is no lack of re-makes not achieving vibe *or* mechanic.
We know a re-make isn't going to use a save system that requires a 24 digit case sensitive password that require you yourself to create a new language to interpret your own writing better. =)
That said:
Blaster Master
Ninja Gaiden (orig)
Blaster Master *especially* needs a remake and it would be *awesome* if the studio that made BC Rearmed did it.
-- My first post at Slashdot in 6+ years... put your tarps over the woodwork. =)
I am Jack's HTTP Server
Remember this one? I recently stumbled over this walkthrough page and finally could play through all the castles that were too tough back when playing as a child.
one thing that I think might be an issue is originality; as an example, take a teenager who has managed to survive to about 15 years old without seeing it to see Star Wars (the real one. "episode 4", allegedly).
They won't be as impressed as we were; they have seen those clichés, those scenes, those concepts, ripped off in a dozen+ movies; The progenitor of all the rip-offs is gonna look like "same-old, same-old" to them.
The same goes with games, to a degree. I say to a degree, because we don't get games of the same types as we used to; where is the modern Wing Commander, Strike Commander, Aces over Europe? the only fun flight sim I've played lately is "Attack on Pearl Harbor", and while it is undoubtedly fun, it isn't really as much fun as the originals where (it IS close).
Instead, we get FPS, MMO, and RTS. and a few little independents making games that require a measurable IQ to enjoy.
Of course, Xcom and Master of Magic are the first games I thought about when I read the title; those are games that require nothing more than improved graphics and bug fixes to make any game company that ships them wealthy.
But what about Kings Quest? how many millions of sales did that series of games make?
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Imagine a world ... where ghosts stand between you and your favorite food ... where blue is the only safe color... Imagine ... Pac-Man World. Directed by Uwe Boll.
(I know it's early, but I swear, "Bionic Commando: Rearmed" was "Bionic Commando: Reamed." Now that would be an odd game.)
Bark less. Wag more.
Not the first one, and certainly not The Passion (oh God). But Test Drive II: The Duel was a very sweet spot in that collection. Update the physics, update the cars, update the graphics, make it network capable. Keep the game play essentially the same - racing from point to point, avoiding other cars (including the other players) and cops, and keep the witty remarks. I'd play it, and I bet others would, too. I still play The Duel now via DOSBOX.
I don't know, maybe there's something else like this out there now.
Hey guys, what about that fantastic Action 52 game?
Action 52 Video (NSFW... maybe)
That game was fantastic.
A NES could beat a Atari 2600 hands-down, but there's no way it was superior to the Commodore 64. Plus, us Commodore owners didn't have the Nintendo Seal of Qualitcrap, so we could play games that featured bloody decapitations.
This summarizes many years of my childhood:
(shoves Pitstop tape in 1530)
LOAD "*"
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
(goes and makes a sandwich)
(sits in front of computer eating sandwich, waiting for game to load...)
LOAD ERROR
"fuck!"
(gets yelled at by mom for cursing)
My Son (a sophomore in college) has complained bitterly that nobody has put out a game as wonderful as the original Descent. Back in mid 90's I had a few DOS machines networked at my house, and we would all play descent against each other. He got a kick out of kicking the snot out of me...
I found a version of Descent a few months back, and it seems they used code timing loops.... It played in 10X time...
I'd love it if someone would build a game with a level editor, 3D space, networked, first person shooter sans all the blood, gore, and realism so popular now days.
I get the nostalgia thing when I see that I can play a game like Pac-Man on the Wii. And maybe I'll spend an hour with it. But that is it. Pac-man is not a great game by today's standards. I guess it is an ok flash\casual game. After an hour I get really bored doing the same thing over and over again. I know there are some people that can spend a lifetime trying to beat Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, but those people are in a very small minority.
Just compare Pac-Man to Team Fortress 2. For $5 I get an hour of entertainment from Pac-Man, unless I'm insane. I've easily had 100 hours of entertainment from TF2 for $20, and the TF2 crazies are probably up in the 1000s of hours. What about Pac-Man is better than TF2? Graphics? Gameplay? Hmm... they are about equal in story.. no, TF2 wins there because the characters are at least funny.
As fun as they may be in short sessions, early video games are just a novelty now. Once storylines start to appear a game might have a little more life to it. A good modern game will easily beat (almost) anything published on the Nintendo and earlier.
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
C'mon. Sing it with me. ... doo doo doo DOO dit dee DOO doo ... Go get 'em Master Chef Peter Pepper
ScummVM has moved beyond just LucasArts games and now supports old Sierra games. There's an iPhone port, so you should be golden for some leisure suit action.
Stunt Car Racer would get my vote for a remake. The sense of height and speed was amazing for the C64/Amiga/ST days. I played it for ages.
What 'allegedly' are you talking about? "Star Wars" was and always will be 'Episode 4.' Lucas imagined it as harking back to the origial Buck Rogers serials, where you'd be dropped into the middle of the story and have to just accept the exposition as it came.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Nintendo needs to release new 2 PLAYER games. One awesome thing about the old Mario games was that you and a friend could play the story mode together. Every time they come out with a new one... Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy, etc... I hope for it, but it never happens. I don't want a game with separate multiplayer modes, I want a game that the adventure story mode can be shared by two people (and it not be a stinkin' "party" or sports game) - just like Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World.
I'm trying to work out whether you're telling us about your life or telling us a bad analogy (and what for) ...?
