The Virtues of Videogame Remakes

2023 is an interesting year for videogames. Specifically for the amount of remakes being released. We’ve had both the Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 remakes come out very close to each other, with both receiving critical acclaim, and later in the year we have the Super Mario RPG remake and Star Ocean the Second Story R. On top of the Kirby Return to Dreamland remake which I looked at earlier in the year.

Videogame remakes are nothing new. One of the earliest gaming remakes I know is Super Mario All Stars which redid all the NES Mario platformers for the Super Nintendo. The GBA had a ton of remakes on it both good and bad, and don’t get me started on the PSP library. That thing was like 40% remake and 60% JRPG, and most of the JRPG’s were remakes so it’s probably mor 80% remakes.

But what I find interesting about videogame remakes is the reactions they get. When movies get remade, most reactions tend to be a resounding meh. Some may be a little excited for them, but the vast majority are indifferent if not outright hostile towards them. Just look at the Disney live action remakes.

Videogame remakes though, they seem to have the opposite effect. While some may be indifferent to them, that’s largely due to the game itself not being their particular cup of tea. Most gamers seem to react positively to videogame remakes, with some being just as excited for them as big new releases.

And I want to discuss the reason why that is.What is it about videogame remakes that make them better, why are people more receptive of them than other remakes, and what are some good and bad examples of videogame remakes that are out there.

First though I need to establish the difference between a remake and a remaster. As a general rule, I consider a remake to be an updated re-release with new visuals, content and updated game mechanics, while a remaster is simply a slightly updated port, usually improving the visuals but not really updating the core gameplay experience.

Admittedly though, the line between the two can often be very blurry. You could make the argument that the Last of Us Part 1 is more of a remaster because it doesn’t change the gameplay much outside of updating the control slightly.

Conversely, you could say that the Crash and Spyro remaster trilogies are remakes since they feature new assets built from the ground up and several gameplay tweaks and improvements. Then there’s Wonderboy the Dragons Trap remake which does add some new things but mainly acts as a visual update to the original, to the point where the original games graphics are an option. It sits between being a remake and a remaster.

It can be a little difficult to qualify what is a remake and what is a remaster. But I do have some criteria. Basically, if it features new assets built from the ground up for it, new content made exclusively for it, i.e., not previously released DLC on the disk, and gameplay updates then it counts as a remake.

It doesn’t necessarily need to have all 3, but it does need to have some combination of them. The first one is likely the biggest indicator of whether it’s a remake or not. If it’s using the same assets as the old game just uprezzed, then it’s probably a remaster.

I probably could have just said that and things wouldn’t have been as confusing, but hey, that’s just the way things are. Some games are called remasters when they’re more like a remake and vice versa. Gaming companies are not good at categorising things.

Hopefully you get the idea. A videogame remake is taking an original work but updating with new assets. Better visuals, voice acting, music, basically taking something old and making it new again.

So now that we’ve established that, what is it about them that draws gamers to them. Why are they more positively received then their filmic counterparts. Well, I’ve already provided an answer. As I said, videogame remakes have new content and gameplay upgrades. The latter of which can make a huge difference.

Videogames age very differently than a movie and a tv show. When those age and become outdated it’s usually because of the subject matter. A well-made film from 1935 is still a well-made film today, it’s just the actual content of the film that date it.

Case in point, Birth of a Nation. That film is a technical marvel for its time. It’s considered one of films first true epics by film historians and a pioneer in a lot of film making techniques still used today. It’s also a horrifically racist film that depicts blacks as violent animalistic rapists, and the Klux Klux Klan as knightly saviours of the put upon south. No amount of technical brilliance can ever cover that shit up.

Conversely, a film like King Kong may not be as impressive today as it was on its first release, but it can still be admired for its technical achievements and for just being a great movie. So long as the content of the film isn’t horribly outdated, the technical stuff isn’t too hard to adjust to for modern audiences.

The same can’t be said for videogames. And keep in mind I’m not just talking about the visuals or the music. If the rise of indie games has shown us anything it’s that those older games had a charm to how they looked and sound. A well-made 8-bit game can look just as good as a modern title, it’s just a matter of what you do with the style.

