Natalie Rambles About the Modern Reality of Remasters, Remakes, and Re-Whatevers

Because this topic has been looming over Natalie.TF for long enough…

Part 01: Recap and Reintroduction

Hello and welcome to the second part of my ramble on video game remasters, remakes, and re-whatevers. Last week I covered the complex and winding history of video game publishers’ attempts to convert, port, and bring older games to modern systems, and… well, the article was half a novel in and of itself. There was a lot covered there, but for those who just want to jump into the now-now, let me give you the abridged version.

The term video game remaster and remake are ultimately marketing terms, and have been used casually by both marketing and gaming enthusiasts alike. The term remaster is a largely new invention for video games, acting as a term inherited from the music and video industry and the popularity of the term “digitally remastered” through the 1990s and 2000s. For the sake of clarity, I have prepared definitions of both:

Video Game Remaster: When the original game is altered in various ways with the goal to enhance or improve things. A remaster could replace the textures, models, lighting, and the gameplay could be significantly changed, so long as the underlying game remains the same, like with The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D (2015). Alternatively, a remaster could be the same game, just with a higher resolution, higher frame rates, and minor qualify of life enhancements, like with Freedom Wars Remastered (2025).

Video Game Remake: When a video game is recreated from scratch with few, if any, elements directly carried over from the original game. A remake can attempt to recreate the game as closely as possible, adhering to its story, perspective, environmental design, structure, and overall gameplay, like with Shadow of the Colossus Remake (2018). Alternatively, visuals and gameplay could deviate to the point where it only abides by the broad strokes, world, characters, and overall story, like with Silent Hill 2 (2024).

Video Game Reissue: When a video game is released on a new platform without many or any significant changes. This term is synonymous with port, and indicates that what you are playing is the game was it was originally released on its original platform. Every Nintendo Virtual Console release falls into this category, as does Sony’s re-released PS1, PS2, and PSP titles, and so do most video game compilations. If there are not enough changes for a game to be a remaster, then it is merely a reissuing.

Together, these three form a spectrum of sorts, reissue on the left, remake on the right, and the axis indicating how different the game is from the original. It is not always clear which game belongs in each category, and out of fatigue with the inconsistent labeling on behalf of publishers, I have taken to calling these releases re-whatevers.

Video Game Re-Whatever: A video game that has been reissued, remastered, remade, or is some other recreation of a pre-existing game.

Re-Whatevers have always been a thing, with many conversions of arcade and PC games being somewhere on the spectrum, as the games had to be literally rewritten to work on a new device. They persisted throughout the 90s, but only really began to take off in the 2000s with the widespread availability of three similar home consoles and the re-whatever gold star child, the Game Boy Advance. Re-Whatevers flourished in the PS3 generation due to the rise of digital distribution, giving developers the opportunity to re-release their back catalog for cheap, in HD, or with entirely new graphics. This came to ahead during the latter half of the generation, when the industry saw dozens of high profile HD remasters of games hitting home consoles, normalizing the idea of video game remasters.

However, in 2013, following the release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and later the release of the Switch in 2017, there was what I call a great reset. All three of these consoles entered the market with no back catalog, no way to play older games, and this lead publishers aplenty to take this opportunity to remaster their back catalog, now in 1080p and 60 fps. …Maybe. This trend began with the release of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition (2014), but I would say it was proven a success with The Last of Us Remastered (2014), the sixth best-selling PS4 game of all time.

This comfortably brings us to a recent enough era, the PS4 era, and one that should be familiar to you. …But I’ll give a brief overview of the state of re-whatever in gaming, leading back a decade ago, all the way to today, before delving into the murky modern reality of re-whatevers. So, for now, let’s review the facts.

Part 02: The Re-Whatevers of 2014 to 2026

With the big boy consoles of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One boasting a library of no games, publishers were quick to spend… basically the entire lifespan of the console remastering last generation leftovers.

Now, part of the confusion around this circumstance is the sheer number of games that were re-released for PS4, even during 2014, with basically no changes other than the obligatory resolution and frame rate bump where appropriate. This makes categorization of these games a small nightmare, so I had to make rules just to categorize them.

What’s the difference between a multiplatform release, a reissue of an existing game, or a remaster of a game? For example, Strider (2014) came out on PS3 and PS4 on February 18, 2014, so it is a multiplatform release, with every version of the game being largely identical. But would the same apply for Rayman Legends (2013), which originally came out on September 3, 2013 and only hit the PS4 on February 18, 2014? The PS4 didn’t come out until November, and it probably took a few months to get this port ready to go. Oh, and remember that games often have delayed releases between systems. So, should there be a grace period or, I don’t know, six months or something?

This is also where I need to pause and acknowledge how nebulous the idea of a remaster truly is at this point in time. The Last of Us Remastered showed that time is not much of an issue for a remaster, and that just adding a few little extras constitute that label. The same is true for releases like Darksiders: Warmastered Edition (2016), one of the first to be cute with the label of remasters.

So, what does this mean for, say, Hotline Miami (2012) when it released on PlayStation 4 in 2014? The game was originally released for PC and the PS4 version is largely a PC port of that without any major differences. However, the game was also released on PS3 and PS Vita, and the PS4 version performs better than those. Would it be right to call it a reissue or remaster if there was an original PC version with variable settings and a scalable resolution?

What about [Prototype] (2009), which released on PS4 and Xbox One in 2015? That game’s console only re-release boosted the game’s resolution to 1080p, which the PC version couldn’t do without some extra tweaking because 2000s PC ports sometimes sucked. However, the PC version natively ran at 60 fps, which the PS4 and Xbox One versions struggled with, so… would it be considered a remaster or a reissue?

My response to this is to say screw it, they’re all re-whatevers, and they were utterly normalized during the first two years of the PS4. I went through Wikipedia’s noncomprehensive list of 436 games released for the platform in that period, and between remasters and reissues, there were 180 games that were brought over to PS4 from other consoles. Not multi-platform releases, just games that had already been established on other platforms and were brought over to the system. That is a massive portion of the library, and this trend did not die out.

The sheer scale of re-whatevers in this era was immense, and it is difficult to quantify without running into weird edge cases all the time. Resources like MobyGames and Wikipedia do not capture the sheer scale of what was going on during this era because… contributors don’t care about this level of granularity. They probably shouldn’t.

While there are countless examples I could highlight, from Risen 3: Titan Lords Enhanced Edition (2015) to Dishonored: Definitive Edition (2015) to Akiba’s Trip 2: Undead & Undressed (2014), the majority of theses remasters aren’t too interesting. Some did offer an impressive amount of additional content and alterations as part of the remastering process, such as Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition (2015) or Earth Defense Force 4.1: Shadow of New Despair (2015). I personally was not pleased with the changes made to Metro 2033 Redux (2014), but it did try to make a better experience. Meanwhile, releases like Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (2015) and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (2015) were full of smart and careful changes, albeit in different ways.

Though, there were remasters that mad some fairly contentious changes. Resident Evil Remake HD Remaster (2016) decided to crop the top and bottom of the pre-rendered background so it would be a widescreen game, when really it just makes it feel needlessly claustrophobic. Batman: Return to Arkham (2016) made minor and extensive changes to the lighting and textures, but in a way that made it look materially worse than the original games did on PC. Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection (2016) attempted to bring back fan favorite entries in the series, yet someone screwed up big time in the conversion process, changing character models, textures, and the lighting during key scenes.

It quickly became clear that remasters, just like anything else, needed to be handled with care, and that’s not quite what happened. In developers’ pursuits of making games look more modern, they often implemented new systems quickly and compromised the original art direction, before shipping the project out early to appease customer demand. Oh, and don’t even get me started at the sheer number of times a remaster added glitches. It should never happen, but it does!

One of the funnier examples of this inconsistency is how Xbox also had its own odd stint with remasters during the first two years of the Xbox One, and the duality was nuts. Fable: Anniversary (2014) was the original 2004 game but with Unreal Engine 3 tech slapped over it, giving the game a jarring look similar to Halo Anniversary three years prior. It was bad. Similarly, Microsoft’s attempt to bring the Halo series to Xbox One originally resulted in a profound disaster with Halo: The Master Chief Collection (2014), which epitomized the constant bugs and performance issues that plagued games, in general, throughout 2014.

However, their attempts to modernize Gear of War (2006) with Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (2015) were generally well received, offering an experience that was not marred by the performance restrictions of the original title. There was just enough care to make the game feel decently modern without robbing it of the essence of the original. Well, unless oppressive gray was your preferred vibe. While Rare Replay (2015) is still one of the best and most creatively rich game compilations (with lightly remastered games) ever released. Sure, the Speccy games aren’t worth much, but with 30 games for $30, it was a tremendous release.

I’d love to say that some of the most notable and memorable re-whatevers from this era were the good ones, but… no. The ones that stick out most, at least to me, are the ones that gave re-whatevers a bad name, and we reached a particularly bad string in 2020 and 2021. Gee, I wonder why.

I’m talking about re-whatevers like Warcraft 3: Reforged (2020), XIII Remake (2020), Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Remastered Edition (2020),Pokémon Brilliant Diamond And Shining Pearl (2021), Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition (2021), and Sonic Colors: Ultimate (2021).

All of these games can, and do, deserve a hefty dose of criticism for their technical incompetence, decisions to make the games look, play, or perform worse, and truly profound number of glitches upon launch. Games like these show what could happen when these projects are not given the time, money, or expertise they clearly needed. They showed that even the simplest of re-whatevers, ones that seemed impossible to screw up, could be screwed up. And now, whenever a remaster or remake is announced, we need to worry that they could end up like these wet, hard duds.

If goldarn Grand Theft Auto can get the most dogshit disgrace of a remaster I’ve ever seen in my bloody life, then in the modern games industry, nothing is sacred. This very well could cause people to reject remasters until they get their quality control in line, but that did not really happen. Over 10 million people bought the disgraceful remaster of the PS2 GTA trilogy, showing that you can still sell a vastly inferior version of a game and people will buy it if the name is big enough, because they love the original that much. Yes, remasters are still a pillar of the industry, and one that many legacy-driven studios are looking at, eager to exploit for acclaim and profit. In fact, because I am desperate for structure, let’s go through a few of the bigger re-whatever peddlers of the past decade.

Throughout the past decade and change, developer Nightdive would begin a string of well received remasters of classic shooters for PC and consoles. Rather than just port them, they would add smart quality of life additions, visual improvements without replacing the original assets, and even additional levels or modes. Their remastered catalog includes System Shock, Doom, Quake, Turok, Blade Runner, Blood, Rise of the Triad, Powerslave— and all of them are great ways to play these games without fiddling with some source port.

The late Vicarious Visions played a pretty substantial role in the modern trend of video game re-whatevers through their highly influential, and successful, revisions of PS1 era bangers. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, and Diablo II: Resurrected are all acclaimed for a reason, and it’s just a shame they got made part of the machine. …Excluding those who jumped ship to Star Fox (2026).

Sony would go through their catalog and attempt to bring some older handheld titles to fill in the gaps, remastering Parappa the Rapper, the first two Patapon games, and Gravity Rush. However, they quickly pivoted away from that and toward remakes, namely Ratchet & Clank, Shadow of the Colossus, Medievil, Demon’s Souls, and The Last of Us Part I. …Yes, only four remakes, because they were too busy ushering in the PlayStation 5 generation by releasing very necessary remasters of Marvel’s Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, Death Stranding, Uncharted 4, Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone, and The Last of Us Part II.

Square Enix would go through their back catalog and remaster the Kingdom Hearts, over a dozen Final Fantasy games, and a vast array of the Mana and SaGa series. Titles like Nier and Chono Cross were brought forward with enhancements of debatable quality. And, of course, there were also some remakes thrown in, such as Trials of Mana (2021) and, of course Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020). However, they have continued to pump out re-whatevers like mad well into the modern day, doing their darndest to make the most of their back catalog. I tried compiling a list of anything that could be considered a remaster or remake released from 2014 to 2025… and I’m comfortable saying it’s over 50 games.

Capcom would fancy themselves into a reissue and remaster factory with their handling of their back catalog, putting out the entire Ace Attorney series, several Mega Man collections, and oodles of fighting game compilations. Remasters were typically reserved for special occasions, such as Ghost Trick and the first two Onimusha titles. However, Capcom’s biggest contribution to the discussion of re-whatevers has to be their line of Resident Evil remakes, with RE2 and RE4 being some of the most celebrated remakes of the modern era. Resident Evil 3’s remake was just okay.

