REMAKES GALORE!

I'm kind of constitutionally opposed to the idea of remakes. I agree with Red_Nova, the games which are really worth remaking are the ones which weren't that good the first time around, which could be revamped to better exploit the potential of some their ideas which weren't implemented properly the first time around. But, since these games generally weren't successful to begin with, game companies don't have much incentive to remake them, because their names don't lend any selling power. They'd be better off saying "hey, remember that game we made years back which was a flop? I think it had some interesting ideas we could salvage for a new project."

But if a developer's idea of how to make a successful game relies on repackaging their own work from years ago, I tend to doubt their ability to actually improve on the original work.

bahleted

author=Sated
Streets of Rage 1, 2 and 3.

...

WE'VE LOST SIDE-SCROLLING BEAT 'EM UPS OKAY!

They've been taken over by Dynasty Warriors 3D aerial(ish) view beat em ups.

author=pianotm
Oh, right! Xenogears! Yeah! I'm not so sure about remake, but it definitely needs to be properly finished. Speaking of which...

https://rpgmaker.net/games/9599/

Well, then.

Well, the FFVII remake doesn't inspire much interest in me, as I've never wanted a remake. I'm pretty cynical about remakes in general (at least ones like this that have so much money and expectation attached to them). Square Enix still publishes cool games (like Nier), but some of the latest FF stuff has felt a bit soulless.

Though I would want an updated version of the original three Spyro games, for the ps4 or whatever. They just seem like perfect games for those value/retro bundles.

Link to the Past is perfect and remaking it would inevitably be like that horrible Ecce Homo restoration.

This is apparently the thread best designed to promote hot takes from me.

Xenogears is kind of my favorite game, although a lot of that is for sentimental reasons, and if there's any sort of situation where I'd agree it would make sense to have a remake, it would be one like that, where the game was already pretty well received, but was notably hampered in its original development by funding or time issues or the like. But the driving figures behind Xenogears don't have the rights to it, and I'm not sure there are any cases where all the circumstances to make a remake I could get behind actually line up, given how often key team members come and go from companies and property rights pass from the hands of the people who were personally involved with the games.

That said, one thing I do think is really underexplored is reusing resources from existing commercial games for new games. More than just using the same engines for multiple games, I think there's a lot to be said for recycling substantial amounts of work between games which are built on the same continuity. Almost all the work that went into Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army was recycled back into its sequel, Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon, and the result was that the sequel was a much more expansive and polished game which I felt improved considerably on the first. Considering they were made so long apart for completely different hardware, I'm not sure whether A Link Between Worlds actually reuses resources from A Link To The Past, since it was probably more practical to remake it from the ground up based on the original model, but that's also a good example of how you can use familiar material as building blocks for a new game.

Actually, what might be interesting with a Secret of Mana remake, but I doubt they're going to do, would be to implement the story material which was intended to make it into the original game, but had to be cut due to cartridge size limitations. From what I've read, Emperor Vandole was originally intended to be a more significant character, and the conflict between the Empire and the Resistance was meant to be more drawn out, but that was all cut because they were running up against the memory limits of the format.

I'm sure there'll be material in the remake that wasn't in the original game, but it makes a big difference in my opinion whether it's done by people who were involved in the original, or at least were close enough to the project to know what the cut material consisted of.

I'm definitely not a fan of updating silent games to include voice acting though. First, players have already had the chance to come up with their own ideas of what the characters sound like which are likely to clash with the new voice acting. Second, I just feel like voice acting is so easy to screw up and so hard to get really right, my grand list of games which I feel were substantially improved by their voice acting is one entry long.

nah not cynical. ff7 is probably overrated but still pretty good. ff15 was pretty bad