by Frederica Allen
There have been a lot of remasters of classic games in recent memory from the traditional remake of Pokémon games, though the gen 4 remakes were not as well received as their peers, to surprise remasters of Metroid: Prime and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Outside of Nintendo, there are also Silent Hill 2, Final Fantasy 7, Dead Space, Dead Rising and plenty of others.
This makes me ask myself, is it all necessary? A few months ago, I wrote an article about the Paper Mario remake for the Switch and I was mostly positive about it, my only real criticism being that action commands are overall easier to pull off and that money is far more plentiful. That’s one point for remaking these games; they allow publishers to iron out all the jank that these older titles had. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door had a bad problem with backtracking, particularly in Chapters 3 and 4, and the remake addressed that by adding warp pipes to allow instant travel between key areas in the chapters. Furthermore, many more little touches helped elevate the game above its predecessor, such as an enhanced soundtrack that removed the monotony of the battle theme and new animations that gave the characters even more, well, character.
However, it can be easy to mess up a remaster. Look no further than Pokémon: Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Generation 4 is touted amongst the best of the entire franchise, on par with Generations 1 and 5, yet the remakes left many people cold. On release, they were riddled with bugs, such as one man who got softlocked because he spawned above all the doors and so couldn’t leave the area, to all the sounds and music being corrupted if you didn’t install the day 1 patch. Even after all the patches, the games are still the inferior way to play Generation 4 as they lack any of the content present in Platinum, which also contained all the stuff in Diamond and Pearl in the first place. If you’re looking to play Gen 4, why play BDSP when you can play Platinum?
Some may argue that remastering classics is a fool’s errand. These games are works of art, and the imperfections to some of them can enhance the experience. Silent Hill 2’s wonky camera lent the game a dream-like detachment that made the titular town feel alien and strange as well as making protagonist James Sunderland feel a bit crazy. This made the atmosphere and subsequent plot twist all the more impactful, something that isn’t achieved with the remake’s better camera controls. Sometimes, even something as little as a graphical enhancement can change the entire experience. Majora’s Mask is a good example, as the relatively low graphical quality made the world of Termina feel alien, whereas the greater detail of the 3DS remake gives everything a much clearer shape which, in turn, makes it seem less strange. The finer control of the save system and 3-day mechanic also make the remake feel thematically worse, since a large part of Majora’s mournful and sombre tone comes from the fact that Link is no longer the main character, the destined hero, he’s just another person caught up in the Skull Kid’s plan.
At the end of the day, I am undecided on my own question – should we stop remastering classic games? Despite all the negativity I’ve expressed about BDSP, Silent Hill 2 and Majora’s Mask 3D, I cannot deny that if I want to replay Metroid: Prime or The Thousand-Year Door, I’m going to be playing the remakes for the Switch rather than the original games. They are just simply better. As such, my answer to the question is going to be very disappointing: it depends on the game and the developer. A lot of BDSP’s problems came from the fact that the developer, ILCA, had only done outsource work beforehand and were not qualified to make a game as highly anticipated as the remake of Generation 4, and the lack of Platinum content was due to marching orders from Gamefreak and Nintendo to maximise profits from the dual release of Diamond and Pearl. Silent Hill 2 is a game that wouldn’t work as a remake: the wonky camera could not be left untouched in a remake, even though it was integral to the horror of the original. Majora’s Mask 3D needed the increased control of saving and time since, as a handheld, it would need to be turned off at any moment, the platform itself was incompatible with the 3-day mechanic.
However, what I can say definitively is that if you play a remake and you enjoy it, give the original a go and experience what originally was before all the edges were sanded off.