Do Games Need Remakes?

It’s hard to say exactly what the first video game remake is, but suffice to say, they’ve been around for a long time. They appeared sporadically in the 1980s, started to become more common in the 1990s, and by the 2000s, they were much more common, with remakes of Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid being released when the originals were only six years old. If there has been a change in recent years, it’s not necessarily that they’re more common than before, but that they’re more prestigious releases. Rather than something outsourced to another studio or developed just to fill a release schedule, these are now major releases, and they’re perceived as being the treatment that the source material deserves. Inherent to this idea is the assumption that older games can never be as good as new games, or just that there’s something wrong with old games that could and should be corrected. Regardless, it would behoove us to first understand exactly what a remake is.

Outside of video games, the distinction between a remake and a remaster is fairly clear-cut. An Ultra HD Blu-ray release of RoboCop is a remaster; the 2014 RoboCop film directed by José Padilha is a remake. More generally speaking, a remaster is the original work presented in a new, higher-fidelity format while a remake is a completely new work based on the original. Remakes are less common in other forms of popular media. Some books are explicitly written as rewrites of classic literature (there’s a whole cottage industry of retellings of Pride and Prejudice), but these are generally billed under different titles. Remakes in music are often limited to covers of songs, with entire album remakes being very uncommon, Taylor Swift notwithstanding. In video games, they’re relatively a lot more common, but this is in part because the nature of remastering and remaking is a bit different. With films and music, there are source materials that can easily be reproduced. Film negatives can be cleaned and scanned at higher resolutions with digital video editing used for colour correction (the remasters of the Star Wars films go further by replacing original visual effects, but this is neither common nor popular). New mixes of audio recordings can be made that are better suited to modern sound systems and sensibilities, although this can also prove controversial. In either case, however, the remaster does reflect the original work, albeit in a different format.

Video games introduce complications. The source material is not nearly as easily identifiable. There are the audio and video assets that make up the game’s presentation, but behind that is the game’s code, which is written specifically for the hardware it’s being developed for. Remastering a game necessarily requires adapting it to the new hardware. Unlike a film negative that can be scanned and encoded into any video format, the original code needs to be made for the intended format. Therefore, preserving the actual source is incredibly difficult. The best-case scenario is to preserve the effective source. That is, while the code may be different, the end result is the same. But at that point, do you want the end result to be the same? If there are glitches in the original game that make the game worse, is it good practice to keep them around for posterity, or is it better to correct these mistakes when the opportunity arises?

A very fascinating case study in this problem is Marvel vs Capcom 2. The original game features a wide range of outcomes that span “unintended but a natural consequence of the game’s conscious design choices” to “very obviously a glitch that makes the game worse.” In rereleasing the game as part of the Marvel vs Capcom Arcade Collection, Capcom had the dubious task of deciding where to draw the line. Some were obvious. Preserving the Ruby Heart glitch would be a terrible idea. In a game with online multiplayer, easily letting players freeze the game is a recipe for disaster (“I want that guy banned from PlayStation Network!” doesn’t sound right, either). So, fix away, nobody will be mad. But the famous Juggernaut glitch is a different story. I won’t go into detail about exactly how it works or what it does, but the end result is that it elevates Juggernaut from being a middling character to being entirely viable. But, it was a glitch, so Capcom removed it, much to the dismay of the game’s players. After some pushback, Capcom intentionally restored a glitch they previously fixed. While it was never an intentional part of the game, it arguably made the game better by expanding the range of characters that can compete at the game’s highest levels. Evidently, deciding whether or not a glitch should be preserved is a sensitive subject.

Beyond just the unintentional, there are a lot of intentional things that still need to be addressed. The game’s code is particular to the platform, and that’s not just under the hood. Different consoles historically handled things very differently (differences between modern consoles are significantly less pronounced). Consider the original PlayStation, which had relatively rudimentary 3D rendering capabilities. These limitations, such as the use of nearest-neighbour interpolation and fixed-precision geometry, are easily visible in the blocky textures and wobbly polygons produced by its graphics processor. In remastering a PlayStation game, should these limitations be considered? They’re a consequence of the hardware the game was developed for, but consequences that were well understood at the time of development. How well can the game as an abstract concept be separated from the actual product of the game as it was played at the time? Should the original texture filtering and geometry precision be preserved, or should they be supplanted to see the underlying assets more clearly?

