Video game remakes can be disasters, but before getting into my opinion and reasoning …What are video game remakes and why are they made? It is when developers of a big hit game work on making a new adaption using new technology in order to promote a game franchise that was created years ago to an audience. For example, some games from the following consoles: NES, SNES, N64, GBA and ect…were remade for a brand new game console. Video game developers often add new graphics, extra story plots and new features to the game to bring the player’s interest. Remakes can make the audience of said franchise grow as a community, by bringing new members.
What can ruin a remake? Original games have a very distinguishable atmosphere that compliments the game’s art style and genre. However, there are ways developers can do the opposite effect and make the game bland. Ways of developers making their game unintentionally bland is when developers change the renders of an art style to attempt to make the game look “new” and improved. In the process of this, developers may make the characters bland and uncharacterized by redesigning the fundamentals of the character. Examples of “bland” traits are when characters have less expression, one of the possible reasons for this being the budget. It could have possibly been too low that the added-in features actually make the game somewhat unappealing. For example, the big hit game called Secret of Mana, which was originally released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System on August 6, 1993, was remade for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. The RPG game was added with new features to make it more astonishing, but it backfired and was even considered a bad adaptation by game reviewers. The characters from the story were made into 3d models, which were poorly rendered, meaning that the characters were often expressionless and had stale movements. An additional feature that was also newly added was voice acting for the characters. The voice acting almost seemed pointless, since the character models didn’t have any talking animations. Imagine a character talking, but their mouth isn’t closing and opening to perform any speech! Music soundtracks have the same songs from the original, but new instruments and sounds were added, making the music sound quite ear-piercing. Almost too many instruments were being performed that it made the soundtracks sound overlaid, unpleasant and chaotic. This brings us back to voice acting, the overlaid music made the added in voice lines very difficult to listen to, since the music is actually too loud. Overall, the game is speculated to be made as a cash grab from how the production was poorly made.
Playing a couple of remade games myself, made me realize how exactly remakes can have the same charm from the original. Not only the graphics, sounds and music itself make the games have personality, but newly added features. Earlier, I mentioned that adding new features might be pointless to the actual game if it doesn’t affect anything. But there are various examples of this being done right, which greatly benefits the attention of an audience. Kirby Super Star Ultra for the 3DS released in 2008, and it’s a remake of the original title, Kirby Super Star which was released for the SNES in 1996. I’ve played the original and the newly released one from 2008, and would like to say that it’s still my favorite game. There are lots of elements that carry the game and make it better than the SNES version. Both are great but 3DS is a great improvement, and worth playing! Well, let’s get into what makes it so great for me. The music soundtrack still has the same songs, but there was more additionally added music as replacements for songs that were often repeated. This recurs as a way to give the player playing that the level is special and an important timestamp of the game. Something I would like to mention is the sound chip for the 3DS. The music sounds different, high pitches and low pitches are highly exaggerated, but those are the effects from the 3DS sound chip. It doesn’t ruin the experience but it’s surely something that you’ll notice when playing. The art for the game is almost the same as the original, colorful, wholesome and playful. It doesn’t look bland or boring, it definitely has the same energy as the SNES ver. New characters and stories were added in to give the player more variety of options to play with, even after completing the game!
People can have different opinions about games, they might even say that some video game remakes are really good or really bad. Speaking on the nostalgia part of the spectrum, these remakes can mean a lot to other people because it shows the love of the game’s audience. I personally think there are ways to make remakes with the same charm and energy as the previous ones.
