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Why Classic Video Game Revamps Must Disappoint
An anonymous reader writes "Somehow my brain, so addled by pop-culture and videogames, drew a link between the alteration of the game-play mechanics in a 20-year-old series, and growing up. I want things to be how they were. I want to play the games I played when I was a child, only I want them to be new. Naturally, this just can't happen. Things will never be the way they used to be. Summer days are no longer spent running around outside before collapsing on a sofa to try to beat Labyrinth Zone; instead they're spent in a sweltering office full of morons who watch The Apprentice. Life has changed. Circumstances have changed. Even if the perfect 2D Sonic game were released tomorrow, it still wouldn't feel right, because I'm no longer the person who played those games.'"
The new Sonic would be great if it didn't run at 10 frames per second.
And yet when I go back and play classic games, often in emulators -- games made at least 15 years ago, and in a few cases over 25 years ago! -- I sure feel like I'm enjoying them.
And it's not purely nostalgia; I have enjoyed games from that era that I did not play at the time.
I want to play the games I played when I was a child, only I want them to be new. Naturally, this just can't happen. Things will never be the way they used to be.
You can substitute just about anything for 'play the games I played' and that statement would hold true. The times (and games and people) are a changin'.
What a drag it is growing old.
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Sonic the Hedgehog may be a poor example for this topic. The gameplay consisted mostly of running and jumping really fast while grabbing rings. It took advantage of the console technology of the time to provide smooth framerates with no tearing, which allowed the backgrounds to zoom by quickly, giving the illusion of speed. But that was the gimmick. Sonic the Hedgehog, as a series, wasn't known for being difficult (like Mega Man) or innovative (like Marathon). It doesn't even have that much of a compelling story (like RPGs). The same gameplay 20 years later may appeal to some people, but most gamers who played Sonic back then are different people now and are looking for more than just running and jumping really fast while grabbing rings (which is one of the laments of the article).
A better example of a classic revamp would be the Bionic Commando Rearmed or the most recent Mega Man game. Bionic Commando Rearmed adds a lot of modern features to the original game, like big boss battles, hacking mini-games, and the ability to swap weapons within the stage, but the basic mechanic of swinging and shooting is still challenging. The most recent Mega Man was pretty popular, despite (or perhaps because) it staying true to the 8-bit Mega Man graphics and gameplay, mostly because it still maintained the same level of challenge.
Of course, many classic games are getting a cloning vats treatment on the iPhone/iPad/iFranchise and Android market. If anything, the older 8-bit, 16-bit, and PS1 era games (or clones of those games) are seeing a bit of a renaissance on those platforms.
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...Sorry, couldn't resist the snipe.
But I reached this conclusion after being bored this past winter, and searching for a decent MMO. There aren't any. (EVE, of course, but I'm sorry - anything that requires complex spreadsheets that would make economics majors cringe isn't a game. It's not even a hobby. :P)
I started reflecting upon the sad state of affairs that is the MMO genre, and I realized something. Part of what made MMOs attractive in the first place was the fact that they were, pardon the pun, game-changing. Sure, there were text-based MUDs aplenty - the golden age was just starting to wind down. Sure, there was UO, but at the risk of annoying legions of UO fans - well, come on, it was UO. Not even close to the same level as that horrible monstrosity and destroyer of lives, careers, marriages and time - EverQuest.
There was something unique about EverQuest, that no other MMO has ever been able to capture, no matter how hard they've tried or what improvements they made. It was the 'newness'. Just a brief time earlier, there was nothing out there like it. But suddenly - bam - the future was here, and holy shit. A massive, 3D world, with ungodly amounts of players. It was the stuff of science fiction back when I was a kid, having to deal with mere 8-bit game consoles - but there it was, finally. The future(tm)! Woo!
Now? Anyone can make an MMO. And it isn't exciting. Because it isn't new. You can change the names of classes; you can add cheesy mechanics, but that initial moment of awe-inspiring potential - stepping into a massive, virtual world for the first time and simply being astounded by the potential - can never come again. ...Also, no moment in gaming will ever be as awesome as getting to the end of Bionic Commando and seeing Hitler, in 8-bit glory. :(
Tempest can't be played correctly without a potentiometer (the round dial), Missile Command can't be played correctly without a big trackball, and Battlezone can't be played without the two sticks that mirror real-life tracked vehicle driving (which I've done).