Developers like Digital Eclipse and M2 both deserve particular mention, not for their remasters, but for their high quality and consistent re-releases of prior titles. With Digital Eclipse putting out both standard collections and interactive documentaries that allow you to experience old games in entirely new ways, and sometimes with brand new visuals. M2 similarly focuses on high quality emulation for their venture, putting out over a dozen collections and playing a major role in productions I did not think about. Castlevania, Gradius, Mega Drive games on NSO. Did you know they were the ones who handled the emulation of Sega’s arcade cabinets in some Like A Dragon games? I didn’t!

On that note, I would argue that Sega was one of the greatest beneficiaries of this boom in re-whatevers. They threw out Valkyria Chronicles in 2015, where it sold over a million copies, and remade the first two Yakuza games before remastering parts 3, 4, and 5. It did wonders to help them expand the reach of the series, and is a testament to the power of re-releases in endearing a dedicated fanbase. …Though, the less said about their utter bungling of Sonic Origins, the better.

However, the biggest peddler of re-whatevers is easily Nintendo. With the Switch, they put out the vast majority of their Wii U catalog, some games from older systems, and pretty much every one of their re-whatevers was good. In fact, allow me to emphasize the sheer deluge of re-whatevers Nintendo has released for Switch as of writing this:

Nintendo Remasters:

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Pokkén Tournament DX
Bayonetta
Bayonetta 2
Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE Encore
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
Super Mario 3D All-Stars
Pikmin 3 Deluxe
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury
Miitopia
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD
Metroid Prime Remastered
Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe
Pikmin 1+2
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD
Donkey Kong Country Returns HD
Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition
Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2

Nintendo Remakes:

Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee!
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX
Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir
Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp
Super Mario RPG
Another Code: Recollection
Mario vs. Donkey Kong
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

Am I missing stuff here? Probably! But seeing 33 re-whatevers in a little over 8 years is telling that the industry has become enthralled with re-whatevers.

If I wanted to, I could talk about ALL of those games, and more, forever, because this is the era where I was most actively taking all of this crap in, talking about it every Sunday. However, I want to get this article done, so let me… what’s a cute way of doing this. Oh, I know, let’s talk about the biggest re-whatever of every year and discuss what it meant and what it means to the shifting cultural understanding of what re-whatevers can be.

Easily the biggest remaster of all time— that’s a fact— is Grand Theft Auto V (2014) for PS4 and Xbox One. This version proved that a remaster could become the de facto version of a game for roughly a decade. For tens of millions, it simply is GTA V, and is arguably the version of the game that should have been from the start, unrestrained by pesky hardware limitations and rendered in true high definition. People seem to have memory holed it, but it was a technical miracle that GTA V was able to run on Xbox 360, requiring an installation to work properly. So seeing a version of a game like this, that, by comparison, just worked, just ran well, was reason enough for people to want EVERYTHING on their shiny new black boxes.

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (2015) is a testament to how a remaster can revise and alter a game through upgraded systems that lead to a smoother experience. While the work on tuning the first Uncharted might homogenize it with its sequels, uh, just because something was different doesn’t mean it was better. Bluepoint’s treatment here is pretty much considered the best way to experience these games, and served as a great introduction for those who skimped out on a PS3. The action set pieces, character interactions, and all the bombast that comes with it simply feel better when the game runs better, looks sharper, and plays without any 2000s shooter jank.

Ratchet & Clank (2016) warrants special attention in my mind— not because it’s a particularly great remake, it’s pretty inhibited by its adherence to a so-so film adaptation. However, it had a rather unusual reputation at launch, being favored and beloved by people who had never played, or were unfamiliar with, the series before. Which really exemplifies how a remake, no matter its form, so long as it is marketed properly, can attract new people, eager to get into a series! …Then Insomniac took five years to make a sequel, as they were busy with the Spider-Men.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy (2017) bluntly demonstrated the sheer industrial power of nostalgia for 20-year-old games and how, if you gussy them up with modern graphics, they can be as successful now as they were in their heyday. It was THE big facelift remaster that inspired many others, and the first to truly bring up widespread discussion of how changing a game’s visual identity, animation, and environmental aesthetics can change the experience overall. Whether one prefers the designs or even feel come down to preference, but for a millions, it just replaced the originals. …Not like they could play them without breaking the law or buying old tech nowadays…

Shadow of the Colossus (2018) warrants special attention to me, as not only did it give a facelift to the artistically poignant and deliberate original, but it remade a game that had been remastered. Sony could have just had Bluepoint port over their 2011 remaster, but instead they had them remake it as a showcase for the PS4’s hardware, delivering a comparable experience, mechanically faithful, yet with a far more standard look to it. However, people did not seem to mind too much with this one, as if you have a timeless experience, and it is pretty, then people will probably have a good time. …Also, don’t ask me why Crash is a remaster and this is a remake. I don’t know at this point!

Resident Evil 2 (2019) pretty much set a gold standard in what people expect from a modernized remake, as it so thoroughly reimagines the original game under the guise of what a PS4 player would want and expect. RE2 2019 captures the tension, dread, and general beats of the original, but is divorced from the mechanical, visual, and even auditory identity of the original, reimagined as something new. Pretty much any desire for games to be remade as modern experiences can be traced back here. Remakes before this have changed things drastically, but RE2 2019 is where the idea of what a remake should be began to shift. Not just the same game with modern graphics, but modern everything. …And with 18.3 million units sold, its success is evident.

Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) was the fulfillment of a dream two decades in the making— but not quite in the way that people expected. The fact the original game was being split in three, that 8 hours was being extended to 40 hours, that characters were given slight redesign, and that it was not a true remake but an alternate universe sequel. There… there was a lot of discourse to be extracted from this stone, and there are still reasons to criticize and bemoan Remake, especially with its larger than life expectations. Still, it stands as an example of actualizing a world, taking its characters further and farther than they could with text and crude models, and adding stuff. It was not just FF VII with new graphics like some contrarians have bemoaned, but per the way the winds were going, this was the only way forward.

2021… could be represented by any number of re-whatevers, but I’m going to bully Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition (2021) some more. I cannot emphasize enough how GTA on PS2 alone attracted eight digits worth of people into video games. In a just world, every one of these games should have been given a nine digit budget to be recreated, bit-by-bit, and treated with the care demanded of a major release. Instead, Take Two looked at this opportunity, the most slam-dunk stupid-ass phat-cash remaster, and delivered a catastrophic insult to life itself. Years later, the games are still a technical mess, they still look like crap, they are missing a bunch of music from the originals, robbing the game of its licensed and grounded character. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong, and the end result is the strongest reason to oppose remasters, as a concept, I have ever seen.

The Last of Us Part I (2022) proved that you could really remake any game even if it was already given a refresh and looked good by modern standards. It represents a critical mass event previously seen with Shadow of the Colossus, but now for a game that sold over 25 million copies. It looked higher fidelity, played a bit differently, but was a point of diminishing returns in fidelity, all for what? To tie in with a TV adaptation and prevent players from needing to engage with the friction of playing something that only looks “good,” not “great?” Or is it representative of a callous fear to ever create something new in a climate where risk runs rampant?

Resident Evil 4 (2023) showed that you could remake one of the most cited greatest games of all time… and pull it off. Despite seeming like a terrible idea at some point, RE4 2023 ultimately delivered the sequel to RE2 2019 that people wanted. It used the foundation of the original to great success, resulting in a game that I often see discussed in hushed tones of reverence. The original was too goofy? Not anymore. The original was still using a version of tank controls? Not anymore! The original had some specific moments that required you to play the game a certain way? Not here, bucko! Hell, it’s so successful it managed to outsell the original, despite having been released on everything.

Persona 3 Reload (2024) was Atlus looking at half a decade of clamoring for a remake, looking at the precedent being established, and deciding to do… that. To take this cult classic, foundational, and successful PS2 game and remake it in the mold of Persona 5, and they generally did just that. They used the PSP version’s script as a base, recreated about every major note in modern 3D, recreated the boss battles and key moments, while offering new side activities and events to further the relationships between characters. However, in their attempt to recreate their original, they could not help but lose the edge in the process, and… screw it, P3R is getting its own section later on.

I could talk about Suikoden, Dragon Quest, Trails, or Metal Gear, but I think The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (2025) is a key element in understanding the modern reality of video game remasters. From one perspective, it is the return of a game that always had technical limitations and scuffed visuals being given a technical and presentational facelift with fewer opaque annoyances. Like the slow walking speed. Or needing to sleep to level up. Or the UI.

However, the most striking element of Oblivion Remastered is how it takes the guts of the original, shoves them into an Unreal Engine 5 body, created by outsourced contractors and people who seemingly hate the sun and colors. It is, in many ways, the ultimate facelift remaster in how is subsumes the original art direction, and replaces it with something that… often looks more like an Unreal Engine 5 preset than a finished game. In addition to this, the game also performed terribly on PC, becoming something of a poster child for unoptimized UE5 games, a reputation worsened by the lack of patches and updates. They took an ugly classic, destroyed what art direction it had, replaced it with something unsightly, and re-broke it. Brilliant!

Currently, 2026 is looking like the year of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake. We don’t know much about it, but per the snippets we do see, it seems that the era of overwriting the original art direction for something modern is IN.

This is the current state of re-whatevers in gaming. Some are great, others are terrible downgrades, and most… most are just okay, I guess. But every company wants to make them, and everybody— even you— wants them.

However, that is not enough for me, as I have been talking about this subject again and again, about what re-whatevers could be, about what they should be, and now that I’ve laid the foundation, it’s time to talk about… basically every facet of re-whatevers I can think of.

Part 03: Video Game Re-Whatevers: The Quest For Infinite Money

While I have only said this implicitly throughout this article, I should be upfront and state the reason why re-whatevers exist, above all else. It’s about the money.

Video games, as a business, are all about maximizing revenue, accruing greater and greater profits, and growing as an industry. However, games also have a problem. They are really expensive and take a lot of time. This makes it dangerous to commit to a new and unproven idea if it has a high enough price tag, especially with $300 million and 5 year budgets being a commonplace routine in the western AAA games industry. This approach highly discourages experimentation, rewards routine, and urges publishers to invest in safe bets. …or, alternatively, they could gamble big in the pursuit of the biggest thing at the moment.

In this climate of high risk as a rule, remasters and remakes serve as very attractive prospects. With a remaster, the core of the game is already done, already designed, and just requires varying levels of technical tweaking, maybe some additional content production, to be produced and released. The costs compared to a new game are fractional. Well, unless you are doing a facelift remaster that requires remaking the game’s visual identity. They are great for both fans and great for newcomers. However, depending on how modern the original games are, that can dramatically affect who they appeal to. A souped up PS3 game was a lot more immediately appealing in 2015 than a souped up PS1 or PS2 game is in 2026.

Remakes cost more, require more effort, but as wholly new creations, can do more and theoretically, appeal to a wider audience. They are not as beholden to the same design, presentation, or even genre to some extent. They have a built-in base who remembers, and presumably liked, the original, along with the freshness of a brand-new release, with modern sensibilities at various levels.

Neither of these are surefire ways to make money. Nothing is, really. The games industry, being what it is, is so secretive I’m not going to try to predict the profitability of any re-whatever. However, I know for a fact that it would be cheaper to make something based on an existing game than a new one. And I know that, under the right circumstances, a re-whatever can do as well as a brand-new release.

The revenue generated by these re-whatevers is definitely nice, but they also play a role in increasing the value of the brand, or IP, they are associated with. Klonoa: Phantasy Reverie Series (2022) bumped up the value of the Klonoa IP and showed its ability, or lack thereof, to support new projects, whether they be games or just merch. However, a bad re-whatever can undoubtedly sour fans and lower the value or prospects of a new IP— looking at you, Front Mission remakes— but the same is true for most bad products.

…And that’s pretty much the reasons why we see remasters or remakes, at least 90% of the time. Because it brings in money and boosts the value of the IP. Sometimes its more basic and boring, like keeping a dev team busy, or fill up a release slot, but those all come back to money. In gaming, everything comes back to money.

Part 04: The (Dismal) State of Preservation and the (Pressing) Need for Reissued Games

The concept of preservation is an unambiguous good, and I do not feel that I need to stress the importance of that. Preserving history, maintaining art, allows things to be enjoyed by future generations, increases humanity’s breadth of understanding of their culture largely and specific artforms specifically. In a better world, we would have records of just about everything of note created by a person, maintained and widely accessible and available. Every book, every piece of music, every film, every show, every painting, and every video game.

Unfortunately, the video games industry has been notoriously awful at maintaining its own history, at making its back catalog widely available. Despite making an earnest effort back from 2006 to 2013, the industry’s efforts have been insufficient, scattered, and pathetic. Video games are a multi-hundred-billion dollar industry last I checked, yet they cannot figure out something the smaller film, music, and book industries had figured out well over a decade ago?

While video games are far in a way more complicated than the other major entertainment industry, the technology to play back video game ROM files has existed for decades. However, the video games industry is young, lacks much in terms of tradition, and is notoriously stubborn. Accordingly, there is no truly widespread means for older games to be bought and sold.