No, I’m talking about the actual gameplay. A lot of older videogames can be clunky to control, be overly difficult, have obtuse puzzles and progression, lack a lot of modern quality of life improvements expected for its genre etc.

While you can blame these issues on technical limitations, a lot of the issues with older games come from design decisions that were just accepted at the time. One of the reasons NES games are notoriously difficult was to mask their short length and to avoid kids beating them in a weekend rental.

These days that absolutely would not fly. At least not for AAA gaming, there’s plenty of indie games that offer that kind of difficulty but those meant for a specific niche, not necessarily a mass audience. Point is a lot of older design decisions would not really work today.

This can prove to be a bit of an issue when trying to go back to older games. Especially for newer players who aren’t used to the idiosyncrasies of retro games. Which is where remakes have a distinct advantage.

Sure, you can re-release these games with modern amenities like save states and rewind features, but those won’t fix underlying design issues. With remakes you can. And in some instances, these improvements can make the remakes the definitive way to play the original.

One example I talked about a little while ago was the Crash Bandicoot The N-Sane Trilogy. Whenever I go back to the original Crash trilogy I go for the N-Sane remake. Not only do they look way better, I still think they look great even now, but they feature a few improvements to the gameplay that make them more enjoyable. Especially for the first game which made getting 100% much easier.

Metroid Zero Mission is another good example. The original Metroid was a groundbreaking game but it’s clunky and dated by today’s standards. Zero Mission not only controls much smoother it also has a lot of the quality-of-life improvements introduced in the sequels like a map feature.

That’s another thing remakes have going for them, being able to retroactively add in features that weren’t introduced until the sequels. I’ve been playing through Star Ocean First Departure R in preparation for Second Story R, and that has a bunch of features that weren’t introduced until Second Story, the original PS1 release not the upcoming remake just to be clear. In fact, it plays almost identically to Second Story, only with the characters, story and world of the first Star Ocean.

Which is good because Second Story is a much better game. So being able to play through the original story with the better mechanics of the sequel makes for a much better experience.

It’s funny because it’s almost like designing in retrospect. You know when you go back to the first entry of a series, and it feels weird because a lot of what the series is known for either weren’t implemented or fleshed out properly. Well remakes don’t have that issue because they have the benefit of hindsight and can add those things in.

I see this mainly with fan remakes. There’s an excellent fan remake of Kings Quest 2 which tries to tie the somewhat bizarre story with it’s sequels by adding in and expanding on plot points that weren’t in the original.

Fan remakes in general tend to go a lot farther than official remakes. But I think I’m going to ignore fan remakes from this point forward because fan projects are a different topic entirely that deserve their own discussion. And I don’t feel comfortable comparing fan made passion projects to official productions made under different circumstances.

Making the originals play a lot more like its sequel can really help improve the games playability. While I don’t count it as a remake, you could argue that Kingdom Hearts Final Mix does exactly this. Fixing the clunky interface of the original with the much smoother design of Kingdom Hearts 2.

But the best remakes don’t just add stuff from the sequels. They add in a bunch of new content on top of that. It could be a new level, a new character, maybe some new story or boss fights or even entirely new mechanics.

One of the best examples I always point to for this is Mega Man Maverick Hunter X. A 3D remake of Mega Man X on the PSP that not only had more story content, but also a brand-new campaign where you could play as the villain Vile with his own story. It was a cool remake that remained faithful to the original and expanded on it in logical ways. The fact it is still locked to the PSP is a crime.

Though when it comes to adding new content, it doesn’t always work out. It can often clash with the core design and stick out like a sore thumb. I noticed this recently in Sonic Origins Plus where they added the spin dash to Sonic 1. It made it very clear the game wasn’t designed with that in mind. Cool to have, but it kind of breaks the game.

Still, it’s always nice to have new stuff. It’s a great way to expand on a game while also giving players who have already played the original an excuse to check the remake out. I’ll always give points to a remake for having new content even if it isn’t always the best.

