How would you remake X game?

[ASandoval]

Playing the excellent Super Mario RPG remake last night, Karen asked me how I would approach remaking EarthBound.

My first response was that I wouldn't. Part of what makes the Super Mario RPG remake work (to use Karen's words) is that clearly if they could have made that game, with it's pre-rendered and shrunken 3D graphics, look like the remake, they probably would've. EarthBound on the other hand I strongly believe was always meant to look the way that it does; a bright, colorful Super Nintendo game. I think some might argue that it could have a clay/stop-motion look like the concept and marketing art, but I feel that the art for the NES/SNES Mother games inspired the clay model art, not the other way around*.

After thinking about it a little more, I added a second answer: make it look like a television cartoon special from the 1970s. Something like The Point or Really Rosie with the battle screen more like Yellow Submarine. If the goal was to be Americana nostalgia, that'd be the closest I feel in capturing though vibes - though again, ultimately the best answer is no change to the art at all, similar to how flashbacks in the later Metal Gear Solid games use footage from the old games rather than remaking those scenes in the new engine or using footage from other remakes re: Twin Snakes.

How about you? How would you remake a game if you had the chance? Feel free to interpret the question however you like!

*I didn't look into this too deeply so I might be wrong about it! If there's sources out there you know of that claim otherwise, let me know!

 

[Peklo]

I'd come up with something way worse than the seemingly ideal form the Ufouria remake is shaping up into.

 

[RT-55J]

If I were Digital Eclipse, I'd make a collection of every Channel F game for the system's 50th anniversary. In addition to the usual supplementary materials (interviews, design docs, etc), the emulated games would also come with several novel filtering options to make the blocky graphics shine, such as cut out construction paper and cartoon outlines. Other additions would include schematics and blueprints of the hardware, and source code for any games where it may exist (or be reconstructed).

Also, I'd try to remake as many of the games I could in a style that resembles the clean, abstract shapes on the box art, recoded from scratch so they run at 60 FPS.

The coup de grace would be a built in IDE and coding tutorial series courtesy of the folks at 8bitworkshop.

 

[ThricebornPhoenix]

The main feature of my fantasy remake of the game Xenoblade Chronicles X would be putting it on a system that is real and exists.

 

[RT-55J]

One game that I had seriously considered remaking myself a year or so back was the 1992 ZZT world The Crypt. It was published by Epic themselves for winning a design contest, and I had just released a remake of another winner from that same contest, Ezanya, so I was curious if it was worth trying my hand at the project.

The game has a lot going for it. It has a anachronistic fantasy setting, where the main town has a church, an arcade, and a supply room with a replicator, which fits ZZT quite well. The residents of said town are being driven crazy by the evil emanations coming from a nearby crypt housing a demon lord, and you decide to put a stop to it. There are a lot of ways you can die, and they all have shockingly gory descriptions. There's even a simple morality system. It was a pretty promising game at first glance.

Unfortunately, it's rather threadbare overall. There is only one quest (find a way to enter the crypt), compared to Ezanya's four quests, meaning there's no real plot or worldbuilding going on besides the initial premise.

The worst part of it all is the asylum right next to the town, filled with the people driven mad by the crypt. It's an interesting concept, but it approaches the topic of mental illness with about as much tact as you'd expect (poorly). It clearly was attempting to be as schlocky as the rest of the game, but didn't stick the landing. Furthermore, being nearly a full third of the game's content, I couldn't justify removing it.

I might revisit the idea later, but currently my opinion is that the amount of old content that would need to be reworked and the amount of brand new content needed both just make me feel like my efforts would be better spent making a wholly new, unencumbered fantasy-themed game.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Night Trap

Starring

Matt Berry as Victor Martin

 

[Baudshaw]

All I pray for is skippable cutscenes in the Mega Man Zero games…

 

[fanboymaster]

I want my remakes confrontationally disloyal to the source material

 

[Becksworth]

I want my remakes confrontationally disloyal to the source material

I'd claim to do HD2D or similar graphical overhauling remake of Chrono Trigger, except pull a FFVII Remake style fake out and some new villain is messing with history and it was actually a surprise 3rd game in the series the whole time.

 

[Becksworth]

"Demake" The Legend of Zelda: Spirits Tracks by making it more in the style of Wind Waker in terms of visuals and gameplay.