The problem of games preservation should ideally be solved through the introduction of multi-platform storefronts for consoles, PC, and mobile, letting users play and emulate these games as they see fit. Something similar to Nintendo’s Virtual Console service, D4’s Project EGG, or GOG, but without the platform limitations. The emulator these services would offer would ideally have the various feature sets that are customary on most modern emulators. Save states, rewind, controller mapping, presentation options aplenty— staple elements of any retro game compilation, and Nintendo Classics. However, the ultimate goal should be to present these games as they were, within reason, as simple reissues.

Of course, as many games as possible should be added to these storefronts, but licenses, companies who want to conserve value via scarcity, and rightsholders who don’t want to share their work with the world will not comply. This is unfortunate, but every other medium has large amounts of smaller, more obscure, and niche works that are not on major storefronts. And… that’s okay.

The goal of preservation is not to truly preserve everything. There’s a lot of petty garbage that I don’t think many people will miss. But the fact that only 13% of games released before 2010 are legally available is downright shameful. At least aim for 50%!

If your goal is preservation, reissuing is the way to go, as it lets people play the original, as was transcribed on the ROM, or in the original files. Many companies are trying to achieve just that, hustling for licenses, putting out collections, and doing what they can. This is an admirable effort, but it’s tantamount to filling up an Olympic-sized swimming pool with a bucket. In order for official and authorized game preservation to be saved, there needs to be a larger organization with an established structure for distribution, and a way to secure licenses in bulk.

Yes, yes, there are plenty of sites that dump and distribute ROMs, classic games are widely circulated and available. Emulators let people play games with more options and capabilities than ever before. We have these older games saved… but not in a legally sound away, and by existing outside the law, the current status quo is not likely to persist forever. Especially not with server and hosting costs only going up. I love emulation, I love making games look better than ever, basically remastering them myself, through these means. Hell, I would even say that emulation has spread countless games to more people than any official release ever could. …But we gotta get this shit legalized.

Unauthorized copying and emulation should not be the only reasonable way to play countless game. Games should be reissued by the rights holders through official means.

Part 05: Authorial Intent and the Original Vision

So, one of the defenses I sometimes see against remasters and remakes speaks to this romantic idea that the original work is, pardon the poetic language, sacred. That every game is shipped and crafted with a clear artistic vision and intent that defines what it is, what it should be, and every choice was deliberate.

While this may be true for the works of certain creators, specifically indie devs slaving away on a project for years, this is not the true reality for the vast majority of games. Beyond niche fringe cases and basement developers, making video games is a highly technical, multi-faceted, time and money hungry job, a professional endeavor. The people creating any given game need to be concerned about technical restrictions, the market their game is being released into, and what their co-workers want from it. Every game is a compromise between resources and reality. It’s why games have always been shipped rushed, had bugs, had questionable design choices, and been bad. What, you think a lot of people are trying to make bad games?

Virtually no game ships with the totality of the vision from every creator claiming authorship of it. Many choices are made arbitrarily. And if you know anything about game dev, you know that things are being tweaked up to the 11th hour as feedback is given from testers and QA.

The reality of game development makes it incredibly difficult to gauge what intent and deliberate choices went into a game, especially so many years after the fact. Some developers might have entered the project with wildly different ideas, different intents, and compromised them. Others might have just forgotten about them. Or the goals were not shared by every member of a project. Often, intent changes as the creative process goes on. Sure, creators can tell us their intent, and we can choose to believe they are being truthful. But how do you reconcile with the fact that all creatives change over time, their intent shifts as they look back on a work and become a different, older, and wiser person?

Acknowledging these realities, I struggle to view the original version of any game as being perfect, as something that should never be altered, and treated with reverence. Naturally, I don’t think it should be replaced. But I think it is important to acknowledge the fact that so many games are compromised in their construction and, bearing this fact in mind… maybe the creators screwed up. Maybe they used bad numbers for something, or didn’t test it. Maybe the publisher made them change the difficulty or a game, even if they thought it was tuned right? Who do you trust there? The original creators, the publisher executive who mandated this change?

I am not dismissing this theory outright or claiming that these are not things worth considering when assessing a game. Authorial intent can dramatically change how people view a game for the better, and sometimes the original vision is incredibly balanced. However, I view this fixation on the original to be a restrictive perspective on what games can be. Especially because… sometimes, things suck, and sometimes, it’s a good idea to make them not suck.

This is something I am saying both as a lover of games, and as a creator who has gone back and adjusted my work. I’ve reedited it, redone it, added things, replaced segments, and made changes based on what I know now, and not what I thought back then. I acknowledge that I make mistakes, that I sometimes ship things before they are given the effort they deserve, and I have to assume that at least some developers are like me in that respect.

In fact, I know some of them are, because so many games make changes after the fact in the form of post-launch updates!

Part 06: Are Game Updates Remasters? Yes? No? Maybe?

While I know I just said that video game reissues are the best form of preservation, I think some people get the idea of preservation twisted, as the topic is so broad. Yes, it is important that people are able to find the original version of a work. However, that is not necessarily the best version of it, as art can be altered, adjusted, fixed, and improved over time.

The final push, combined with post-launch criticism, is an essential part of many games’ development. Sometimes, this all works through crunch culture magic, other times this results in mistakes. Since it was possible for a game to be patched— sometime in the early 1980s— games have received adjustments and alterations. Now, many of these were just routine bug fixes, correcting obvious errors and unintended behaviors in games. These became pretty common on PCs in the late 90s, where the internet made it pretty easy to download patches and apply them to installed games. As games became online however, with purveyors like Ultima Online and EverQuest, the genres of hotfixes, smaller patches, and tweaks to a game’s balance and economy became increasingly common.

On consoles, this was not really a thing beyond paid downloadable content via Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. Patches were a thing, but they were rarer due to the prohibitive costs arbitrarily imposed by Sony and Microsoft alike. Nintendo… Nintendo let you download locked content via the internet for free, for DS games, so they were on a whole ‘nother level.

This is all to say that free updates did not really become a super common thing until 2013, when Sony and Microsoft revised their patch policies and let people patch games as they saw fit. This led to the era of the day one patch, where C class bugs ran rampant, performance issues were common, and it was clear that publishers were shipping games before undergoing their final round of QA. In fact, can we get that Assassin’s Creed Unity (2014) face? That sums up the sort of things that we just accepted during this era.

Thanks!

This is a point in gaming history where the idea of a shipped and finished game began to shift and transform. The concept of Early Access was implemented by Valve, for better or for worse, and it become almost expected for the launch version of a game to have various problems. Some games were just left broken. Some were fixed up to a general satisfaction. And some used this new system of updates to add to the game, causing it to become something well beyond.

The biggest example of a game being changed through updates is likely No Man’s Sky (2016), going from the greatest disappointment of the year into a truly robust experience that few games can match. Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) was an utter mess on launch, but received oodles of bug fixes, mechanical reworks, new quests, balance adjustments, and an expansion to make the game a more cohesive experience. While other games, such as Pokémon Legends: Arceus (2022) just used updates to add a few extra hours of postgame or optional content, just as a bonus to round out the package.

Updates can change games, they can make them better, even make them “like a new game” some might say, and with most long-updated games, they have a point. Shifting to a game I’m familiar with, Dead Cells reached its version 1.0 release back in 2018, yet continued to have years worth of updates, additions, and refinements. It has had so many changes that it’s easy to argue that it’s not the same game, but a remastered version. New weapons, areas, balance changes, bug fixes, this is all sounding like a remaster to me. Hell, some especially long-updated games can even have updates that are more extensive than certain remasters and, hell, a game might update itself into a remastered or definitive version as a marketing ploy.

Now, I’m not going to say that every patched game is a remaster of the prior version. That may be true in a technical sense, but I understand it’s not true in a practical sense. However, I do think that it should be acknowledged that in this era of games updates, the idea of a game being this original, fixed, thing is no longer true. A game shifts during its post-launch life, grows with the addition of downloadable content, before eventually reaching its final post-update form, if it ever gets there. (I still cannot believe Minecraft has been getting routine updates since I bought it in 2010.)

Is this always a good thing? Well, game updates can go wrong, especially with games like MMOs. Ask any dedicated player, and I’m sure they can talk about how developed botched this or that. Most of the time though, I think that updates make games better, makes them fuller, and makes them more complete experiences. Sometimes, developers need to make the game before they can fix the problems it’s lousy with, and I love to see any game turnaround its reputation through committed updates. I could voice about how “back in the day you only got one chance to ship a game.” But as a lover of games, I just think it’s great when games are made better, while trying to have a looser idea of what that means.

On that note…

Part 07: I Actually Love Remasters

At this point, I probably should make it overt and say that I’m actually quite fond of remasters.

Anybody who has read my reviews of a more typical game these past few years will probably understand that I can be quite critical when it comes to how games are tuned. I fussily fixate on how the math is balanced, and how much of one’s time is dedicated to this or that. This is because, one, I am a fussy person who fixates on perceived problems, and two, I think that fixing these problems can make for a better experience. I think all you need to make a great game excellent and turn a mediocre one into a good one is a bushel of careful focused changes, built around optimizing the experience without compromising anything too much.

As a game goes through its life, the specific and highlighted flaws of its original design become more apparent as time goes on. Even some of the most celebrated games of all time having that part of that mechanic that serves as a roadblock in an experience. Sometimes these are a point of unwanted friction, an annoyance that does not comfortably feed back into a game’s goals or work as intended. Others just waste time through repetition, blind experimentation, or external resource consultation. And many serve as points to jump off the bus, as the game stops being fun and starts being work.

In fact, let me stop with such vagueries and list a few instances where a remaster can benefit a game a lot in the long run:

A dungeon/section that isn’t fun to navigate, requiring a lot of menu fiddling, random experimentation, wandering, and waiting before progress can be made, as seen in Ocarina of Time.
Sections where you are expected to farm for levels because that’s just how games were designed back then, see any number of classic RPGs like Famicom Dragon Quest, PC-88 Ys, and PS1 Vagrant Story.
A restrictive save, checkpoint, or lives systems where you need to repeat significant amounts of progress if you make a mistake. I’m not even going to bother listing examples for that.
An uneven difficulty curve that has enemies shift from walks in the park to imposing threats that put a stopgap in a playthrough, so much so that you just wish the game just cut their health or damage by 20% on normal mode. You know what to do, but the game didn’t properly prepare you for crap of this intensity.
A fussy camera system that can make navigation cumbersome or annoying, as seen in too many games, but my go-to example of a fix is the exceptional The Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered.
A segment of the game that takes a lot of time without offering much engaging content, like simply walking or traveling through an expanse of nothing, looking for something rare or obscure, see Wind Waker HD.
A feature from later games that makes them dramatically better and is so essential to the series that the fact it was missing from the first game makes it feel weird and limited by comparison. See Sonic 1, Tony Hawk 1+2, and Mass Effect 1.
A control scheme that just does not work particularly well or is seen as difficult to use next to a more contemporary control scheme, which I know helped people gel with the Metroid Prime Remaster.
A mess of systems that are hard to parse in their original context and arrangement, but are far more digestible in a different, clearer one, like with Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age.
Level designs that make sense in the broad strokes but is more like a rough draft, leading to an unengaging or boring time, see Yooka-Replaylee (2025)’s update on the original Yooka-Laylee (2017).
A menu system or UX that just kind of sucks to use and makes you wish that you could spend less time fiddling around and more time playing the actual game. Again, do I need to list examples? Older inventory-centric RPGs were notorious for that.
A progression system that is uneven or not the best way to make use of the set pieces and assets assembled by the original dev team— see the Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat remaster for Wii. Not the best example, but it works.
Otherwise cryptic information that the game does not tell you and adjust the UX to convey necessary information. …Again, how many older games had hidden stats? Loads. How many of them made it a problem or chore to work around opaque information? Probably half of them.

In case it’s not obvious, I’ll just come out and say it: I am absolutely the type of person who views shortcomings or annoyances in games as things to be fixed. Often, the most straightforward way to do this is by cutting out the crap in order to retain the parts that I think work well. Even if you can relate a point of friction to a greater theme of the game, that does not actually makes it better.

There are a lot of little annoyances or shortcomings that can be succinctly addressed by a remaster, and as someone who occasionally plays an older video game, there are countless instances where I wish this or that were tweaked slightly. When something becomes available, what is distributed where, and the exact rates for this damn rare drop.

A remaster does not need to do this, this is not a requirement, and it’s also possible for a remaster to not understand the nuances of an original release and make things worse in trying to make them better. However, I think that anything that is commonly considered as an issue, as a shortcoming, of a game by the fans who have rallied behind it over the years, is at least worth interrogating when composing or attempting a remaster. Because, as I said, not every design decision in a video game is as deliberate as you might want to believe.