Now in terms of what we’ve covered, improving on the game and adding new content, I find the one genre that benefit from these the most are RPG’s. Which actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

RPGs are by far the most complex of gaming genres. Not only are the games much longer than most, but also feature a lot of in-depth mechanics and tons of variables in terms of stats and customisation.

Because of this older RPG’s are almost impossible to get into for newer players. Unlike a platformer or an action game which can be simple to pick up and play no matter how old it is, an RPG requires a lot more dedication and patience from the player to get through.

And in older RPG’s where everything is clunkier and more obtuse, it can get outright incomprehensible for players who didn’t play them when they first came out. Especially for the ones on PC. Those could get ridiculous with how complicated everything was.

That’s not even getting into how difficult a lot of them were. Mostly due to the often unrefined and, let’s be honest, unbalanced gameplay. It’s not hard to see why retro RPGs are harder to get into than most other genres.

Look at the original Final Fantasy. For all its classic status, it’s also an unfairly difficult, grindy, unrefined, bug riddled mess of a game. Half the fucking mechanics don’t even work for god’s sake. The thief class couldn’t even steal things. How do you have a thief that can’t steal, it’s like their one job.

No one plays the original Final Fantasy on NES, outside those nostalgic for it. They play one of the many remakes that fixes all of that, adds in new dungeons and bosses and even changes the magic system to be more in line with other entries in the series, the originals magic system was more DnD inspired.

There’s even a new version you can play right on modern platforms with the Pixel Remaster. Which is a remaster since it’s the same game with new visuals no added content, but it does have several gameplay tweaks that make it play better. So, it’s half remaster, half remake. Told you it got blurry.

Probably the most famous RPG remakes are the Pokémon remakes. With all the improvements added in every sequel, it can be awkward going back to the originals. Even some of the remakes themselves quite frankly. I love Fire Red and Leaf Green, they’re great remakes, but them being released before the physical special split in gen 4 does hurt them in my eyes.

Thankfully later remakes did and were better for it. Hear Gold and Soul Silver are far better than the original and that was already considered the best in the series. The gen 3 and 4 remakes are also pretty good, though they have some issues that are baked into the DNA of the originals. You can meme about IGN saying “too much water” in their review but they aren’t wrong.

This does lead me to one of the pitfalls of videogame remakes. While a lot of them can and do improve on the original, they can’t improve everything. Some flaws are just inherent to the original games design and can’t be fixed without massively overhauling the game.

At that point though you aren’t making a remake, you’re making a reimaging. For me a remake should try to improve on the original, but it should also try to stay true to the original. If you change too much, then it becomes unrecognisable and becomes something different entirely.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake was accused of this when it came out and it’s not hard to see why. The gameplay is completely different from the original and the story features a bunch of changes that make it both a retelling of the original and a pseudo sequel to it. it’s a weird project.

But the one I always point out for this is the Ratchet and Clank remake from 2015. That game had so many changes to the story, structure, and levels, even cutting several from the original, that it didn’t feel like the original at all. It had some things from it, but it was redone so heavily it was very much a reimagining of it. Mind you that’s because it was meant as reboot to tie into the failure that was the Ratchet and Clank film, so maybe it shouldn’t count as a remake in the first place. It’s a weird one.

That said, not every remake that changes things from the original is bad. Sometimes they can make the game worse, I personally didn’t like Ratchet and Clank 2015 at all, but sometimes it just makes it different. People do like Final Fantasy 7 remake; they just think it changed a little too much.

The recent Resident Evil 4 remake has a whole lot of changes. There are sections that were cut entirely, and the tone is more serious compared to the campy b-movie nature of the original, but people still really liked it. it got tons of praise from critics and it’s in the running for game of the year for many players.

Then there’s the Resident Evil 2 Remake. That game changed way more than the 4 remake did. Basically abandoning the original Resident Evil 2 style of gameplay and using the gameplay established in Resident Evil 4, the original not the remake. And yet, fans loved it. They thought it was the best Resident Evil game in years and a faithful remake of the original despite the changes it made.