Of course, code is not the only thing to worry about. The assets are the other side, and changing them is also a difficult subject. In some places, changes are mandatory. To pass console certification, in-game button prompts need to match the buttons on the console’s controller. If the remaster is for a console family the game has never been on before, some new graphics will need to be made to match the new buttons while matching the original graphics. Of course, remastering also presents the opportunity to improve on other things. Maybe it’s just some noticeably lower-quality assets that can be improved, or maybe it’s higher-resolution textures across the board. Suddenly, remastering the game can involve creating all-new assets, perhaps defying the ethos of a remaster as opposed to a remake. More confusing still, there are some games that use all-new graphics while running the exact same logic as the original game (the recent remaster of the original Wizardry comes to mind). Here, the code is the same, ported to modern platformers within a new container, with a completely new presentation. Again, the lines are blurred.

So, between glitches and hardware quirks, there are a lot of decisions that go into remastering a game, and these decisions complicate what exactly a remaster is. In a conundrum reminiscent of the Ship of Theseus, it’s hard to pinpoint at which point it starts to be a different game. This of course creates confusion when remakes, which are overtly different games, enter the equation. Too often, games that are billed as remasters are really more of remakes, considering they have been completely rebuilt from the ground up. Whether this rebuilding produced a game that plays very similarly to the original or a game that plays differently, it’s still a different game. Consider the aforementioned Resident Evil remake and the more recent Resident Evil 2 remake. Resident Evil preserves most of the controls and the fixed camera of the original game; Resident Evil 2 transforms its source material into a fully 3D game with an over-the-shoulder camera, among many other changes. In much the game way, the RoboCop remake is very different in story and style from the original film, whereas Gus Van Sant’s Psycho is an incredibly direct remake. That some remakes are more direct than others does not negate the fact that direct remakes are remakes nonetheless.

Now we return to the question posed in the headline: Do any games need remakes? It’s a common sight to see fans of classic games declaring which games they think deserve or need remakes, with the argument being that it’s the right treatment for these time-honored classics. Of course, this is a bizarre practice. One cannot imagine fervent calls for a remake of Citizen Kane or The Godfather. Yet that was the case for Final Fantasy VII, a landmark video game that in recent years has been the subject of a series of remakes (confusingly, these are also meta sequels to the original, but I won’t dive into that right now). There are a few arguments I can see for why Final Fantasy VII should have been remade. One is that the original is a masterpiece, but one that may not appeal to the tastes of new generations of gamers. I would object and say that they should learn to appreciate older games, but the sad truth is that a lot of people simply won’t play any games released before whatever arbitrary cutoff point they’ve set. Another argument is that while Final Fantasy VII was good for its time, it hasn’t aged very well. It’s not just that the game is alienating to new players, but even people who grew up with it can see its shortcomings. But again, if the game is a classic, a masterpiece, a high-water mark, does it make sense to say that it’s actually not very good? At that point, you’re remaking a game in an effort to appeal to people who don’t like the original game. How will the people who do like the game feel about that?

The argument that is most compelling to me is that a game like Final Fantasy VII that features beloved characters in a brilliant setting, and there’s so much you can do with those characters that the original game didn’t do. It’s not a question of Final Fantasy VII needing a remake. The original is still great. Rather, it’s simply recognizing the opportunity that you could make a really great game in the modern age by starting from the basic, elemental parts of Final Fantasy VII and doing something different with them. And guess what? That’s exactly what Final Fantasy VII Remake is. That’s also what the remake of Resident Evil 2 that I mentioned above is. Even in the cases of some more direct remakes, like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, you can see this in action. The levels from the originals have been faithfully recreated, but updated skating mechanics based on later games in the series and updated goals to match. It’s not the same game anymore, but it’s a damn good game. And that’s what a remake should be. Don’t capitulate to the whiners who are afraid to play an old game. A remake should be made if the opportunity arises to do something differently.