And then remake that into HD.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

I would ask Gemdrops to remake Valkyrie Profile 1. They've done a pretty bang up job with the Star Ocean 2 remake, and have shown their capacity to bring out the brilliance within the ambitious yet rough designs of tri-Ace games. A modern remake of that game could be quite wonderful, and could reinvigorate the long dead franchise, besides.

 

[Violentvixen]

Just go through so many games and give all the women actual clothes instead of gross boob armor and lingerie. If I still have time fix all the sexist dialogue in, uh, a lot. I feel like I should have a more specific answer but that would be nice.

 

[Patrick]

Oh, jeez, the Etrian Odyssey series with not gross character portraits (including townspeople).

 

[Exposition Owl]

Oh, jeez, Planescape: Torment with not gross character portraits (including townspeople).

 

[YangusKhan]

I keep trying to think of novel ways to remake a few games, but it's actually pretty tough. I'm thinking like... Xenogears, Ogre Battle, Secret of Mana, Illusion of Gaia... lots of games I consider classics and still love playing now, but could also still benefit from certain aspects getting remade.

I would ask Gemdrops to remake Valkyrie Profile 1. They've done a pretty bang up job with the Star Ocean 2 remake, and have shown their capacity to bring out the brilliance within the ambitious yet rough designs of tri-Ace games. A modern remake of that game could be quite wonderful, and could reinvigorate the long dead franchise, besides.

I do think Gemdrops proved a very important thing with the SO2 remake in that you don't really need to "rebalance" an old game when you remake it, when instead you can focus more on exposing aspects of the game that were too opaque or confusing the first time around (and not implemented that way on purpose, of course).

So for example, with a hypothetical Secret of Mana remake I would want to retain the core action gameplay (even though I don't think people like its pseudo-ATB system) but instead try to make the rest of its action combat more elegant (hit-box collision and such).

 

[Ixo]

Starfox & Starfox 64 as first person VR games. Motion sickness ahoy!

 

[RT-55J]

If I still have time fix all the sexist dialogue in, uh, a lot. I feel like I should have a more specific answer but that would be nice.

With the power of the Playstation 6, the developers of FF16 will finally be able to give the women characters agency.

 

[Bongo]

I believe the safest and most impactful improvement that remakes can categorically make is to improve the user interface. Expose more information about things that might, at the time, have been relegated to manuals or player notebooks. Give clearer (but not intrusive) feedback about the results of player actions. Stick an autosave or quicksave feature in there. Take arbitrary missables and slot in a discreet way to recover them. Add warnings in front of points of no return. Display tasteful button guides in appropriate places. Improve the menu ergonomics. Pick better fonts.

Obviously, in some cases, opacity and "inconvenience" carry an artistic purpose, and in all cases, consonance with the game experience is important. But a game is a piece of software, in which there are often practical usability improvements that weren't feasible, economical, or known back in the day.

 

[Olli]

Commercial quality Ultima Underworld remake (I know there's a bunch of fan remakes) with modern first-person dungeon crawler user interface and game design. Most of the level design, setting, plot and lore can stay, but make it more approachable and fix some of the more egregious design flaws (like the untelegraphed possibilities of locking yourself away from progress)

 

[ShakeWell]

Remake NES Strider in a way where it's not a broken buggy mess. (Yeah, arguably the latest game in the series KINDA did that, but it's not that story or those settings, it's just a non-broken Strider metroidvania.)

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I would remake Xenogears so that the spritework was Vanillaware-tier. Update all the BGs/environments so they look sleek and modern. Update the character portraits so there were dozens of different emotions instead of just the small handful. Give map/dungeon exploration a modern Mario style control/camera setup so things like the Tower of Babel feel fun instead of punishing. Remaster all of the anime cutscenes and add in several hours worth of more. Full voice. Expand out a little bit of the story in Disk 2 so that obviously unfinished/buggy things could be corrected (like Esmerelda's story) but otherwise leave the Evangelion Ep 25-26 story framing intact.

I would remake Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars so that its shitty combat mechanic was removed so that it's just a pure tactical game on par with Tactics Ogre/FFT. Also tons of anime cutscenes because why not.

 

[Exposition Owl]

I would remake Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars so that its shitty combat mechanic was removed

That reminds me! I’d remake Dragon Age II to remove the combat as well, and make it purely an adventure game.