Why is that? Simple, it didn’t lose what made the original Resident Evil 2 so special. Despite all the changes it made it still had all the familiar elements knew and love. It still had a lot of the old set pieces, the two separate campaigns that change depending on what order you do them in, Mr X, the puzzles, the police station. It still felt like Resident Evil 2. It just played more like Resident 4, and 5 and 6 but who cares about them.

I think with remakes it’s expected that they’re going to change things. I mean why remake it in the first place if not to do exactly that, but you don’t want to change so much that you lose a lot of what made the original so beloved. Hell, the Resident Evil 3 Remake would learn that lesson not long after RE2 Remake came out.

Conversely, you also don’t want to change so little that the remake doesn’t justify its own existence. I mentioned The Last of Us Part 1 as an example of a remake you could argue as a remaster because of how little it changed. I remember when that came out, it got praise because at its core it’s a good game, but it was also criticised for not having a reason to exist.

If I wanted to play the original, I would just play the original. If you weren’t going to improve things beyond the graphics, why remake it in the first place. Just release a remastered port at that point. I want remakes to give me something slightly different from the original since I’ve already played it.

That’s the thing with gaming remakes. Most of them are made for players who may have missed out on the original. It’s why a lot of remakes feature a lot of quality-of-life improvements in the first place. But there’s also going to be gamers who grew up with the original who are going to be interested in the remake.

Mainly because of nostalgia, but also because they want to see what’s different. They’ve played the originals, sometimes so much they know it by heart, so they’ll be looking at these remakes as an excuse to replay the game in a different way.

And if you want a perfect example of everything we’ve talked about so far, look no further the Resident Evil 1 Remake. Yup, we brought it full circle. Gameplay that remained faithful to the original but with huge improvements to the mechanics, vastly better visuals, music and voice acting, new gameplay and story content without removing anything from the original. It’s as perfect a remake as you can get.

In fact it’s such a good remake that fans consider it the definitive way to play the original Resident Evil. And it isn’t alone. There’s a ton of other game remakes that are just outright better than the original, to the point it renders the original obsolete. Metroid Zero Mission, the Pokémon remakes, most modern versions of Final Fantasy, Crash Bandicoot the N-Sane Trilogy and the recent Live-A-Live remake are a few that come to mind.

And that’s not something you can say about remakes in other mediums. That isn’t to say there haven’t been good film remakes because there have been, but very rarely do these remakes supplant the original. Even the best film remakes are mostly a different take on the story that can stand beside the original, not replace it. But with game remakes they can be so much better that there’s simply no reason to go back to the original, outside of nostalgia or curiosity.

But let’s be honest, the main reason film remakes never replace the original is because most of them are terrible. Film remakes have a bad reputation for a reason. Because the vast majority of them are shameless cash grabs that are insulting to the original. Very rarely do you find one that’s actually decent, let alone good.

But game remakes don’t have the same issue. Oh, there are some truly awful remakes out there, Sonic Genesis on GBA, the Xbox Live remake of Flashback, Double Dragon 2 Rage of the Dragon, Turtles in Time Re-Shelled, the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy.

It’s not hard to find a bad gaming remake. And if I’m being honest a lot of remakes out there can be pretty middling. I love Klonoa Door to Phantomile but it’s Wii remake, while faithful enough, makes some small changes that make it a lesser experience. It’s not bad by any means, but the original is better.

That does sometimes happen with gaming remakes. Sometimes the original is better for one reason or another. I’m not going to lie and say the world of videogame remakes is perfect because it’s not. But it is more consistent than the world of film remakes.

Even most of the bad remakes are usually smaller scale releases that don’t get much attention. When it comes to remakes of bigger titles, they hit far more than they miss. At least from my perspective.

Then there’s just the fact that it’s nice to have these older games available on modern platforms. Gaming preservation is an important practice many companies are slacking on, and it’s only going to get worse as we go more and more digital.

Granted, re-releases are a better way to combat this. After all you want to preserve the games as they are, so porting the game to modern platforms is the preferred option. However, remakes do have their advantages in this regard.

