The Remake Renaissance

Everything that’s old is once again new in the video game industry and that’s a good thing. It’s true that in console generations past old games have been given a new lease on life via ports and “remasters”. Often times however these were straight ports with no difference to the gameplay or graphics. This method worked well enough for games originating on 8 or 16 bit consoles as the games didn’t look too bad and the demographic of gamers purchasing these ports grew up with the titles.

As time went on and gamers who grew up with PlayStation one and N64 got jobs and became nostalgic for their youth a new problem was presented. Games from this era look just awful by today’s standards. So bad in fact that the nostalgia these gamers felt would not be powerful enough to cover up the flaws.

Personally my introduction to gaming came with the Playstation 2 and Original Xbox, and as such I have no fond feelings for the fifth console generation. What I did have were stories, shared by more senior gamers of times spent lost in worlds such as Resident Evil or Final Fantasy VII. So when I bought myself a vita TV one of the first things I did was purchase a copy of Resident Evil 2 and oh boy did that game age poorly. What I saw wasn’t anything like the world I had imagined instead it seemed as if the world was a pointillism painting brought to life. I was thoroughly disappointed say nothing of the tank controls, I wasn’t disappointed with the game, how can you expect a game made on that hardware to live up to today’s standards? No I was disappointed because in that moment it became clear I was never going to have the experiences that the older generation spoke about with such reverience.

That’s about the time when things began to change with the eighth generation. The first hint I became aware of the past being made new was Rachet and Clank, which came with updates both graphical and narrative in anticipation of the movie. The game sold well, and had a hand is brining Spider-Man to the PS4 the film bombed.

Personally the release of the Crash Bandicoot N’Sane trilogy appealed to me more. While playing I was transported back to my cousin’s house as we’d waste afternoons trying to beat each level. The game looked as good as the unreliable camera in my mind remembered, which is to say this version looked incredible. Fully recreated for the modern gamer.

In November Nintendo released a remake of Pokémon Yellow with Let’s Go Pikakchu and Lets Go Evee. True the original being in 2D allowed it to hold up better but this rerelease was everything you wanted from a Pokémon game as a kid and made me extremely excited for the next mainline game.

The muse for this article was without a doubt the thirty minute one shot Resident Evil 2 demo. Being fully immersed in this violent and frightening world gave me the feeling older gamers must have had while playing the original. Zombies could be around any corner, my ammo was dangerously low and perhaps most importantly the fixed camera angles were done away with. Instead this felt as my brother said to me like “DLC for one of the best games ever made” that game being of course Resident Evil 4.

As gamers I know we long for what’s next. Be it original works like Horizon Zero Dawn or another chapter in long awaited sequels like Kingdom Hearts 3 we want that new experience. However this generation had shown me that sometimes something truly special can be achieve by looking to the past.

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