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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?
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.
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.
Nintendo's release of old games to the Wii is absolute genius. Those games were so popular for a reason. It wasn't for their killer graphics - it was because they held your attention and entertained you for hours.
That has little to do with the age of the game. The ratio of garbage to memorable has most likely stayed similar. These old "classics" are just the very few games that have survived the quality filter, out of myriad lumps of crap.
No, it's something the die-hard gamers have been begging Nintendo (or someone) to do for at least a decade. It's not a coincidence that every time a new console or handheld is hacked to run homebrew code, emulators are the first applications to be ported. Nintendo could have made a killing many times over by selling PC-based emulators and game ROMs online at something like $1 a pop, but instead they chose to sue and harass the emulation community. (I.e., their fans. Sound like a familiar story?)
But what irks me the most about the Wii thing is that the old games are pretty damned expensive. According to this page NES games average $5 and SNES games average $8. That's quite a lot of money just for a trip down memory lane.