However good the graphics and mechanics are recreated, it doesn't work without the controllers the games were designed for.
... it's not that you want the game to play as it was when you were a kid. When you were a KID you were at the beginning of game design, as game design advances in a genre or area your expectation bar moves higher. The real issue is that developers don't know or are too afraid of revamping old games. They are afraid of updating the design by what has been learned since the old games release. And quite frankly I think too many developers are out of touch and don't have it in them anymore and thats why we end up with graphics refreshes with the exact same old game template.
There's tonnes many fans would love to add to old games if they had the skills/got the chance. I often wonder what Chrono resurrection aand possible other fan remakes/spin offs would look like if it wasn't for the copyright nazi's.
http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/
Funny for this just get posted. A few hours ago I was introduced to "Super Mario Bros. Crossover (Hacked!)" - I suggest the nostalgic among us give it a whirl. It's the original Super Mario Bros. except that you can play through the game as other 8 - bit Nintendo characters such Samus, Mega Man, and several others. The people who put this together did a bang up job. I blew through level 1-1 -> 7-4 in about an hour with one of the Contra guys. You get all of there weapons and attributes, the in game music even changes to accommodate the character. Anyway, I think Link and Contra guy are the most fun. If your missing the past, as I do, this is a fantastic way to relive it. It's free on the google chrome store. (I originally posted this as an AC - I've been posting enough the last couple years I decided I might as well log in)
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What about the remake of The Secret of Monkey Island? I thought it was terrific.
Eh, I've had a pretty good time with a Missile Command clone recently, driven by the mouse (which is, after all, just an upside-down trackball).
The other two, sure, I agree with those.
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Tempest acutally uses a spinner. Potentiometers can only move so far in one direction, a spinner moves freely. You can build one from an old ball mouse pretty easily.
For missile command, you can get arcade style trackballs still. I have an X-arcade trackball and it's quite good. I wouldn't recommend the joysticks though.
For Battlezone, and other dual stick games like Robotron 2084 I've found the analog sticks on the dual shock to be a very very good replacement. But again, you can buy twin sticks for use with MAME.
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Stop making excuses for Duke Nukem Forever. It was just bad, the poor reaction to it had nothing to do with nostalgia.
I play plenty of old games (or remakes, or clones with the same mechanics) and find them just as good as I did when I was a kid. What the author is missing is the massive dopamine rush that some experiences produce and that you can never normally replicate (because your brain adapts, this is why junkies have to keep increasing their dose).
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I just finished playing through Quackshot, and I'm working my way through World of Illusion. I also just beat Super Metroid. Sure, I'm not the same person I used to be, but I can appreciate things I didn't notice when I was a kid. Like level design, beautiful sprite work, little touches like Donald Duck closing his eyes when he fires or the water lapping against Samas' feet....
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Speaking about the perfect sonic game, here's one based on the old Sonic 1 game, but fully modernized in 3D - the new "Sonic Generations":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuj-6T_ymqg
They've even used the same music from Green Hill zone (which I still love today), and the orchestration is good, but I still prefer the original for various reasons (chorus section has the bass-line moving instead of the melody, giving more contrast etc.). Also the 3D on first glance looks great. But rasterization actually really spoils it. If this was fully-raytraced / globally illuminated, it would look a TON better, and much more likely to give the dreamlike feel that you would have gotten as a kid, but today instead of back then.
To even get a glimpse of that atmosphere from when you were a kid, you need detailed graphics, an I mean REALLY detailed stuff (and no, I don't mean realistic). Generations is great, but you bet you could get 1000x better.
I'm not saying playability isn't important, as it is, but a lot of the 'atmosphere' and nostalgia comes from the audio/visuals (and I would include even Space Invaders and Pacman here).
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I've had just as much fun with Donkey Kong Returns as I had with the SNES series. Great game. Same goes for Mega Man 9 on the Wii Store. Bionic Commando Rearmed was good fun as well. It is possible to make games like they used to. You just have to look at the plethora of indie titles that are available on the Wii Store, XBLA, etc. Super Meat Boy anyone? That's Nintendo hard.