So far, I’ve been talking about gameplay stuff for this segment, because I think that should be the chief concern. For audio, I don’t think things should change beyond new additions. If you want to add voice acting, new music, an alternate soundtrack, and better sound mixing, be my guest, all of those are great things. However, for visuals, I tend to be more of the mind that a game’s visual identity should not be replaced, just modified. Changing around the HUD, menus, aspect ratio, resolution, frame rate, texture filtering, internal resolution, antialiasing— these things are fair game. However, I have mad gripes with games that meaningfully change a game’s look for little reason.

For example, Lunar: Remastered (2025) took the PS1 versions of the original Lunar games and applied a bunch of filters over them. The top of the screen is out of focus, there’s often a foggy haze or lighting filter is placed over the original maps, and battle backgrounds have been blurred and stretched. I’ve done some visual editing in my time, and this is clearly the art director trying to make the remasters look more striking or modern while obscuring the original image. I can stomach this in small doses, but this is way too far, and can seem, well, lazy in how slapdash their implementation was. I’m not a good sprite artist, but even I could’ve expanded the battle backgrounds if you gave me a few weeks.

Changes like this, attempts to fix the way these games look through these filters are, simply put, bad, and it annoys me to no end when games go with this feature as the only option. Lunar: Remastered does not do this, as you can play what’s extensively the PS1 version of the game, but with Ace Attorney Investigations Collection (2024), you can only play the game with newly redrawn backgrounds.

I find the overwhelming majority of games that aspire to give a title a “remastered facelift” look worse by virtue of their attempts to appear modern, by their commitment to look new and different. This leads various attempts, such as Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster (2024) to look wrong when compared to the original, imposing a new aesthetic onto it that rarely meshes with the unchanged mechanics. It’s more fidelity, the graphics are better, but the identity is lost.

If “remastered” visuals are an option, such as a toggle you can use by pressing a button, that’s fine with me. I’m not going to throw anything more than a whiff of snark or confusion at a damn option. If they are the only presentation style available, then I’ll be varying levels of miffed that the developers would discard the original game’s look. Maybe I’ll like the new look better, view it as enhancing the original art direction. Or maybe it will be an insult to life itself and I will hate you for what you DID to my precious memories, trying to overwrite my happier times with a bunch of doo-doo pee-pee garbage. …I don’t even know which facelift remaster that should be directed to, so I’m just going with the upcoming Godzilla game.

I’d rather remasters avoid making any major changes to a game’s look. Both because I care about the original identity and… because I’ve got a bone to pick with games that thing better graphics make things better. Or, rather, the bloody system that facilitated this whole dang perspective.

Part 08: Graphic Lust and the Aging of Games

One fact that will forever have games stand as something different from the more established entertainment mediums is that video games are software reliant on technology in order to function. Technology that is always changing and is thousands of times more powerful now than it was 50, 40, 30 years ago. Films do not look too different from how they looked 50 years ago. The picture is clearer and effects are better, but a movie still looks like a movie. Games though? Space Invaders (1978) and Resident Evil 9: Requiem (2026) look nothing alike. They don’t even look like the same medium!

Because of the rapid technical advancement experienced throughout the medium’s life, what video games look like, can do, should look like, and should do have changed dramatically. What was once cutting edge becomes incredibly antiquated, and expectations grow as technology does. This makes it far harder for some individuals to “go back” to older games with different looks primality and systems secondarily, as they do not look like the games they might be familiar with. Or, quite simply, they might think they look ugly, with blurry textures, limited 3D models, and abstract pixelated graphics.

This might not be strictly true in the modern climate, where the likes of the low fidelity Minecraft and Roblox encompass gaming for a large stratum of the younger generations. However, the core gaming space is pretty firmly invested in how games look. They want them to look bigger, flashier, more impressive than what came before, and achieve states of realism or otherwise beauty that had not been possible before.

Now, it may be tempting to blame The Gamers™ for perpetuating this idea, but that’s like blaming the legion of Joe Schmoes in America for White Supremacy and capitalism. No, no. This fixation on impressive graphics is a learned behavior, echoed throughout culture, and perpetuated by various forces. Namely developers, publishers, and the press.

Game developers, as innovators in a burgeoning field, were naturally eager to push what it could do, what computers could display, and as tech enthusiasts, wanted to push boundaries. They wanted computers to display complex multicolor graphics drawn by the machine. They wanted to make worlds that simulated three-dimensional spaces, and they wanted to make computers that were good enough to render polygonal figures that resembled a human. Developers of all colors have historically been eager to push how good their creations can look, and led to many techniques that are still used today. They largely made these innovations out of a sporting competitive spirit, a desire to push computers to the limit.

Game publishers exist within a competitive market, and need to somehow sell their games to a wide audience. Initially, this was done through the use of other mediums— flashy box and promo art, commercials that exaggerate what the experience will be. However, as graphical quality improved they gradually shifted to using screenshots, gameplay footage, and the like as ways to sell their games to people. Because people were merely seeing their games, the best way to sell them was to make them look better, more advanced, and more engaging than other games on the market. So, publishers wanted to push the best video graphics in order to sell more video games.

Then there was the gaming press. I searched through a bunch of old gaming magazines for the history piece, and it was incredibly common to see them grade games based on their graphics, originality, and innovation. When selling games in these magazines, these were some of the most common ways for them to be promoted. The people who read these magazines, like me, learned to recognize these things as good, and were gradually taught that, one of the worst things a new game could do, was feel like it belonged on the old console.

All of these factors, and broader cultural preferences pertaining to what “good” looks like, led many avid game players to correlate good graphics with quality: The belief that a game with bad graphics is probably a bad game. There has always been push back to this, with gameplay over graphics arguments probably dating back to before I was even born. However, this has not changed the fact that many people with many dollars want games to look better. The culture of gaming is build on a graphical arms race that started back during the arcade days, and continues with every AAA game trying to push boundaries, hardware chasing incremental gains, and graphics companies pushing new graphical tech.

The rapid growth of gaming graphics means there is more to adjust to when one is going back to an older game. What was realistic and crisp can be seen as abstract and fuzzy through a modern context. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons why one might prefer games to look newer or older, and taste can never be accounted for. However, for the 7 genres of persons who follow gaming news, the fixation on high fidelity modern graphics is hard to ignore.

This fact intersects with the desire for games to be remade, and leads people to want games to be remade with modern visuals. Gamin enthusiasts prefer them, or at least have been socialized to view them as good. Or, as I like to put it, old graphics are a graphic turn off for some, while high fidelity modern graphics fill them with a graphic lust.

Some people are more overt about this, embracing this desire, while others are less subtle yet carry this bias with them. It extends to how they view newer games, correlating its quality with its perceived bad graphics, and viewing older games as implicitly lesser because “they don’t look very good.” To some, seeing how a game actually looked, after being away from it for so many years, can be crushing, a reminder of the fallibility of the human mind and that you like something bad as a kid. Meanwhile, any remake that promises to “look how you remember” can sound like a crystallization of a childhood memory.

Graphic lust is a factor that leads many to want to see their favorites remade with modern visuals, but they often don’t just want new visuals and new gameplay. Oh, no. As game graphics grew, so did game design,. People wanted more “immersive worlds” to explore, and to be able to do things that they could not do before.

These fixations led to changing trends, different perceptions and conceptions of what games could and should be. Design standards changed while games of old stayed the same, unchanging, and reflective of the era and standards they were build under. Going from new standards to old standards can create a level of unwanted friction for players, as they are forced to engage with systems that can be opaque, limiting, or just kinda fucking annoying. Higher difficulty, a lack of direction, limited lives/chances, soft locks, and an unspoken expectation that a player would be willing to invest weeks into understanding poorly explained systems.

With no rules, no standards, everything was on the table, and game developers had a blast pursuing whatever ideas they had in mind. Some can prefer or find something to love in these old school design principles, finding something to love in a fussy camera or laborious character movement, or a 5 hour game with no continues or save system. Others are inclined to write off these features as bad, annoying, or dated, to say that a given game has aged poorly.

Linguistically, this is and has always been incorrect. While game hardware— the physical cartridges and discs— has aged over time, designs don’t age. Designs merely become dated and fail to conform with an ever shifting set of loosely defined broadly understood cultural standards. These elements, which have a very wide definition, can make it difficult for certain people to engage with older games, either because they barely/never played them or they forgot how to abide by these older standards.

Games do not age, the world around them ages, the culture ages, and games that do not fit with the modern culture seem dated, just like anything else. It’s tempting to say that this is a modern phenomenon, but it really isn’t. Saying that a Genesis or SNES game looks like or played an NES game was an insult circa 1992. Saying that a PS1 game looked or played like a Super Nintendo game was an insult in 1997. Saying that a PS2 game looked like an N64 game was an insult in 2003. Saying that an Xbox 360 game looked like it belonged on PS2 was an insult in 2008.

This fixation on wanting games to look and feel modern has always been a factor, and it is a key reason why so many people fixate on and clamor for remakes of their favorites. Because as people learn and incorporate the standards and culture of modern core terminally online gaming, they will learn graphic lust. I carry it, you carry it, we all have that lust for graphics deep within us.

Part 09: No Game NEEDS to be Remade (If You Like It)

As older games have been brought forward with modern graphics and features, or reimagined from the group up as something with a familiar face and different figure, desire for remakes has been instilled within gaming culture. It’s not uncommon for people to wax and pine over how much they want this or that series to come back and be recreated. And while this is not a modern phenomenon— people have wanted to see old favorites come back since enough time passed for old favorites to be a thing. Hell, I saw it all the time back during the late 2000s.

Naturally, I get where these people were and are coming from. I’ve wanted plenty of my favorite games, or games that I found too jank and old to love, to be more palatable experiences. However, over time my views on the matter changed. I have come to realize that there are many reasons why I love a given game. The mechanics and journey it sent me on. The world it crafts for me to gawk and awe at. The soundscape that accompanies this adventure, punctuating actions and building atmosphere. And the characters who I meet along the way.

I love games for what they do, what they did, and the experiences they offer. Are there games I love that I would like to see receive some tweaks, adjustments, rebalances, and presentational enhancements? Yes, such as most of them. However, I generally don’t want games I hold dear to be remade due to a rather simple fact: When you remake something, you are inherently making something new. You might be using the same basic designs, same music, and same characters, but it is not going to be the same game. You might like it more. You might like the remake and not the original. Or you might hate everything it does to the original.

This uncertainty is why I sometimes find it hard to get excited for any remake, or remaster, because it is so easy to screw it up. And if I had to either have something I love risk getting screwed up or simply shipped with no significant changes… I’ll take the latter. It’s part of the reason why I’ve come to groan at the idea of, say, a Sonic Adventure 1 or 2 remake and only wanted better ports with slight remastering touches, like real widescreen and various things mods have added.

Why don’t I want a remake of some of my favorite childhood games? Because both those games were a highly specific blend of choices and aesthetics. The sound, the look, the loose yet smooth feel of the playable characters, that is Sonic Adventure. And if you were to change that, make it look modern, make it look realistic then, well, the vibe would be off, it would no longer feel like Sonic Adventure.

I will concede that a remake can simply be better than the original, especially in the world of video games. For example, I know that I would not want to play the original Final Fantasy after loving the GBA remake as a kid. I think the originals look boring and plain, full of experimental mechanics that require the right mindset to approach, and I don’t want to rethink how potions work. I don’t want to go back to the magic charge system, as I find the MP system to be far more intuitive.

I still view the version of Ys Chronicles on Steam to be the best version by a country mile, despite being the, what, a remastered of a remaster of a remake? I do not like the more stilted presentations of the originals, and think it pales in comparison to the lavish detail put into every aspect of the latest version. Though, I could mess with the PC Engine CD version, as it has more graphical texture, better quality audio, and more presentational meat on its bones. However, that’s also a remake.

I think the first two Metroid games are cumbersome, teetering on annoying, next to Zero Mission (2004) and Samus Returns (2017). The limited movement options, narrow perspective, and lack of map mean I don’t get along with these games, or trust them, nearly as well as their remakes. Does that mean I don’t like the Metroid series? No, it means I don’t like being lost in a same-y looking maze!

Hell, I know that I would never touch the first four Rance games with a five-foot-pole, because… they’re Japanese only PC-88 games. Even if they were in English, I wouldn’t want to put up with that archaic crap. I’d rather just play the remakes, because they seem like games I would actually enjoy.

If I don’t really like a game, or only like the ideas of it, then sure, I would be done for a remake, but that’s because a remake has the inherent promise to do something new or different. And for some games, all they need to be palatable is a new coat of paint.