 

[Olli]

Remake any and all SMT games so that you're not required to save-scum fusions to progress

 

[Second Duke Revier]

Remake Illusion of Gaia to shorten the intro, get the player into the "action" faster, make switching between Will and his other forms smoother, redesign some of the dungeons to have more actual puzzles beyond "put key into hole", make Will's powers more fluid and combat viable, make the bosses actually fun, put proper automaps, and have a better, less Engrish-y script.

Remake Terranigma to have more going on in Chapter 1, with trickier and more elaborate puzzles in the towers, in fact have more puzzles in all the dungeons. Improve the bosses, get rid of the random magic locks, change magic itself to be more interesting and less potentially OP, cut vast swathes of Chapter 3 out, make Ark learn a few new moves over the course of the journey, and, again, put proper automaps and have a better, less Engrish-y script.

Sorry for the necropost, I just completed these two games back to back, and think they're Good Games with lots of flaws holding them back - the perfect targets for remaking.

 

[Purple]

I want my remakes confrontationally disloyal to the source material

There are a grand total of 4 remakes I have played and not wished I were just playing the original (or at least seriously found myself missing aspects of them. Two of those are Gamecube Resident Evil, and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Certainly doesn't hurt that they're both just excellent lovingly crafted games with their own ideas they really want to put out there, most mostly they work because it's clear neither is trying to replace the original, so much as have a conversation with it.

The others are the Switch releases of Phantasy Star and Wonder Boy 3, both of which really commit to just about letting you have the original experience with minimal alteration (new WB3 DOES still have the expanded draw distance, tweaks to the charisma mechanic, "hu-girl," and bonus dungeon), with any changes being both optional and all on individual toggles (with WB3 also having that wonderful trigger button wipe that slows down if you spam it and even lets you go half-redraw half-original).

Basically the concept of taking a game and making it "better" by inflicting my own design sensibilities on it and/or redoing the graphics just strikes me as fundamentally anti-art and if something was good enough to want to revisit it, I just want to do that, warts and all.

ALL THAT SAID, the prompt is to pick a specific game and make changes, so, OK, Koudelka. While again, leaving all of these as toggles for purists- remaster the audio to deal with the balance problems and quality losses from recording a bunch of it via freaking international telephone call. Track by track to swap out music for fun new remixes and/or the live instrumentation versions on the soundtrack release. A lot of remixes, maybe with a shuffle option to mix it up. Then lets see, an option to have background walls in combat instead of just a floor texture in a big black void, updated character models (if possible, the ones used in the cutscenes, just rendered in realtime, big ears and all, the cutscenes themselves get absolutely no changes), separate option for updating monsters, and while we're at it, original resolution and color depth vs. modern capabilities. I guess while I'm noodling around I'd throw in an alternate battle system and see if I could maintain the vibe of desperately flailing and needing to push back for territorial control to revive people while speeding things up some. Simultaneous actions maybe, D&Dish threatened sqares. Emphatically NOT just letting people have Shadow Hearts combat though. And of course the one seriously needed quality of life change, the option to switch to character-relevant movement controls (RE style) because holy crap is Koudelka ever the cautionary tale for why you don't actually want screen-relative controls with artsy-placement horror cameras.

Oh yeah, and an apology at the end to the speedrunning community for not only reducing load times but having no way practical way to maintain the physical challenge of quick disc swaps that genuinely effect that running scene.

 

[Beowulf]

I'd claim to do HD2D or similar graphical overhauling remake of Chrono Trigger, except pull a FFVII Remake style fake out and some new villain is messing with history and it was actually a surprise 3rd game in the series the whole time.

This is a fantastic idea and I'm there for it.

I keep trying to think of novel ways to remake a few games, but it's actually pretty tough. I'm thinking like... Xenogears, Ogre Battle, Secret of Mana, Illusion of Gaia... lots of games I consider classics and still love playing now, but could also still benefit from certain aspects getting remade.

There are a bunch of games that I'd love to see the remakes actually expand out to their original promise. Like, I was deeply disappointed by the Secret of Mana remake because it didn't expand the light and moon dungeons and bulk out all the plot that was clearly cut from the third quarter of the game. They also had the chance to put in more branching-path options and complications (like early in the game and when you pick up the girl) but didn't. Similarly, I'd want a Xenogears remake to expand out the second disc and replace the talking head sequences with actual cutscenes and dungeons.