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Centipede is a more popular title than all these, and that also falls into the category where it's not the same with a trackball that doesn't feel like the one you'll find in a computer trackball. There are some reasonable arcade trackballs for emulation you can use to make it and Misslle command workable though, as well as some other big trackball games (Marble Madness, Crystal Castle).
Emulating the Tempest spinner is much harder but still possible, by purchasing the same type of hardware and calibrating it obsessively. Never 100% right, but 95% is close enough to enjoy the game, and for the adjustment period to playing a genuine cabinet to be short.
Battlezone, though, the feel of that game is impossible to recreate anywhere else. A sit-down vector Star Wars is in that category too.
I have realized the same dilemma. My solution is to stick with the old consoles for those games that I have played in my childhood. It's amazing how fun it still is to play SMB1 on original hardware. Playing on original hardware for classics still beats emulation in terms of accuracy and nostalgia. Even though I know the NES cartridges need to be aligned and not blown, I still blow on them just for the hell of it. Classics that I never had a chance to play as a kid I buy on eBay nowadays. For newer consoles, I just stick to newer gems like Limbo on the Xbox 360 instead of going for remakes (except Perfect Dark since I don't want an N64). I never owned an Atari 2600, but I found myself buying one at a flea market and about 30+ games after that for dirt cheap. Many of those games are still entertaining to this day. One more thing I should mention is that young kids today go nuts for the old hardware more than you think. Break out the NES and they'll harass you to let them play with it forever.
Remakes suck because the designers remove things that made the original great.
Persona was remade on the PSP, so they gutted the original soundtrack (one of the most memorable ones in a videogame) and replaced the entire thing with J-Rock/J-Hip-Hop. This was done out of some misguided sentiment of making the game more hip and youth friendly. People were disappointed across the board. Now with a sequel coming out, they held a press announcement _just_ to tell people the original soundtrack would be included.
Or look at the Silent Hill 2/3 HD remake. They are canning all the original voice work and re-hiring new voice actors because Konami is too cheap to pay the original VAs for re-using their work.
Contra 4 on DS came close to being a good remake, but had such excessive difficulty that it was impossible for anyone to enjoy even on the easiest setting. All the original Contra games were challenging but not hard for the sake of frustrating the player.
The biggest problem with remakes is that frequently nobody from the original teams are involved, and they are made by people new to the industry with almost zero experience. So you get people with good intentions but no guidance and no real skill. Compare this to the original games that were all made by industry veterans with years under their belt.
That's why remakes suck.
360 degrees can NOT be played without a joystick that can rotate around an axis but doesn't have freedom to go through the center. The game is just impossible.
Spy Hunter absolutely can not be played without the 4 button steering wheel controller, shifter and pedal to control your speed. Which makes me sad because of all the video games I played growing up, I was by far the best at Spy Hunter, and could play it for as long as I wanted to on one quarter.
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I don't know what your problem is, but please don't project onto me if you feel that it's more enjoyable these days to sit out on your porch and yell at kids to get off your lawn. I'm still happy to play a game, past or future.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm probably one of the more jaded people here when it comes to enjoying games. I rarely play them these days, as 'real life' gets in the way too much. Also, the atmosphere of games is WAY lower than when I was a kid. It's like having a weird dream, which has a strange kind of atmosphere, and then trying to explain that atmosphere to someone else - you can't do it (also similar to when you try to describe 'green' to a born-blind person). Hence nostalgia is incredibly difficult to pin down.
However I will say this, despite my pessimism and the way I usually find today's games utterly boring, I know that an INCREDIBLE game could be produced in theory. For a driving type game for example, it would have the physics of something like Stunt Car Racer, with the tight controls of Outrun, and the futuristic setting of F-Zero, Wipeout or STUN runner, with the variety and sometimes colour/clarity of say, Rainbow Islands, but a million times better than any of these. The game would be easy to master, and incredibly hard to complete with worldwide competitions taking place each day trying to beat the best time / get the furthest. There would always be something to do with your fingers to keep interest at every millisecond in the game (twitch gameplay to the max). The graphics would also be fully raytraced, with full global illumination, not the rasterization crap they use today, which always makes 3D graphics look 'cookie-cutter'-esque. It would be as popular as football if done right I reckon.