As… all these examples demonstrate, I think remakes make sense for older games with more limitations. With older games, mostly meaning pre-DOS, NES, Master System, that jazz, it can be hard to mesh with the construction of the original. You need to have a lot of patience and imagination for certain titles, and sometimes… it’s preferable to just have a modified, more direct, experience that sacrifices crypticness at the expense of mystique. Not everybody, even staunch enthusiasts, will like every game. However, they might like the remake.

Still, I don’t think these remakes are “necessary.” Just having the original versions available is the only thing I’d consider necessary. Remakes can be good, they can be better, and there are titles that, due to various limitations, would probably be easier to remake than remaster and be better for it. However, most (over 50%) of the time, I think that a comprehensive remaster, that keeps what the original did while tweaking things aplenty, is the better option.

So, yes, I think a lot of 80s games could benefit from being remade, as there were just some things you couldn’t do on hardware that was available at the time, and what you could do with graphics was limited. I would love to say something like “games after the 20th century generally don’t need to be remade.” Unfortunately, there are platforms whose libraries are so fixated around an unconventional display method that you can’t make them fit on modern displays. One set of thousands of games that I’d rather not experience in their original orientation, that would need to be broken apart and reassembled in such a comprehensive way it goes beyond a typical remaster. I’m talking about Nintendo DS and 3DS games.

Part 10: DS and 3DS Games Need Remakes (Or Remasters)

From 2004 to 2016, Nintendo had a problem with using unconventional control and display technologies before shifting to making almost every one of their games playable with a standard controller and standard single 16:9 display. This decade-plus of exploration makes much of their back catalog difficult to go back to, as it was built for bespoke hardware. I previously rambled about this WAY back in 2019, and still believe that this quirkiness was a mistake, a dead-end innovation.

Wii games, as has been proven, can be converted into a playable state with just a remaster and remapping certain buttons. Look at Skyward Sword HD, Super Mario Galaxy HD, and Donkey Kong Country Returns HD for the Switch. This is a fairly straightforward process for most titles, and for any game that supported a classic or GameCube controller, there’s nothing to really change. Still bad news for stuff like Wii Sports and Red Steel 2 though.

The Wii U… has like ten games that used the Gamepad in novel ways that haven’t been brought over to the Switch, so whatever salt I had about the gamepad use has largely subsided. We can do without Game & Wario (2013), and Paper Mario: Color Splash (2016) would be better off with a remade battle system, and actual characters, anyway, as that game is carried by its story and graphics.

But the DS and 3DS? As someone who has emulated both systems a fair bit, I can safely say that they do not always map to the standard interface of a dual analog controller and a single screen. Every set up for playing the vast majority of these games on anything other than a DS, 3DS, or some hotness like the AYN Thor will have a certain level of jank to it. The two screens and touch screen will always make things awkward for certain games, and while a mouse can work in some instances, it’s never ideal. These are games made for a specific form-factor, and it can be hard to get ideal experiences without that. I mean, do you REALLY want to play a game with UX like this on your computer?

There hundreds, maybe thousands, of games for these systems that are suboptimal on anything other than the original hardware. If you want to make them feel as if they belong, you need to rework the entire UI, UX, and controls of a game around a new format. Sometimes this works well. Other times, it does not.

For example, my favorite Nintendo DS game, The World Ends With You (2008) received an excellent remaster in the form of The World Ends With You: Final Remix (2018) for Switch. It condensed everything down to a single screen, replaced the sprites of the original with illustrations, which… I think look better. Some find this to be a step back, as you are no longer switching between screens with the originals (OPTIONAL) two character battle system. However, I find the action of Final Remix to be far more engaging, intense, and precise than what was possible on the DS. It looks, sounds, and in my opinion plays better. Play the final postgame campaign with a stylus, ultimate difficulty, with a 30 level penalty, and tell me it’s not peak touchscreen action.

M2’s remastered compilation, Castlevania Dominus Collection (2024), gave players a bunch of options on how to display the game, but the main option combined the top and bottom screen through a series of windows. The main action screen is on the left, taking up 75% of the screen real estate. The upper right sports the game’s map, a very handy thing to have at a glance. While the status screen is in the bottom right corner. A bit awkward, clearly a kitbash, but I think it’s pretty slick while being respectful of the original, not making anything new. This is basically the best-case scenario.

Lock’s Quest (2008), a tower defense strategy game, was remastered to accommodate a wider field of view and button controls. However, the remaster was plagued by technical issues and did not adapt to console play as well as it should have, as it was designed for a stylus, showing that you really need to be careful with conversions like this.

Azure Strike Gunvolt (2014) initially received a pretty terrible PC port in 2015 that, rather than concisely combine the two screens together, presented everything with a strange picture and picture view surrounded by an eye-catching border. It looked terrible, instant refund. The game did not get a proper single screen conversion until its 2017 switch release, where they did the actual work and condensed things into a single screen. This was not very hard, as the game was already predominantly a one screen game, just relegating UX, information, and action buttons to the bottom screen.

In fact, MOST major 3DS games just dedicated the bottom screen to maps and menus, unlike the original DS, where things were a lot more varied, which makes 3DS games strangely easier to adapt. This is why Resident Evil Revelations (2012), Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate (2013), Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance (2012), Yokai Watch 1 (2013) and Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon (2013) all had fairly clean remasters. They just shoved UI elements elsewhere in the HUD. Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl (2021)… straight up remade the game and condensed everything to a single screen except for the main bottom screen feature, the Pokétch, which was so awkward that most players did not bother using it or displaying it.

Ghost Trick (2010) similarly brought all relevant and necessary top screen UX elements to the bottom screen. Which, uh, evidently was not much.

Trauma Center: Second Opinion (2006) is a mess to play, along with the rest of the series, so I choose to believe it never existed. No analysis, just rejection, it never happened.

Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection was a thorough and extensive, slightly hackneyed, way to play through the ideal DS dungeon crawler series, letting the player explore on the left side of the screen, make a map on the right, or rely on an auto map while exploring the dungeon in glorious 16:9. It’s another thorough UX redux, complete with new character and enemy sprites, crisp 3D, and pretty high res textures. It’s still clearly not a game designed around this format, but works well enough and supports mouse/touch controls for good measure. That is a bit limiting but… let’s be real. If you are playing a dungeon RPG, you’re doing it on a PC or a handheld.

All of which is to say that… you can remaster DS and 3DS and have them be pretty good on another system. Unfortunately, this is obviously a case by case basis, making it very difficult to bring them over compared to, say, a GBA game. Furthermore, some games can be adapted with relative ease, while others… no, just don’t even bother trying. In fact, as a fun little experiment, let me go through some of the best-selling list of DS games.

New Super Mario Bros. (2006) would be easy, barring the handling of underground stages and some alterations to the UI. Maybe put the star coin, progression, and reserve items as part of the UI, or put them in the pause menu. However, the minigames would be incredibly difficult to convert due to their strong reliance on rapid touch screen movements.

Nintendogs (2005)… would not work, as the entire point of the game is talking to and touching your dog. You could use a controller to do that, in theory, but there’s a reason this IP did not live past the 3DS.

Mario Kart DS (2005) would work just fine. Throw the map and time somewhere on the screen, make everything wider and yeah, it’s Mario Kart DS on anything other than the DS!

Brain Age (2005) is a hard NO, as it is reliant on holding the DS like a book, drawing numbers, and using other key features. Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training for Nintendo Switch (2019) was already a hard sell that relied on motion controls and touch screen nonsense, and I think this series is cursed to be gimmick only.

Pokémon games would need to have their UX redesigned from scratch, as seen with BDSP, but otherwise should work decently well. I tried making some mock-ups a few months ago, but they were all dreadful.

Animal Crossing: Wild World (2005) could work, as the top screen was mostly used to shoot floating presents and the rest of the dual screen hoopla was UI elements, but also why?

Super Mario 64 DS (2004) just used the touch screen for a map and information that could be condensed to the HUD. …But also contained so many extras and mini-games specific to the DS’s hardware. It’s possible, but also why? Just remake Super Mario 64, Nintendo. I know you want to.

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (2009) just used the other screen for menus, and I could easily see a conversion working. …But Square Enix would just wind up remaking it instead. And I would buy it, as I was a Dragon Quest IX kid. 300 hours, baby!

Mario Party DS (2007)? No. Just… Just no. Stop it. Get some help. Minigame titles WOULD NOT WORK with a controller.

Professor Layton? They tried remastering those games for mobile, they were all vertical orientation, nobody wants to play vertical games on a TV. Every puzzle is driven by touch screens, so it just would not work without oodles of fine-tuning. Or do you want to use a virtual cursor to solve puzzles? Do you? Do you really?

Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (2009) would be doable, bu kind of a pain in the butt due to all the minigames and fringe uses of the second screen in combat and for UI carryover. It’s not ideal, but it could have worked if AlphaDream didn’t remake this game on 3DS, those dorks.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (2007)? The touch screen controlled vertically oriented Zelda game with pretty crude 3D models? This is an example where I will just say it is infinitely easier to remake it.

Or in other words, the DS library is complex, full of weird edge cases and so many games made for the hardware. Some may say this makes the system unique and irreplaceable, I say that’s true and awful. Because it just had to be cute, we are likely never going to see optimal ways to play them on a standard display. Remasters can definitely work, but require attention, care, to break apart the game and rearrange it. But, in extreme cases, it would just be easier to remake them from scratch.

Though, Kirby Super Star Ultra (2008), my favorite DS game, would be relatively easy to get working on a standard display. Just shove the UI to the side! Oh the joys of being a remake of a Super Nintendo game.

Thanks for innovating, Nintendo. Now what are we supposed to do with the nearly 5,000 games that, on some level, relied on your funny duddy tech? All because you could not see that the future was not on multiple screens, but a single, wider screen, that has become canonized as THE way to do all things computer.

…Ah, crud. I was dreading this part. Time for another history lesson with Professor Nat-Nat!

Part 11: An Abridged History of Aspect Ratios and Resolutions

…I spent half an hour on this image, removing UI elements, looking up the original sprites, before realizing that I did not center it. …I knew I should have just done this for *Super Mario Bros.*

You cannot discuss the topic of remasters or reissues of games without discussing the matter of resolution and aspect ratios. In the contemporary climate, it’s largely agreed upon that console and PC gaming should be displayed at a 16:9 aspect ratio, the standard resolution for displays, and should range between the coveted true HD 1920 by 1080 resolution and its 4K counterpart of 3840 by 2160. Ultrawide displays with a 21:9 ratio exist, 5K and 8K displays exist, 32:9 displays exist for people who don’t want multiple monitors, and smartphones have their own funky range of resolutions and ratios. However, most media that is not made for phones is made for the 16:9 aspect ratio, and most media made for phones is just 9:16.

This, naturally, was not always the case. Up to the 2000s, TVs came in all different shapes and sizes, but they generally gravitated to 4:3 displays— to making things square but just a little bit wider. Why was that the case? Well, look at what old 1920s movies were displayed at, look at the aspect ratio of photographs, it just made sense to work within the model of a sorta square. So, when television broadcasts were first established, they were designed around the shape of televisions, on the cameras available at the time. I know I am making this a bit too simple, just let me get on with it.

This 4:3 aspect ratio could have worked, and we could have just accepted that this is the ideal form of video. Then the film industry, in order to combat television, began releasing films boasting wider aspect ratios, allowing filmmakers to show fuller spectacles, massive crowds, and create something that felt truly large and imposing. The ratios fluctuated— they fluctuated a LOT through the 20th century— ranging to the tune of the ultrawide 21:9 aspect ratio, and often being bigger. While originally developed in the 1950s, film continued to mess around with aspect ratios, regularly choosing between the ultrawide innovations introduced then or the more modest 16:9 aspect ratio.

Still, this was just one avenue, one medium, meant to be a spectacle, an event, and it’s fine if it’s displayed differently, right? Well, not quite.

In the 1970s, the diligent work of many brilliant people ushered in the era of home video, the ability for people to determine what they want to watch. No longer would they need to be restricted by what a handful of channels were broadcasting, now they could watch what they want, when they want, provided they could afford/rent a video cassette, or LaserDisc, containing the film. The technology was very expensive out the gate, had its own messy format war, with VHS winning and LaserDisc being the best on a technological level. A LaserDisc was basically Blu-ray quality.

Yes, yes, I am getting to the video game stuff, but this is important!

Regardless of your format though, films were always limited in their home release. Films released on video often used a technology called pan and scan, where they would take the 23:9 to 16:9 original film and squeeze it into a 4:3, or 12:9, frame, panning the area of focus in order to capture the most important part of a given scene. Not all pan and scans were created equal, yet they were objectively inferior next to the original. You were losing almost half a movie in some cases!