Aside from being able to update games that haven’t aged the best as we’ve already gone over, there’s also the fact that remakes seem to have a higher profile than a typical port. I mean a remake has significantly more money behind it that a simple re-release, and therefore a higher marketing budget, so remakes tend to get a lot more attention from gamers who may not be familiar with them initially.

Did you know both Resident Evil 2 and 3 were both released on the GameCube? Probably not because they were basic ports of the PlayStation originals. Everyone talks about Resident Evil on GameCube because it was a full scale remake built from the ground up, while nobody talks about the second and third games because there’s nothing to talk about. And this is the last time I’ll bring up Resident Evil, I swear to God.

And another good example of this would be Trials of Mana. The remake of that game was released not long after the original was re-released with the Collection of Mana. Though technically that isn’t true since that collection was released in Japan several years before we got it in the west, and the original was never released in the west prior to that so it’s technically the first time it was released here, but I’m getting too caught up in the details.

Point is the remake likely brought more attention to Trials of Mana that the re-release did. How do I know this? Because they announced Collection would release in the west, right after announcing the remake. They caught our attention with the remake, and then said the original would be available if we wanted to play it.

This tie in to the revitalisation effect a remake can have on forgotten franchises. Crash Bandicoot was all but dead before the N-Sane Trilogy released. He was basically relegated to a Skylanders cameo, and his last few games were critical and commercial failures. One great remake collection later, and now he has a new sequel and spin-off game on the market.

I will admit this doesn’t happen often, but it can happen. I would argue that a remake could make for a more effective reboot than an actual reboot. Since the latter comes with the risk of alienating long-term fans of the series. Just look at DMC.

But even if you don’t make it a pseudo reboot, being able to breathe new life into a forgotten and/or dead franchise can help build excitement for the remake. One of the reasons I was excited for the Klonoa Phantom Reverie Collection was for it to hopefully bring back the Klonoa series. No idea if it succeeded at that but that was the hope.

This also might be why there’s a lot of hype surrounding the upcoming Super Mario RPG remake. Mario RPGs aren’t as strong as they used to be. Mario and Luigi is dead at this point, and Paper Mario is too busy experimenting to bother being an RPG. This remake could show there’s still demand for a traditional Mario RPG. Maybe, hopefully.

I think you get the idea at this point. Videogame remakes are far from perfect. There are plenty of examples of gaming remakes that crap the bed, and I will confess there is a degree of corporate greed and creative bankruptcy that goes into why they are made. But to ignore the good reasons remakes exist would do them a disservice.

Remakes are a great method of revisiting a previous work but with updated presentations and mechanics, while also allowing these games to exist on modern day platforms. And it’s that last one that I think is why most gamers react more positively to remakes than filmgoers do.

Movie remakes have very few reasons to exist. In a modern age where I can get pretty much any film I want on DVD, streaming or… less legal means let’s just say, what’s the point of remakes. I have ready access to the original and I’d rather just watch that anyway.

But gamers don’t always have that option. A lot of these older games are locked on old hardware that isn’t readily available to most people and is becoming pricier and pricier as time goes on. There is emulation, which does help, but that has its own issues and let’s be honest it’s always better to have an official release over piracy.

So, until videogame preservation starts being taking more seriously, gamers will accept remakes as a necessary evil even if they aren’t the best. But the fact that a lot of them are better than the originals does help sweeten the deal.

There are plenty of great remakes out there, many of whom I didn’t cover here, and there are plenty more we’ll see in the future. And with new gaming technologies and engines there’s some remakes people are really demanding. Ever since the HD-2D engine launched people have been clamouring for a Chrono Trigger remake on it, and I’m with them on that one.

Hell, it’s getting to the point where 7th generation titles could be remade next. Resident Evil 5, goddamnit, is likely getting remade next after the success of 4’s remake, and 5 isn’t even that old. I’m just worried they’ll end up remake the Resident Evil 1 Remake. Once we’re remaking a remake that’s when we’ve gone too far.