Circuit Jerk

I stare blankly at my DLC on both my Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. 95% of what I’ve downloaded are ports of games I was playing 10-20 years ago.

I pass on acclaimed games like Braid in order to play through Syphon Filter or Duke Nukem 3D again.

This, I think, is why I defend the creation of remakes.

There are some remakes that create a different game or surpass the original. When handled correctly you get a diamond of a remake like we did with the Gamecube remake of Resident Evil. The puzzles were different, some of the story was changed, the layout of the mansion barely resembled the original. We essentially got a new game.

Metal Gear Solid’s remake on the Gamecube was also a notable one. Twin Snakes fixed some of the funky controls from the first one and added first person shooting. There weren’t any noticeable changes to the puzzles, but the upgrade to the graphics made it feel like a new game.

Then there are some remakes that most would rather have left behind.

I predict that when I play Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, I’m going to be grossly disappointed between the difference of how great the original Silent Hill was compared to this remake. It might even give me a greater appreciation of the original.

This is also true for The Adventures of Monkey Island high-def remake. The remake stays true to the source material, but that sort of makes it boring. We all played through the original Lucas Arts point and click adventure game. We all know the jokes and the charm, and I don’t know about everyone else but I hoping for new charm. Sort of a let down. This game isn’t the same as Doom, where I can play through those levels multiple times. This is a story, one I’ve heard before.

Then there are the games people have been begging for to be remade. Final Fantasy VII and Goldeneye immediately come to mind.

Are you in love with the game or the memory? If you’re in love with the memory, you’re being selfish. A remake will never be able to recreate the sound of the disk loudly spinning in the gray console and the CD quality sound of the Playstation title screen as you open the two liter of Mountain Dew on a Friday night. Mostly likely what will happen is a bunch of people will have their memories ruined, while a new generation of kids ask themselves, “Why’d grandpa think Cloud was such a great character? This game is shit.”

Besides, do we really want to play Goldeneye. No matter how many people tell me it was one of the greatest games ever, I just can’t believe it would hold up. As a console FPS at the time, it was the best, but that was mostly from lack of competition. The only other FPS games available were awful ports of Doom and Quake for PS1 and Turok on N64.

It broke boundaries as far as multiplayer and splitscreen went. The frame rate for four players was unbeatable at the time. But that clunky dinosaur would make most people under the age of 18 throw up all over the floor.

Then there’s the question of the willingness of developers to remake classics. Most are afraid to repaint their Mona Lisa. Square/Enix are one of these companies. They already have most the story and dialogue in place for a remake for Final Fantasy VII. So why won’t they remake it?

Final Fantasy VII developers were recently discussing why they haven’t remade Final Fantasy for a high definition system even though it’s a guaranteed trillion times seller. The reason for this is, “Its too hard to develop all of the villages and cities in high definition.” (Here’s the real story, that was an artistic paraphrase.) This coming from people that program individual strands of hair on their characters. Give me a break. Just tell us you’re scared it won’t live up to the original. If you were under the EA umbrella, the B-team would’ve started on this remake years ago.

I guess what I’m saying is, go ahead and make the remakes. Give some new guys on the B team a chance to make it happen and build a name for themselves since they sure as hell aren’t going to get the funds to develop a new IP.

-Dan