A lot of filmmakers hated this, and wanted to release their films at their original aspect ratios. This lead to the release of many widescreen VHS tapes that, no matter what TV you had at the time, would look compromised, teensy, and harder to parse. This eventually ballooned into a widespread format war that began on VHS and continued onto DVD, where films often received widescreen and full screen— the marketing team’s term for pan and scan— home releases.

To accommodate the consumerist battle of widescreen vs. full screen, widescreen televisions were developed, first appearing in the 1990s. When they first appeared, they did not make much sense, being bigger and heavier televisions that had extra space that was not widely used for much. Broadcasts were still being shot at 4:3 and video games displayed gameplay at 4:3 or 8:7. However, using movies as a cudgel, the film and TV industry began a decade-long transition to this new 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio.

Again, this is something that could fill up a book in and of itself, but the short version is to skip to the results. By the late 90s, widescreen home video releases were a staple, widescreen televisions could be found in stores. There was a multi industry-wide agreement to shift away to widescreen, or 16:9, as the new resolution for… basically everything. However, it was also more than that. Studios had been experimenting with higher resolution, higher quality, ways to present film and television. They moved past the CRT mold, allowed them to be cheaper to produce, higher resolution, and far, far lighter, which always added to their cost. This was the transition to HD TVs.

This transition was not exactly smooth. There was a bunch of confusion, misinformation, shoddy TVs that mislead buyers into thinking they were higher resolutions, and a whole messy push to shove everything into this. TV broadcasts had to switch over to HD, sets and bumpers had to be remade and made for people who were still using 4:3 televisions, and in key countries (the United States) TV broadcasts also switched to digital. However, by the end of the decade, the transition was well underway, had hit a saturation point, and the film/TV industry was off to do some other nonsense involving 3D, which we are NOT talking about here.

So, what did this (under) 1,000 words of malarkey mean for video games? Well, lots of things, really. Initially, video games had their own weird aspect ratios and resolutions. NES games were displayed at 256 by 240 as the standard resolution, Super Nintendo was 256 by 224 (8:7) in most cases. Mega Drive was on its own nonsense at 320 by 224 (10:7). Dreamcast ran at 640 by 480 as a rule, and I think that’s why footage of those games has always looked so clean back when online video quality was about that level.

Things got weird with the PlayStation, which had a variable aspect ratio. Some games stuck to the mold of the Mega Drive with 320 by 224, like Jumping Flash (1995), but could run as high as 640 by 480, like with Bubsy 3D (1996), or it could pull off NES resolutions like with Little Ralph (1999). It was buck wild. However, things got extra weird when we reached the PS2 and Xbox era, as widescreen was supported on a system level, and hundred of games for both systems supported it and/or higher resolutions.

The PlayStation 2 had a library of about 350 titles with 16:9 support, original Xbox had closer to 450 titles that had a 16:9 mode, while the GameCube had something like 75 widescreen games. Otherwise, the systems generally aimed for the standard 640 by 480 resolution, or 480p, but not every game hit that mark. Many of them instead ran at 480i, which was effectively a nicer version of 320 by 240, and to even get the 480p resolution, you needed component cables or some other digital video cables and a compatible TV.

Needless to say, the resolution situation was crazy back then, and when it came time to the following generation, things were… still pretty skewed.

The New Nintendo GameCube, the Wii, only supported up to 480p, but expanded the resolution with widescreen, with most games offering both 4:3 and 16:9 support, to let people choose during this transitional era.

Xbox 360 and PS3 similarly offered the ability to switch between 4:3 and 16:9, but this feature was generally phased out sometime around 2009 and not every game was designed with this dual resolution support. But basically every one supported widescreen, as that was the new default. As for resolution, uh, some games were not HD by even the most generous definition. The Xbox 360 was generally a 720p console, while the PlayStation 3 wasn’t much better, still with a bunch of 720p titles, but both dipped down to 1024 by 576 for more intensive and less optimized games. It was rough at the time, but it’s important to bear in mind that it took a while for actual 1080p screens to be released at consumer prices, and many early HD TVs were actually only capable of 720p and/or 1080i.

Once reaching the PlayStation 4 generation, we reach something of an end of history state, where resolutions mainly hit 1080p, but often did not quite make it. Games then got boosts with the PlayStation 4 Pro, and 1080p / 60 fps became the much cited goal among performance enthusiasts, before being upped to 4K / 120 fps or whatever is the “in” thing at the moment. 16:9 became the de facto resolution for console gaming, and we’re roughly two decades into it being the default. It took a while to get here, but it does not look like the de facto resolution is going to change, as 16:9 works pretty well with the human eyes, which have greater horizontal range than vertical range.

We have our new standard, but we also have, uh, 30 years worth of games that were not designed around it. So, what the hell are we supposed to do?

Part 12: What To Do About Aspect Ratios, Resolutions, and Frame Rates

How do you go about bringing games designed for a lower resolution, narrower aspect ratios, and lower frame rates onto modern displays and modern devices? Well, the answer is that it’s complicated. Firstly, because aspect ratios and resolutions are sorta interrelated, and any analysis of them requires distinguishing between 2D and 3D games, as they are built in fundamentally different ways.

A 2D game is typically composed of bespoke assets, mostly sprites, that cannot be cleanly scaled to any resolution you desire. Additionally, the game’s logic often operates on more rigid rules than a 3D title. Things that are off-screen can often cease to exist, or only persist for a brief while, and changing this often requires changing large chunks of the game. You generally cannot just change one number, and need to basically break the game apart to implement such a feature. Emulators like the All New Super ZSNES have tried experimenting with this, but it’s very much a work-in-progress.

With this in mind… the best way to scale them is typically to increase their internal resolution to the multiple that best fits on a screen and slap on some black bars or borders. You can add a filter if you really want, but why would you play a pixel-based game unless you wanted to see the pixels? And why would you want to ever stretch out a 4:3 image across 16:9? Do you think that makes old TV shows look better?

A 3D title is, by comparison, far more susceptible to aspect ratio and resolution manipulation, as exemplified by how 3D games have, for the past 30 years, featured various resolutions that could be toggled between. From Doom (1993) to Doom: The Dark Ages (2025), this is a pretty firm rule. Many 4:3 3D games can be converted to a 16:9 aspect ratio, and a 1080p or 4K resolution, worth without much fuss. If not an outright option, such a thing can ideally be achieved by changing a few numbers in the game’s code. You just need to find the right numbers. Other 3D games are fussier when it comes to this, and only load certain elements based on the borders of the original aspect ratio, leading to odd visual bugs and possibly performance issues.

Fortunately, these examples are in the minority, and pretty much any 3D game can be rendered in widescreen with enough technical knowhow and a relatively small amount of time, expertise depending. I am a huge fan of doing this as it’s largely additive. A wider perspective lets you see more of the world, gives you better reaction lead up whenever something is coming up, and makes many types of game easier to play. Platformers? you can see in front of you. Shooters? You can see around you. Racing games? You can more easily take turns. Just moving in a 3D space is easier when you can see more of the world, at least up to a point.

There are some decent arguments against changing the aspect ratio, such as how they games less “intimate” or less claustrophobic, which is important for genres like horror. I can see that angle, why someone would want something like King’s Field (1994) to be in a narrow box to make it more oppressive, rather than something more open. But I’d be lying if I said I agreed with that desire. Maybe I’m just too predisposed to view horror games as software designed to evoke an emotional response.

As for games that contain a hearty mix of 2D and 3D assets… well, they can sometimes work like 3D titles, but sometimes are best constrained to their original aspect ratio.

Next up is frame rates, and this is fun. Video games have always had variable frame rates due to technological limitations, and have had a bad history of basing in-game logic on the frame rate. …Or basing the frame rate off of the CPU speed, with no cap. These were bad practices, as a stable frame rate is a heavily desired thing to game players of all sorts. Those who perform video games at a high level and engage in twitch reflex experiences are very aware of how a low or inconsistent frame rate affects their play. While those on the more recreational end can feel it, even if they cannot recognize it.

While 2D games have usually been able to hit 60 fps across assorted platforms, frame rates became a big deal with the advent of 3D, where many games were stellar if they hit 24 fps. Things eventually stabilized with 30 frame per second as an unspoken standard, but that began to change following the release of the PS4 and Xbox One, where consoles could finally do consistent 60 frames per second… if the developers felt like it. This evolution was great, as more frames means more information is communicated by the game, the player can react faster, and the video is overall smoother. While 60 is still the standard, higher frame rates are very possible, and often coveted by power user enthusiasts. For the rest of us though, we are still stuck on 60 fps displays and not looking to upgrade.

Now, do I have an argument against higher frame rates that is more plausible than the hilarious assertation that lower frame rates make games more “cinematic?” Not really. I can see why someone would not want to go past 60, as they are not used to it. However, anyone who insists that Ocarina of Time were supposed to run at 20 fps, and you should like its native frame rate is, uh, not credible in my book.

Basically, I think everything should go up to “modern standards,” improving how games are displayed using modern tech while only changing a few things about them. It does not always work. We cannot get 2D games to always play ball because of how they are made. And certain games, namely PC games, don’t behave themselves properly at higher resolution, namely with fixed pixel UI elements. However, I think the tools are there to make a game look better without imposing much onto it.

However, not everybody believes in what I think, believing that games are supposed to look the way they looked at launch. I find this notion to be pretty… ahistoric. Partially because games looked different on loads of different displays, and older systems used a variety of analog video formats that, surprisingly produced different looking video. But I also find this argument laughable when looking at gaming through a PC player’s perspective, where variable resolution, frame rate, and even aspect ratios were a common sight and games were adaptable to different hardware.

Still, that does not stop some people from rejecting modernity, embracing tradition, and looking back at the past as being more pure, more honest, more organic.

Part 13: Heyo, MiSTer Cathode Ray Tube, It’s Not 1999!

As a reminder, this is still an essay on re-whatevers. However, I feel the need to acknowledge an anti-re-whatever movement from a subset of retro tech enthusiasts. They’re pretty staunch traditionalist and insist that retro games should be played in as appropriate a context as possible, in order to truly appreciate them.

This context often involves playing games on original hardware, using physical copies, official controllers, and on a big bulky CRT, likely all in a lavish game room with shelves full of plastic. Or, alternatively, if they are space conscious, they will a modded console that reads ROMs on an SD Card, or use various emulation boxes. Devices like a Raspberry Pi was popular for quite a few years, able to emulate many retro game consoles for extra cheap. However, the enthusiasts among traditionalist have largely been moving over to a MiSTer. A MiSTer is basically a collection of hardware meant to clone various consoles, computers, and so forth using a customizable bit of kit called an FPGA board. They even come in PlayStation shape!

I am mentioning this here because this is routinely presented as a counter to the likes of emulation and official releases. If a remaster is bad or remake is bad, then it is a not uncommon retort to reject it by harkening back to the original, played in an “authentic” context, back when games had “soul.” Or, alternatively, this crystallized view of retro gaming is simply presented in contrast to “modern gaming” as being better and superior by being traditional and full of vibes that are different from the complex and busy world of gaming today.

A lot of this can be represented with the “humble” CRT itself. In my prior rambling about them, I have come to accept that the reason people like CRTs in the big 2026 is because… they’re a vibe. It’s an aesthetic, it takes screens— something plain, clear, flavorless, boring, and representative of reality— and renders them into something that looks different. They don’t want clarity of image, they want to feel something. Some people are fatigued by a world full of crystal displays, where things have been optimized to nigh perfection, and look back at a time when every screen looked a bit different. They are fascinated by a screen was not trying to replicate the world around them. With this technology, everything was so blurred and had such added noise to it that you couldn’t see the polygons. On these displays, 64 by 64 textures looked realistic and a bunch of blocks could look like a playable cartoon.

One could point out how many games have their looks transformed by CRT filters, and how they make sprite art look like “actual art,” how they blur colors to add effects otherwise implied. To which I say… no, it doesn’t. You can choose to see that, but I look at any viral crap showing off what this or that game looked like with a CRT effect and say it looks blurry. It has black lines running through everything. It is a harder image to parse, much less play, as you are contending not only with the movement of the game, but the movement of the display.

CRT displays affect the visual information offered by a game, and I think it is a net negative. Pixels that are clear for pixel perfect precision are rendered murky, and I don’t believe that the better response times are worth it. This is an objective improvement, as response time is important, it allows one to perform slightly better and get around split-second situations that, while not common in general computing, are not uncommon in video games. …But how much of a difference does it realistically make?

Do you notice a tangible delay when you type and see the characters populate in a text processor? Do you see the delay in your touch inputs being recognized on a smartphone? Do you exclusively spend your time working on displays that instantly respond to your feedback with no delay? We live in a world where technology is a cornerstone of life, where we are using computers all the time. While there may be some input delay, it is so few frames and so normalized that I don’t see how it would affect the vast majority of people. Are some people naturally going to be more sensitive, especially if they insist on playing games at an exceptionally high level? Yes, but those guys are weirdos, and should be viewed accordingly.