As noted, I loved Sword of Mana despite its flaws because I thought it was a brilliant expansion of Final Fantasy Adventure--not necessarily anything like what the original developers "intended", but really interesting. I think the DS SaGa remakes managed that as well: A retelling of the same story with most of the same beats, but a new game built around it that incorporates the way the series advanced in the interim.

I want remakes of the DS 2D Zelda games that use proper d-pad controls and not the stupid touchscreen controls.

I had a long post in the Ultima thread about how I'd want to remake those games (and the suggestion further down to machete-order them was brilliant).

 

[FelixSH]

Sorry for the necropost, I just completed these two games back to back, and think they're Good Games with lots of flaws holding them back - the perfect targets for remaking.

I don't think anyone here has a problem with necroposting. I never saw anyone complain about it, at least. Don't worry about it.

Also, it's an interesting thread, and deserves more posts. I don't think I have anything to add (I prefer to keep games as they are, flaws and all intact, as they often create a certain vibe that you can lose otherwise), but I find it interesting to read other peoples posts about this topic.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I'd remake the original Dark Souls with Elden Ring's QOL improvements and mechanics like jumping and guard counters, a respec option, a BIG rebalancing of spells (especially the Faith branch) to make them more viable, etc. I'd finish some of the unfinished areas like Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith by making them a bit more intricate and polished. Fix the Bed of Chaos fight to still be an interesting gimmick fight but feel less like bullshit - jumping alone would probably help a lot there. Leave poise alone because it was at its best in DS1. Not sure whether to change spells to MP system or leave them at charges. Also not sure whether to add 2 more ring slots (my heart says yes, but my brain says it may require some rebalancing, which is also fine). Weight limit breakpoints adjusted but the differences in light/medium/heavy rolls stays (and so does the flip ring).

If I were to really get into the nitty-gritty, and away from the original question, something I've considered for this series is that I might change stats so that dexterity adds dodge i-frames and lengthens parry windows while strength adds weight limit and/or poise and block effectiveness. This gives even more difference in playstyle - strength leads naturally into heavier armor and big shields and dex leads into better dodging and parrying (y'know, dextrous things). And a quality build would play like a balance of both. This is instead of the current difference which is "which weapon can you equip and scale well" (which isn't nothing!), but it gives a bit more weight and reward to those stat investments. I wouldn't necessarily nerf the baseline though, so mid-rolls and heavy rolls and baseline parries don't get WORSE, so you're not locked out of the other playstyle, it's just not buffed. I might also do something like "More faith gives you limited health regen" and "more int gives you limited mp/spell regen" to do a similar thing for those builds and further encourage both specialized and hybrid builds. But I'm getting into the weeds here.

I would remake Xenogears so that the spritework was Vanillaware-tier. Update all the BGs/environments so they look sleek and modern. Update the character portraits so there were dozens of different emotions instead of just the small handful. Give map/dungeon exploration a modern Mario style control/camera setup so things like the Tower of Babel feel fun instead of punishing. Remaster all of the anime cutscenes and add in several hours worth of more. Full voice.

I'd want a Xenogears remake to expand out the second disc and replace the talking head sequences with actual cutscenes and dungeons.

These two things.


I want a remake of Skies of Arcadia but I don't remember the details well enough to say what I'd change beyond updating general mechanics, graphics, and QOL stuff.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Similarly, I'd want a Xenogears remake to expand out the second disc and replace the talking head sequences with actual cutscenes and dungeons.

I've actually come around on Disk 2 over the years. Given how much Xenogears owes directly to Neon Genesis Evangelion, it would honestly feel kinda wrong to remove the Disk 2 monologues that are clearly part-homages to Eva's Episodes 25-26. I'd still want them in the game in some form, if only in a reduced manner. There are definitely parts of Disk 2 that clearly intended to have certain sections be playable, and in a modern revamp you would just kill the audience if it was a 1:1 transfer of the original Disk 2. But definitely keep those monologues in the story in some way.

 

[otakujeb]

I've been brainstorming a remake of Metroid Fusion where it allows sequence breaking, however doing so incurs a random chance of an encounter with the SA-X.