The Rise Of Video Game Remakes

Why, over the past 10 years, has a growing piece of the video game market become ported and revamped titles from the past? These old games have become one of the major selling points for the downloadable content services on otherwise super-powered current-gen consoles. It’s a curious irony: serving dinner on your finest china when the main course is macaroni & cheese. What’s behind this trend?

Going Back To The Well

Video game companies believe that creating a popular franchise or brand name is far more profitable than an individual title. As a result, most games we see released each year are sequels and spin-offs. Unfortunately, these games rarely live up to the quality of the game that broke that initial ground. Every now and then, we want to be reminded of the joy we derived from that first experience…and so comes the demand for the republishing of that title.

Square-Enix seems to have this concept down the best, releasing ports of its Final Fantasy series on nearly every platform in the universe. Oddly, they’ve yet to give in to the greatest demand by its audience: a remake of the fan-favorite Final Fantasy VII. They claim even though both their audience AND development teams so badly want it, they don’t have the resources to invest in such a project. Yet they have no problem drawing up garbage that no one wanted, like Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus and Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories. Good call, guys…

It’s Cheaper

One of the most obvious facts is that ports and remakes are typically a hell of a lot cheaper to produce than a new title. Why spend all that time and money on developing new plots, character designs, and game mechanics when you can just give a good spit & polish to material you already have? Ports need only a touch of emulation to get them running on current generation platforms. Remakes, of course, are trickier. But as long as the basic premise is maintained, all you need to do is give the game some updated 3D models and level maps, and you’re good to go!

This only gets worse when a company is creating a new IP they know is going to be crap and might not sell well. So they slap the name of a classic franchise on it to ride its coat tails. Some examples would be Spy Hunter and Silent Hill 4. Neither of those games had much resemblance to their namesake, but by golly, it got more copies sold. That’s just dirty pool.

New & Improved!

Hindsight is 20/20. Resurrecting old games gives the game developers the often-sought opportunity to go back and revisit a previous work with experience they’ve gathered since its initial release. Also, they can take advantage of technological opportunities that weren’t available to them at the time. A perfect example is Capcom’s upcoming Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. The developers are tweaking the gameplay, based on things they have learned from over 10 years since the game’s original circulation.

They’re also giving the game a much anticipated graphical face lift, replacing the dated 16-bit visuals with high-definition. And since internet technology has vastly grown in the past decade, they’ve been developing the special netcode necessary to minimize lag worldwide. Thus making the game playable online to compensate for the near-vanished arcade scene.

Next-Generation Gamers

What’s old can, in fact, become new again. Remember those games that you loved ten, fifteen, even thirty years ago? Most kids that are just getting into gaming have never even heard of them. This may be the third or fifth time you’ve bought the same game, but for some kids, this is their first. The beloved Final Fantasy IV came out well before many of these new kids were born. (Damn kids get off my lawn!) With the recent DS remake, the current generation of gamers can discover, for the first time, the love that we had for the game but rendered in a way that the hardware back in the day simply couldn’t provide.

Portability

When the DS port of Chrono Trigger was announced, most of the response I heard was disappointment. It was just a direct port with a few extra bells & whistles and not the remake they’d hoped for. Those people have forgotten something very important: It’s portable. I can now play Chrono Trigger on my lunch break at work or in a doctor’s waiting room. I couldn’t do that ten… even five years ago! (Legally or conveniently, at least.) That alone is worth throwing down another $35 for a game I already own.

The big mystery is how this trend will affect the future of video game publishing. Re-using old material may be more profitable, but how long can we accept re-buying old games, regardless of our affection for them? I believe if we spend more of our money re-buying classic games, and less on the crappy sequels, game publishers may learn that the longevity of a single title may be more valuable than a brand name. Perhaps the risk of investing in fresh, innovative game design will appear to be a more worthwhile investment. We may see video games elevate from forgettable, pulp entertainment to a thriving cultural medium!