A while back, I made a spoof article and spoke about such a game. Look for 'Forward Inertia' which is described later on, and how it's compared to the dull and drab games which are churned out by their bucketloads with zero imagination today. Okay, that's a bit OTT, but not enough for me to feel a bit depressed about the situation.
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If they made the original X-COM with new graphics BUT with the old game play it would still kick the ass of 95% of the Black Ops-Uncharted-Battlefied-Halo shit out there.
True That Tempest. That and the fact that no video game since has been as challenging; period. Tempest rules them all!
Tempest, while it had basic graphics, was a fast kick-ass game, you had to be one bad mo'foing potentiometer master which super brain to hand reflexes to rule at that game.
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Actually, just by keeping me away from real work I'm quite sure that playing Centipede costs me far more per hour spent trying to master it now than I used to spend in quarters. Once you get decent, a game of that will easily last 5 or more minutes. That's $3 an hour of playtime. I lose a lot more than that when I blow off my job to play with MAME nowadays.
Mod parent up, please. Direct and to the point.
I have yet to find a good spinner for playing Tempest with MAME. The optics in converted mice cannot handle the speed required, compared to the dedicated hardware of the arcade cabinet.
Nothing compares to the hell of replicating/emulating the 49-position optical joystick used in Sinistar.
Playing the real Lode Runner on a decent Apple II emulator is pretty much exactly the same to me.
I got sucked into it again a few months ago.
You can't blame poor classic game re-makes on irrelevant changes in life. They do actually suck, inherently.
We have better CPUs, better graphical capabilities, controllers, etc. Let's use them.
We don't necessarily have better controllers. The directional pad on even a worn Nintendo Entertainment System controller is far more precise than the miserable failure of a directional pad on an Xbox 360 controller.
Missile Command can't be played correctly without a big trackball
I've tried to make Missile Command work with a directional pad. Did I fail?
Battlezone can't be played without the two sticks that mirror real-life tracked vehicle driving
Na naa, na na na na na na na na Katamari Damacy! (That's Japanese for "every console since 2000 has two sticks.") Plug your Xbox 360 controller into your PC's USB port, map the axes, and you're set.
I don't think that Sega can retire Sonic because Sega doesn't want to take risks like every other game company. When was the last time we truly saw something innovative that
A) Worked
And most important B) made money.
For example: Okami was very innovative and a great game but sold poorly. On the other hand, Nintendo can put Mario in a game and it will sell based on the name alone. When creative games sell poorly and mass-produced games based on established names sell well, its no surprise that they all make cookie-cutter games, its the only way they can make a profit.
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Seriously, that game is exactly the game we all remembered, except better, and with epicly fun co-op.
That's why I have an arcade trackball.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
What's wrong with the Apprentice? More entertaining than -most- TV shows around now.
Well I'd say that Yahtzee over at Zero Punctuation nailed it when he described the difference between a GOOD remake and a shit one. He said a good remake or sequel should simply use the source material as a jumping off point while adding new direction or new experiences, while a shit one only wallows in the source material, simply rehashing what has already been done.
Like the new Duke Nukem which my oldest had to pick up simply because he was a fan and REALLY wanted it to be good. I told him he's a college man if he wants to waste his money that was his business and sadly watching him and giving it a spin what a waste it was. It reminded me of those piles of shit "movies" like disaster movie and epic movie where they think simply pointing something out is equal to a joke while completely missing the point of parody. It especially hurt to have Duke make a joke about Halo power armor when he was doing the same shit with only being able to carry two weapons (WTF?) and having regenerating health.
Now compare this to a remake I though was decent, King's Bounty. There they updated the graphics, gave new spells and abilities, gave the character more choices in which way they progress, all while still keeping the core gameplay. While I'm sure turn based strategy is a niche many don't like I thought they pulled that update off quite well.
So I'd say it can be done, you simply have to know the core of the source material you are working with and have good ideas on where to go with it. Which is why I still don't get how they could fuck up DNF so badly, hell you can't get easier to write than a new Duke game!