I'm amazed no one has mentioned Tempest 2K on the Jaguar - that really was a great game updated and *improved*. Minter was right on the money that time. Alas he then did Tempest 3K on Nuon - ermm.... Tempest 2K is worth buying a used Jaguar for though - totally awesome.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Apple has recently perfected "one-click" software purchase and installation on their iPhone/iPod family. You can deliver software "on the whim" for $1-$10 to a potential market of tens of millions. Even if one in thousand purchase, you still clean up. Business week recently ran an article about this new class of iPhone software millionaires. Perfect platform for resurrecting many games.
Now there's a remake I'd pay money for. Too bad so few people have heard of it.
Here you go: http://atarimule.neotechgaming.com/about.htm
Project Spring is an open source RTS platform that has the ability to be skinned and modified for user created games. There are several excellent remakes of the RTS classis Total Annihilation (upon which the Spring platform is based) with an updated user interface and much better POV control and queue management. My only beef with the platform is that it does require some good 3D hardware to run correctly. I can't get a good frame rate to save my life with my integrate radeon x1250... even on a dual core 3ghz Athlon! http://spring.clan-sy.com/
Didn't Shrapnel Games just release one recently?
I've been having a lot of fun with the new Street Fighter on xBox 360. I would love to be able to download Marvel Super Heroes or Marvel vs. Capcom too!
Freelance Web Designer - Portfolio
http://www.snake360.com/
It's Snake. Surely you've heard of Snake. But now it has 3D graphics, 300 levels, co-op play, Internet ranking and two battle modes for up to 4 players.
If you've enjoyed Snake before you may want to check it out =)
X-COM needs a proper remake.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I think people nowadays are way too quick to discount new ideas because they can be summarized to sound somewhat similar to an earlier idea. Yet many games still feel very different because seemingly small differences can change the experience massively and it's the difference in experience that counts. A game can get praised as new and different when it doesn't look much different from afar, just by playing it you notice how it works out.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Many new ideas just die because they aren't good ideas. Ideas are a dime a dozen, good ideas and good implementations thereof are the rare stuff.
Also nowadays when you make a new kind of game the "discerning" people on the internet will dismiss it as "casual"...
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I have a few of the refurbished classics on Xbox Live Arcade, and the graphics look washed out.
I don't know what they use for filtering in for example Street Fighter II, but I guess it's billinear. It looks absolutely horrible.
When you use sprites, you need one version made for each resolution, in my opinion. Simple using linear interpolation on it, is sloppy work and removes details like edges. I also believe that the pixelated look which these old games had due to the low resolution, is a part of the overall graphics theme. Using texture filtering does neither give a good approximation for TV scanlines, nor for low resolutions.
Either go for a faithful replication of the original, or adjust the artwork to today's resolutions without using lazy upscaling tricks.
Just rub a little isopropyl alcohol on the contacts and it will bring any cartridge back to life. I even resurrected an oxidized atari cart this way!
I am the penguin that codes in the night.
"And why is there still no game where I can free-roam through the Star Trek universe, discovering random species or picking fights with Borg?"
Oh dude, that'd kick so much ass.
Starflight was a little like that, it did have a plot twist gradually catch up to you though. I found a walkthrough guide years after I'd quit playing, looked through my notes (wormhole locations and such), I'd mapped like 90% of them. Very large, most of the planets were generated by like a fractal algorithm, so if you had to start over, there'd still be nice mineral deposits in the same spots, but there's thousands of planets overall so even the designers didn't know where the best mineral deposits were for sure.
The closest thing I can think of now is EVE. I never quite got into it. From what I've read there's a high risk of piracy in some areas. I don't know if there are aliens to meet or not, that would be interesting.
Funny you should say that. I still play Master of Magic in DOSBox (though I had forgotten that you have to run that program to set up the sound in it, then feed it the sound card info from your DOSBox config and that was a pain in the ass).
And just yesterday, I installed Baldur's Gate under XP again from the original 5 CD version (also a pain in the ass... I had to open the ini file in the registration section and tell it not to bother me for 999 days and not to ask any of the questions and then print a reg card for "faxing" and I had to remember the trailing slash in the BG ini file when I put all 5 CDs on my HD so that it didn't tell me that "An assertion failed in D:\Dev\chitin\ChDimm.cpp at line number 581. Programmer says: Unable to Open BIF:data\SFXsound.bif" and I had to find the infinitycracker to remove the annoying CD check because I do NOT have ToSC and my version is older than most cracks recognize, even though I downloaded both available updates from BioWare).
Even so, just the other day, we played pong (AKA "laser hockey") on the Wii.
In other words, if you care enough about the original, you can always go back and play it. Emulators are a wonderful thing. But we should be glad that people are remaking the classics. Because I doubt that everyone would have as much patience as I did to restore these old games from their archives of dusty old CDs that haven't been used in ages.
Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get back to the party. Minsc will sic Boo on me if I don't help them finish off these ankhegs ...
no, Star Wars is Star Wars. if you wanna get picky, it's Star Wars: A new hope.
He didn't write the swill that was episodes 1-3 until well after Return of the Jedi. Midichlorians? the fevered delusion of a cocaine deranged idiot seemingly intent on cheapening the memories of millions of fans.
I'm glad he apparently hit rehab, at least briefly, before Indiana Jones IV.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
I don't know if its already been mentioned, but Pac-Man C.E. for Xbox Live Arcade is a fantastic game with great visuals and a nice stage-shifting twist. Would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes the original game.
If only someone would resurrect the following two games:
1. TradeWars 2002--not the new EIS crap, but the original Gary Martin version
2. Land of Devastation--just update it from the original turn-based multi-player to actual multi-player--and keep the ability to tweak and configure maps, in-game objects, etc...
If those two games were released...damn. I'd party like it was 1993ish all over again.
There's no place like