I agree in one sense, but there are some games with enough replayability to make it worth it. X-Com and MoM come to mind. MOO2 is another. I think these games would absolutely work with an updated UI and graphics.
Format, there were remakes of SC2 and Privateer? When?
Yeah, X-Com and MoM are the first examples I think of when it comes to games where the gameplay was already good enough. Didn’t get as immersed in MOO2 as others, though, because of different platform choices. Still, that is a timeless game.
If you remake a game like those now with scalable graphics adjusting to any screen aspect, that’s the last remake necessary.
Star Control 2 is also known as The Ur-Quan Masters. This is a version based on the 3DO’s SC2, which had more everything. Worth the download.
I just replayed BG2 / ToB. After NWN2, it was rough.
Sure, sure, BG2 is very fondly remembered, but, fuck. Don’t get me started on how bad D&D 2nd Ed. was. Or how if the lead character died it was reload time. Or if anyone got reduced to -10 hps and got “chunked” it was reload time. Or how fear lasted up to 2 minutes of real time and it was great fun watching the feared guy run across the entire fucking level aggroing everything. And Watcher’s Keep? Remember that endless fucking dungeon? UGH.
Of course, the flip side is that BG2 (and Torment, etc.) is as good as they are because they’re mostly un-spoken. With the spoken word, as every game today must have, each word costs 100X more (or more!) than it did when it was just plain… text. We’ll never have a game as good as BG2, ever again. And that’s sad.
Now if only someone could mod it to work in NWN2 with 3.5 ed. rules… man…
Actually, I’m playing ToB right now, and it seems great to me. NWN2 has never properly grabbed me. The camera just pisses me off. Yeah, the rules are better in many ways, but that’s not a gameplay problem, per se. Or is it?
You seriously wouldn’t want to see Ultima IV (or whatever game from the same error) updated to modern standards? I’ll be first to admit I am a graphics junky and I couldn’t make myself play those games again. System Shock 2 is about as old as I’ll go and that’s with all the modern texture updates. I couldn’t handle replaying SS1 for example.
And there are a plethora of old games on other systems which are worth updating as well - Phantasia, marble madness, mouse trap etc from Amiga days jump to mind.
I’d love to see it updated to 4e rules in a modern engine. I’d pay for it.
I’d love to see classic D&D/AD&D campaign worlds without the D&D rules visible.
Eh. I think BG2 holds up just fine today (BG1, not so much, but fortunately kind modding teams have shoved it into the BG2 engine for us.). I’m also less worried about the graphics and more worried about issues that actually interfere with the gameplay. Like wonky UIs and locked in graphics resolutions that are effectively unplayable on today’s technology. I can’t handle X-Com’s Windows version because it’s a forced full-screen 640x480 and my display doesn’t really like that low a res. (I imagine the DOS version has similar restrictions, but at least that can be forced into a window when run through DOSBox.)
Been there, done that, buried the tee shirt. What’s the point of novelty if you waste your time on repetition?
“Whore”. The term is “graphics whore”. You filthy whore you.
I’m all for reimagining a franchise as long as the gameplay ‘feel’ is the same. The design of Starcraft is old and stale to me… new graphics won’t be enough to take the bore out of it. But a more fleshed out strategy world with a universe that makes sense, and tactics at both a battlefield and strategic level that kept the feel of the factions and high energy events characteristic to starcraft would get me much more interested.
My biggest fear in sequels in not that they innovate, but rather that they water them down for accessibility and neuter the complexity and depth that made the originals great. Or else, that they ‘hollywoodify’ quirky, imaginative or offbeat writing/story/characters/situations to better fit the biring mainstream style trend of the hour.
What? There are texture updates for SS2?
I suppose it doesn’t really matter anyways, that game is so goddamn hard. My first (and only) 3 attempts ended with a security camera seeing me and calling hordes of guys on me, followed by me accidentally hitting quicksave instead of quickload, and 2 shut downs from various gun turrets. Is there a specific class (and initial skill point allocation) that will make it easier?
Indeed. I was, uhh, dancing around the issue. Thanks for setting me straight. :)
Privateer remake: http://priv.solsector.net/
SC2 remake: http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
As has been pointed out, the SC2 is using the 3DO sources, as most of the PC sources were lost, but they had to use a different title because the SC2 name is owned by Atari (brought to you by wikipedia).
Oh, I’ve played Urquan Masters (a bit anyway), but I didn’t think it was a remake so much as an emulated version of the original (or at least the 3do port, which is still the original game, right?). I guess to me a remake requires updated graphics or something, not just the ability to play the game on newer machines.
The Privateer remake looks cool though!
In my opinion, the 3DO version of SC2 is the real original, while the slimmed down PC version was just a port :)
(Not sure how the actual chronology goes)
Thanks Discord for suggesting this topic instead of letting make a new one.
Why do we give Hollywood grief for making sequels or remaking movies we loved, but give the game industry a pass? I’d pay full retail for an HD remaster of Jet Set Radio Future, for example.
Sega is re-releasing Night Trap on PS4 and Xbox One. I’m totally going to buy this. I had it on Sega CD and my mom took it away because some blowhard on daytime TV said it would turn me into a serial killer.
The big difference is that technology and interface are huge components of the experience of videogames and both have progressed dramatically in the few short decades of the medium to the point where it can be difficult to go back just ten years and still have an equivalent quality of experience with many games, much less twenty or thirty. Meanwhile the majority of movies at worst suffer from some visual effects not looking as good as they did back in the day.
I’ve been thinking that when AI and robots take our jobs we can all spend time remastering old games. At least until the robots figure out creative and artistic things like that.