Gosh, don’t even get me started on analog video signals. Comparing those to even basic VGA signals is like comparing what a painting looks like with glasses off versus glasses on.

Ahem.

Similar to how a CRT is meant to create something that feels different compared to a regular modern screen, the goal of using older consoles, controllers, physical media, or the eponymous MiSTer is the pursuit of an owned experience. To many people, gaming, just like their phones, have become too busy for them to fully enjoy things, too full of distractions, and they want an experience where they are fully in control. Where there is meaning and effort to the things they are doing, and the things they are engaging with are closed systems. It’s a desire for an experience that is, fundamentally, tied to a physical object.

Now, I don’t really care if people do this. I think it’s weird and overly complicated. Yet, I also acknowledge that I am a weirdo myself, and that I like to do everything on my personal PC. It’s where I write, play games, watch videos, do internet stuff, read hentai comics, manage files, and do my day job. I believe in a supreme commander, others need to separate church and state and enjoy touching things.

Still, what bothers me about this mentality is its insistence on being authentic. That there is one method of playing games that is superior to another, and it is one derived specifically from creating the original conditions of their original context. Yes, yes, a CRT screen looks different, controllers feel different, and the vibes of the scenario are different, transcribed with a different meaning.

As an active medium where one is tangibly engaging with something, where the player is in constant communication with the game, where they are the experience, how one plays leads to a different experience. …But so does literally everything else. Their age, neurological disposition, lived experiences, living experience, hands, race, gender, economic background, general personality, chosen character, chosen language, season, time of day, and many other factors all change how a game is played. Because they all change the player.

Games were released in an original context, but that era, physically, mentally, and socially, is gone. This pursuit of authenticity is opting to cling to these vestiges of the past in the pursuit of making experiences more laborious, textured, or otherwise meaningful. However, it is also transforming something that could be far more seamless and accessible into something locked behind barriers of time, effort, knowledge, and the capital needed for investments. Anybody talking about how “retro gaming’s gonna get huge” in this modern era clearly is not looking at enough overpriced eBay listings or is acknowledging the fact that poor people always turned to emulation for a free fix. Talk to a damn Colombian, dude. I did. Though, uh, don’t spend $15,000 on Colombian pussy like I did. Big mistake!

For gaming of the past to be appreciated, it needs to be more accessible, more available through official means. Stuff like a SuperStation One or a retro gaming man cave will always appeal to a certain niche of people. It’s another generation’s version of a music listening room or home theater who need meaning after hauling ass at work. Insistence that this is the right way to experience anything will only make gaming harder to appreciate.

There may be room for a discussion here, but after twenty years of being fed nonsense glazing up the merits of the original experience, I’ve run out of patience. Because if you’re playing a game, you should be able to play it however you want.

Part 14: It’s YOUR Game. Do Whatever You Want With It.

There are still so many other things I want to discuss with this whole bloody affair, for the discourse around remastering, remaking, and reissuing games ultimately feeds back into discussions on changing games. The subject of altering the experience in minute to wildly radical ways.

I was trying to find out the best way to express my thoughts on this border notion of game design and modifying it to your liking. …Then I happened across a trailer for Mina the Hollower (2026). The trailer outlined how the game came stacked with over 200 modifiers to change your play experience. Want the game to be rock hard, to go through it with god mode, or tweak away this or that system to your preferences? Well, as the trailer says, “it’s YOUR game. Do whatever you want with it.” And that, better than anything I could come up with, describes what I see as the best perspective to have here.

Rather than impose harsh limits on what a game could be, on what they should be and how they should be played… it’s best to just encourage players play them however they want. They might not get your experience, might not get the typical experience, but why should that high bar for what constitutes a “real experience” be imposed?

Someone playing the GOG release of Resident Evil 3 on easy on their computer with a keyboard is still playing RE3. Someone playing a difficulty ROM hack of the PS1 release of Resident Evil 3 on a Steam Deck via DuckStation is still playing RE3. Someone playing the Japanese version of Resident Evil 3 on a PS1 on a period accurate CRT display, still trying to learn the language, is still playing RE3. Someone playing the PAL version of Resident Evil 3 on their phone, on public transit, with cheat codes enabled to give them infinite health and ammo, and lets them run in 360 degrees, with the game muted, is still playing RE3.

Sure, everything about these experiences have a distinct difference to them, and the game itself is altered in some of them. Yet, they’re still going on the same journey, seeing the same world, using the same mechanics, mostly, and experiencing their own version of what the game has to offer. They are still the same game, just experienced in different ways, and… I think that’s dope. It lets people play games in a way that better conforms with their tastes, resources, and personal abilities.

Am I saying that people should just enable god mode on every game they played? Well, so long as they enjoy it, sure. Hell, that’s basically how I gained the familiarity with video games to play them on a semi-decent level, as nobody was teaching me this crap as a kid. Am I saying that platforms should not matter? Yes, and not only that, they should have stopped mattering a long time ago. I think that we already have plenty of ways in which people can interact with and play video games, that these ways should be expanded, and encouraged. Sure, they might not have the same underlying experience, but an experience is such a flaky circumstantial thing that I don’t think this should be the goal, even if it pushes them away from instrumental play.

So, how can this fluidity of playstyles, of letting people play games their way, be achieved? Well, there naturally would not be a single best option, but platform modularity and ability to alter games can be, and has been, achieved by emulation. I’ve made a few nods about how most reissues come with emulator features like save states, display options, rewind, and all that good stuff. All of which I think are great ways to make oodles of games, with their limited save options and questionable difficulty, far more digestible.

I should openly acknowledge the fact that millions among millions play older games via a slew of bespoke emulators. I think emulation is a truly wonderful thing, that it lets people play games however they want, with oodles of options and features, along with the ability to modify them via cheat codes and general mod support. The features of emulators allow people to make games, specifically older games, the types of experiences they might want or prefer over the original.

The same is true for another pillar representative of the versatility of PC gaming, mods, the ability to alter how a game functions, its characters, or even the type of game it ultimately is. Mods are a tool to extend what games can be, to fix obvious or perceived oversights, add more to journeys, or to transform them into entirely new ones. They can turn an experience into a distinctly different one, and often do, but I don’t view that as a bad thing. It’s merely an extension of what the original game can be, available as an option. If you want it, cool. If you don’t, well don’t play it.

I think this plurality of what games can be, of how they can be played, should be acknowledged, celebrated, furthered, and seen as a point of pride and praise among gaming enthusiasts. …And that includes people who just want to play on their SuperStation, no upscaling, no save states, after weighing all their options because they are a patented power user weirdo and know it. So long as they have a similar perspective as me, a categorically weird fuck.

However, for as great as built-in options are, for as much as a good PC port or release can make a game a moddability playground, and for as much as I think emulators are dope, there is one growing field that looks to outshine all others. A way to play games with more options, depth, and possibilities than ever before, all created by brilliant and dedicated enthusiasts. Something that I think is, in many ways, better the emulation, better than the original, and with the ability to be better than any remaster.

I’m, of course, talking about decompilations and recompilations.

Part 15: Decompilations and Recompilations Are The Ideal Re-Whatever

Definition time!

A decompilation is when a team of programmers deciphers and reverse engineer the compiled code of a video game into a readable manner, allowing them to use this reconstructed source code to do whatever they want with it. Porting it to new platforms, modding it, and typically, create a robust and fully playable version for PC and or mobile.

The most common targets of recompilations are older games, with a particular fascination among Nintendo 64 games, which have been notoriously iffy to emulate. However, dedicated and robust effort has shown it is possible to decompile even GameCube games. While these versions lack emulator staples like save states and rewind, they do have a wide number of additional features. These include, but are not limited to, built-in cheats, modifiers, and a potential treasure trove of options to optimize your play experience however YOU see fit.

Decompilations are also legal so long as control logs are made and none of the people involved look at the code. Basically, you need to keep records, or else your ass could be handed in court, but if you keep your records properly, and the source code is unknown, then it would be hard to prove anything anyway.

Meanwhile, recompilations are a newer, faster, version of a decompilation that, rather than try to make every bit of the original code readable, merely tries to get it to run on different hardware with various enhancements in tow. Its faster and more streamlined than a full decompilation, just a bit less capable. Yet, per what I have played, the player experience is not too different no matter what option you pursue.

Over the past three or so years, decompilations and recompilations of older console games have been making waves. Bolstered through pandemic era innovations, and programmers looking for dedicated projects, there have been an utter slew of games that have been reconstructed and brought over to new platforms. The things people have done with these conversions has been nothing short of incredible, effectively enabling players to make their own remasters of games, but at a level that emulators historically have been unable to match.

Sick of waiting for Sega to fail to make a modern remaster of Sonic Unleashed (2008) for Xbox 360 so you can play the game in 60 frames per second and at 1080p for the first time ever? Well, Xenia is making good progress, but it’s not as consistent as it could be, so some brilliant enthusiasts made a recompilation of Sonic Unleashed (2008), and it is excellent. Just the game, as it was, with a few extras thrown in. Does it still have the problems inherent with Sonic Unleashed? Yes. But if you want to play a version while caring about performance, then this is the version to play.

Are you tired of how Nintendo has treated the masterwork that is Super Mario 64 (1996) by not giving it the quality re-release it deserves? Well, good news, bucko, there are oodles of different versions of the game that are wafting about after it was ported to PC in 2020. I’m personally partial to the graphic mod Render 96. While it does replace the visuals, it does so in a way that is true to the spirit of the original, using the original texture files compressed for the game, adopting a look comparable to the game’s promo art. (If It looks like concept or promo art, paratextual sources, and was admittedly pretty rough, I don’t mind changing how a game looks.)

Do you want to play the classic 3D Zelda games that Nintendo has never really given the same love they deserve? Well, Ship of Harkinian is a decompiled Ocarina of Time port, 2Ship is the same thing for Majora’s Mask, while Dusklight is a decomp for Twilight Princess. I’ve played through the first few hours in each of them, and I think they are THE way to play the games. It can be faithful if you want it, but if you want it to look clean, change around textures, implement quality of life fixes— like making the text speed not slow-as-ass, you can do it too, on whatever platform these things will run on.

Or, if you want something really transformative, you can check out Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX HD, an extensive fan remaster of the Game Boy original, but with subtle lighting effects and the ability to adjust the scale of the map. This turns the game from small scale and intimate into an adventure that feels huge… and is easier to navigate!

Mind you, not every de/recomp is made equal, and many of them floating around are just early versions. Still, as more knowledge is known, as information becomes shared, and we start having more than a few years of experiencing in this field, I am expecting to see fantastic things from people.

…Unfortunately, as a tech related thing in 2026, many people are making these decomps or recomps with the assistance of AI. This adds a layer or dubious ethics to them, and to their quality as software, because there’s a good chance that someone just vibe coded up a good enough product, which we hate to see. Alas, that is just the state of using software released from 2025 onwards. Everything is tainted!

So, is that it? We have reissued compilations with staple features, some good remasters, the ever present specter of emulation, and now decomps that just port beloved 20 to 30-year-old classics to modern system with extras galore. Combined with hardware emulation and retro gaming, for the wealthy among us, isn’t that all we need?

Sadly, no. Not only because of the locked down structure of game consoles, but decades of graphic lust has contaminated the mindscape of many a video game liker. Being able to play older games in multiple ways is not quite enough. In the end, the desire for new and thirst for modernity will make people, myself included, want remakes.

Part 16: We Will ALWAYS Lust For Remakes

Near the start of this article, I said that the primary reason for re-whatevers, and by extension remakes, was money. That is true, but why is it that game-likers are so eager, if not hungry, to plop remakes down their gullet? This is something that has been theorized time and time again, as the answer is ultimately a confluence of social factors and people getting used to stuff.

Generally, people want to be modern, they want to be with it, they love the past but hate feeling tethered to it, to something they love is dated or of a dwindling relevance. They want to be catered to, to feel like the things they love are still relevant in the world, and a remake is a sign of hope, that market forces in this capitalist world still do care about them.

Fans of a given IP get spoiled by the latest entries, like their changes, grow accustomed to their changes, and do not want to go back to the inconvenience of the older one. They have the new standards and wish they were retroactive— for every entry to conform to a singular set of shared mechanics and systems just with different set dressings. Because if the games are already so similar, then why not just go the extra step and make everything nice, clean, and homogenous across entries? Sure, the originals had identity in their friction, their limited features and… their bullshit, but their perspective of these perceived flaws will be directly influenced by how they engage with them through the work.