All they would have had to do is have a decent writer come up with good action hero one liners, allow him to carry more weapons than a tank, preferably with NO reload so you have the action movie cliche of firing 40 rounds from a 6 round gun, an environment with lots of things to blow up and explore, lots of titties and cheap sexist jokes, and at the end of a level an insane boss where Duke blows the living shit out of the place before walking away while lighting his cigar and spouting a smart ass remark, like say impaling a boss on a giant spike and then saying "I guess he got the point!" and just to add the delicious icing an authority figure bitching to Duke about all the shit he blew up followed by someone saying "I'm too old for this shit".
So you can take a classic game and make something wonderful, just look at Half Life II, but you have to know what you are doing and not just phone it in. Sadly most companies get a hold of a classic franchise and look at it as a license to put out shit and get the nostalgia dollar and that just ruins it for everyone. After playing 30 minutes of DNF I had to dig out my old Duke shareware and the high res texture pack just to wash the crappy gameplay from my mind and remember what I loved about the game. that is NOT the reaction one should invoke!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I am not afiliated with them in any way, but have you tried www.ultimarc.com? They sell all kinds of controllers and interfaces for the DIY arcade cabinet. I only bought two sticks and a dozen of buttons from them for a cabinet i built for my employer's cantina at the time, so i have no experience on the spinners they sell, but perhaps it's worth checking out.
I still plan on building a home console (atom or i3 based) with a self-built retro-looking controller, for my kids to experience the games i played yesteryear.
I disagree with many of the comments on this thread. Some of the older games were just massively better.
My favorite example: Civ 2.
I've played every version of Civ out, the clones, the latest versions... None of them hold a candle to Civ 2. And it's not some nostalgia, and it's definitely not the graphics. IT'S THE GAMEPLAY. And this is true for nearly every classic game.
Civ 2 though is the most profound example. Compared to Civ 2 most of the civs since released (and yes including civ 4 and 5) are just not all that fun. I'd really like to see Civ 2 redone with identical gameplay and modern graphics.
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I did. Took me forever to figure out that you had to press the jump button to break the poles Sonic holds onto in the current tunnels, otherwise you'd drown every time. Also took me forever to figure out that you didn't have to actually beat Robotnik in that level, just make it to the top of the pit.
Those designers were goddamn sadists.
Now, did anyone actually beat "Aliens" for C64 all the way through from beginning to end without using the RunStop-Esc command? I only ever beat the air-duct maze once and died at the "rescue Newt" level after it.
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Most new games using classic IP, IMHO, are pure shit from a classic gamer's perspective. Not that the games themselves are necessarily bad, but they have little business using the classic IP other than to capitalize on its brand recognition. I say this because in almost every instance the fundamental joys of the classic are lost in the modern incarnation. Compare Castlevanias 1-4 and SotN with any of the 3D Castlevania games to see what I'm talking about. It's often an issue of 2D gameplay translating horribly, if not completely differently, into 3D gameplay, but also of a completely different dev team trying to make a completely different game with some obligatory references to the classic in an empty nod to us old timers.
One of the reasons this occurs is because classic gamers are an aging breed, getting smaller by the day. The industry has grown so much and now includes vastly different and more diverse types of gamers. Most of them don't understand the essence of gameplay, of boiling it down to the basics, and just want great eye candy and a cinematic experience. Most classic games were nothing -but- gameplay with shitty graphics so you could see what was going on. Now it's largely the opposite. I recently bought a used Nintendo Wii and softmodded it, then proceeded to hit up the torrent sites for about 150 games. If you want a perfect example of a viable sequel to a real classic, play Punch-Out!! for the Wii. Out-fucking-standing. All it's missing is Mike Tyson, but I guess Nintendo isn't too fond of putting rapists in their games these days.
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I've played a lot of video game remakes. I'm really a fan of the concept. I love playing old games with a facelift. But I don't consider them to be a replacement of the original, but a new experience. For example, in 2000 they made a fully 3D version of Myst called realMyst. I think it's wonderful (and it even has bonus content), but I still play Myst equally as much as realMyst.
Now here's the key to enjoying the original and the remake -- the "switch" key that LucasArts implemented in the Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2 special editions. With one keystroke, you can flick between a precise replica of the original game (with the original graphics, music and user interface) and the modern remake version. It's quite fun to periodically switch between the two modes to see the differences.
Does anybody know of another remake that does this? (Pre-2009?)