Do they like a game despite its flaws or do you like it because of its flaws? Do they enjoy the friction of the game because it makes the heights feel higher, and the work makes the juice all the sweeter? Or are they just sick of seeing this one section come up when they play the game, or when engaging with discourse, where the same damn criticisms are often thrown around for over a decade? …See basically every Pokémon game and their precipitous quality of life, move relearning options, infinite use TMs, updated stats, moves, abilities, learnsets, and everything.

Some people view games as tech products, they view the point of video games to see appealing high fidelity video with game as a secondary. And the idea of playing an older game or one with a simpler style does not appeal to them, as they like the feeling of seeing big graphics that they optimize, fiddle with, before moving onto the next thing. They care so much about graphics and fidelity that they would take an “overly modernized faux replica” over the original on principle.

In their defense… some games just look crappy due to cutting edge design trends that limited creative expression and only hold up in a broader sense. …Such as any game using chunky pre-rendered sprites. Sure, you can try remastering it, but that might just wind up being more work!

Maybe we reached a point where remakes are so normalized that people have grown to expect them and, for as much as people may bitch about them, they still expect them.

Another angle to look at this beyond just the remake as a game, but rather how the game affects the culture. Remakes can build up more excitement than a brand-new release as people have a good idea of what to expect. Knowing that a remake of a beloved fave allows people to enjoy the hype cycle, the fact that people are talking about their game they love again. When they get their hands on it, they can experience the game like it’s new for the first time again, for good and for ill. If they prefer the remake, then they are happy to have seen how the game grew, and if they don’t like the remake, they can take pride that they played the original, before it was ravaged.

In addition to their experience, the thirtysomething fans of the original also have the ability to vicariously live through the twentysomething kids playing remakes of games they played in their youth. It makes them feel more relevant, more important, and gives them the opportunity to connect to these spry youngesters as an unc or auntie figure. You cannot remake the context of an original release… but you can replicate the rush in several ways.

However, the most overt reason out of this slapdash list of mine is that… gaming has an obsession with legacy, with IP, with nostalgia, and with maintaining online communities. I see how people in forums react to news, see the clamoring and excitement that new entries in an established or dormant IP can bring, and I even perpetuate this idea when I do history lessons in my Rundowns. People love the remake machine… because they don’t want the past to die. They want it coming back, again and again, probably forever.

Nowadays, nothing needs to fade away. Games, movies, any IP really, can enter a cycle of decline and revival, always coming back for that rush in a decade or two, and even if it’s not better, you at least get the thrill of seeing it return.

Part 17: We Will ALWAYS Hate Remakes For Doing The Wrong Thing

Despite wanting remakes however, I find that it is fairly common for fans to react to them with varying levels of fiery criticism. Now, this is not hard. Criticizing a remake of something is easy as piss, and I would know given how often I bitch about them changing the visual identity of games. However, what I find particularly interesting is that, sometimes a remake can do something that people have been complaining about for well over a decade. Yet, when they make the changes, they can get chewed out over doing exactly what their nebulous audience was asking for.

I could highlight many remakes that failed to capture what fans want. Except, I already drafted something weeks ago— thanks Yakkocmn— and I want to maintain some focus. So I’m instead going to focus on one example. Persona 3 Reload (2024). As a remake, P3R is largely faithful and aims to be an additive remake of Persona 3 Fes (2007). Specifically not Persona 3 Portable (2009), because Atlus did not want their $100 video game to have a playable woman.

Persona 3 Reload is a rather intriguing remake that, despite years of requests, developed a somewhat fraught relationship within its fanbase. Many of these I feel are warranted, such as how the game added enhanced super moves while doing little to rebalance the game around these additions. Or how the script was often copied from Persona 3 Portable barring a localization/editing refresh, yet was not made to sufficiently accommodate newly added scenes. Reload’s balancing of old and new story content, and how certain scenes were adapted, is debatable, but I’m more concerned about its direct response to fan criticisms of the 2006/2007/2009 original.

The fatigue system of the original Persona 3 (2006) was a mechanic where characters would, as driven by semi-random factors, become tired, sick, or unwilling to venture into the central dungeon of the game, Tartarus. This meant the player could not rely on their party members to always be available and encouraged them to invest in everyone to have spare usable allies. Players could just wait until the next day (because there was barely anything to do at night). However, if they are committed, they could reload the game, roll the dice, and try to avoid this randomized inconvenience.

As a mechanic, it does not endear the player to the characters. It does the opposite. Per this mechanic, every character, even the protagonist, is unreliable as a party member, must be worked around, and a buffer time must be added to any planned event, as people could always get sick. It interjects a level of randomness in a game with playthroughs that can last well over 70 . It adds personality, yes, it makes them feel like real people, yes, but it does so in one of the worst possible ways. It sucks when you make plans with people and they cancel, so why would you want that to replicate that?

The original release, and Fes remaster, of Persona 3 were notable for their use of computer controlled party members, with the player only assuming direct control of their main protagonist. Party members had minds of their own, and while you could have them operate on the default “do whatever” setting, you were supposed to offer them indirect commands through the flow of battle. To understand how the AI worked, you had to experiment, intuit how these vague orders translated to the handful of things the characters could do, rather than just… tell them what to do.

It is a defiance of genre convention in a decently challenging game where resistances are common and using a bad move at a bad time can easily put the player on the backfoot. It similarly belittles these characters by often having them, mechanically, behave like a bunch of morons. No Mitsuru, don’t use Marin Karin on the enemy who resist status effects, use Bufu on the enemy who is weak to ice. I guess I need to change your AI every turn if I don’t want to wipe here and waste an hour of my real fucking life.

This feature was widely derided enough for Persona 3 Portable to switch over to manual commands and for the Persona series to abandon automated party members as a key feature. Because this feature was removed, however, it is retroactively seen as something inherent to the identity of Persona 3, even though people did not like it at the time and only like it in retrospect because it went away. In the contractors’ defense, it was a unique way to play the game and after dealing with any system for 70+ hours, it is natural to be slightly endeared to it. I wouldn’t be, but I’m an ass. Should this feature have been retained in P3R as mandatory? Hell no. Should it have been an option? Well, it was, but it was inconsistent enough to feel like an afterthought.

The reversed and broken social links are another much talked about cool feature of Persona 3 that was removed in Reload. Basically, if the player neglects a relationship for a long enough period of time, their bond with that character could be permanently severed. It sounds cool on paper… but I have to earnestly ask how many people did the following: Encounter them in their initial playthrough, encountered them in multiple playthroughs, and enjoyed encountering them?

Reversed social links were largely a carryover of punishment mechanics born of the social/dating sim genre, meant to penalize players for neglecting certain characters and creating scheduling conflicts. It is an interesting idea in its own right, even if it can make certain characters seem like fussy bitches, like in the canonical origin of this mechanical concept, Tokimeki Memorial. However, you pretty much had to try to break a social link through inattentiveness or just not playing the game for a while months. Even then, a reversed or broken social link could be mended through a little bit of save manipulation, turning this mechanic into another time waster in the guise of realism.

Tartarus was criticized for being 264 floors of randomized dungeon crawling in an era where this approach to level design was not widely appreciated in the western gaming nomenclature. Dungeons were long, samey, and while tiles and vibes shifted, they grew tiresome after a while. You cannot release a $70 game in 2024 that is made up of Euclidean tile-based dungeons, so Reload changed the designs of the dungeon considerably, turning them into more curated avenues to serve battles and dole out treasure. It was a far more practical and less tedious way to bridge dungeon exploring, but when it was changed, people bemoaned the loss of the vibes of hard Japanese dungeon crawling vibes. Vibes that are largely forged through oppressive randomness and unpredictability.

Seeing the reaction to P3R really made me question how much a remake really can appeal to fan desires without getting clapped back for daring to change anything, even if it is what people specifically requested, for years.

Realistically, because bitching is the favorite bipartisan pastime of all Caucasians, or at least Caucasian JRPG fans, the answer is no.

2nd Conclusion: Remakes Are a Nightmare, Gaming is a Nightmare

…Would you believe me if I said that this Ramble was supposed to be 20,000 words, tops? I really bungled that one up!

Video game remakes, remasters, reissues, and miscellaneous re-whatevers are a nightmare and also a… necessity. The status of games as a technologically defined medium makes the desire for the same game but better or more modern too tempting for players, developers, and publishers to ignore. The fact that countless games were initially released for wildly different video, graphical, and presentational standards makes remasters an inevitability. The fact that the overwhelming majority of games are not playable through legal means makes reissues for gaming more necessary than basically any entertainment medium. And because gamers have been enamored by gaming’s past for over 30 years, as I described in part one, the stream of re-whatevers will persist, probably forever, as it has been going strong for well over two decades.

I began this project hoping to understand how we got here, what this current state is, and to finally catalog all of my thoughts on re-whatevers in one place so I can finally put this matter to bed, for at least a little while. In the end, I learned a lot about how re-whatevers progressed throughout gaming history, changing their shape with the time and power available to them. After months of note-taking and brainstorming, I finally have the confidence to say that the current state of re-whatevers… has basically been this messy for the past few years.

As much as it feels like so many more re-whatevers are coming out, the quantities generally are not that different. However, there is definitely a shift in the volumes and types of games that are being re-whatevered, and we can see this with the biggest games of the annual segmented summer showcases.

Geoff Keighley began his showcase with a remake of Resident Evil: Coder Veronica and ended it with Final Fantasy VII: Revelation, the third part in a remake trilogy. Nintendo’s showstopper at their June Nintendo Direct was an Ocarina of Time remake. Most of the games of note from Xbox’s thing were sequels that took things “back to basics” and remakes for Halo and Persona 4. Nintendo Switch Sports Resorts is a new game, but it feels like a remake of Wii Sports Resort. A Touhou remake and Thief remaster were some of the biggest games for niches of weirdos. Final Fantasy Resonance is Square Enix retelling a story from a mobile game and reimagining it on most levels. Is that even a remake? Sorta! Ubisoft is remaking BOTH of their best games of 2013 with Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Recynced and Rayman Legends Retold.

This is a LOT of re-whatevers, but it’s also not anything all too new. We’re just more aware of it now that fewer tentpole AAA games are coming out and companies are banking more on nostalgia. In an increasingly cluttered and complex world, we are clinging onto things we recognize, viewing them as stable and reliable. Yes, yes, we are getting a lot of re-whatevers here but, looking at the data, it’s been this way for a couple years. Hell, just look at some of the bigger re-whatevers we had in 2020 and compared them to what 2026 is bringing:

Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – Campaign Remastered
Crysis 1, 2, and 3: Remastered
Demon’s Souls Remake
Destroy All Humans! Remake
Final Fantasy VII: Remake
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles – Remastered Edition
Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning
Mafia: Definitive Edition The Remake
Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018) Remastered
Panzer Dragoon: Remake
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX
Resident Evil 3 Remake
Saints Row: The Third – Remastered
SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2
Trials of Mana Remake
WarCraft III: Reforged
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
XIII Remake

Beyond these, we still had notable games like The Last of Us Part II, Hades, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and Half-Life: Alyx. Re-Whatevers have been around, have been flourishing, for almost a decade at this point, and it’s gotten so routine, so expected that… I think this is just going to be gaming for a good while.

Re-Whatevers have been going on for as long as I’ve been invested in gaming, longer than I’ve kept this darn website up. So long as they keep selling, they’re not going away. Love them or hate them, play them or don’t, in forms both good and bad, re-whatevers will remain a staple part of the modern nightmarescape that is the video game industry.

And that’s… the straight dope!

For the record, the vast majority of this two-part article was written and edited in about two weeks during my mandatory time off work. So, uh, if things seem scattered or rushed, that’s why. Premiere writers might spend weeks on just a history bit, but not me!

This Post Has 2 Comments

Dark Phoenix 07/08/2026 Reply

“Over 10 million people bought the disgraceful remaster of the PS2 GTA trilogy, and all it really did was damage people’s hopes for remasters.” – I just wanted to say that this isn’t really fair to the people who bought this piece of shit. Most didn’t buy it because they wanted to; they did it because as an asshole extra kick to the balls, Rockstar made it nearly impossible to get any version of the PS2 GTA games that wasn’t the fucking Definitive Edition. That particular topic has had thousands of words dedicated to it… And it’s a big reason why the Def Edition is hated so much.
1. Natalie Neumann 07/08/2026 Reply
  
  Hmm… Yeah, you make a good point. I shouldn’t have phrased it like that. I’ve updated it in the article with the following: “Over 10 million people bought the disgraceful remaster of the PS2 GTA trilogy, showing that you can still sell a vastly inferior version of a game and people will buy it if the name is big enough, because they love the original that much.” It’s a sore topic, and the sales figure still baffles me, but I should not cast the blame on the people who bought it like that.