Now, remakes of videogames. This is unusual. At our point in time the market is being filled with re-releases of games from the previous generation of consoles, usually ‘upscaled’ into high definition. These aren’t remakes, they’re just a convenient way to get people to buy the same game again. Remakes are more like Resident Evil (2002), a very unusual case. Only six years after the original, it was remade with the best graphics of the period – so good they still look hauntingly beautiful to this day – and with gameplay details the original programmers had been unable to put into it in the days of the Playstation. Apart from that, it’s like re-living 1996. Doesn’t that mean it should make the original obsolete? Not exactly. It has King Kong syndrome: the remake is acclaimed but it doesn’t have the original’s freshness. However, it is able to more accurately represent the creators’ original intentions because the technology has improved. And that’s a good thing for games – but not for films, as George Lucas has probably learned. The problem with Resident Evil is that by barely updating the gameplay, it’s just a glossy coat of paint over an old wall. Games are tied to their years of release just as much as films are, perhaps more. If developers went back and re-made their classic games every five years, wouldn’t that show a lack of confidence in the ability of older games to charm with their quirks like old films do? Is that the message the games industry wants to send? Games may be evolving at a rapid rate, but that doesn’t mean that older ones should be disregarded as relics.
A great example of this is Metal Gear Solid. Just like Resident Evil, it was remade six years later in the smooth graphics of the latest generation. Unlike the Resident Evil remake, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (2004) isn’t much loved even though it’s stuff of fairly high quality. That’s despite its improved graphics and gameplay which make it connect much better to the sequels. Metal Gear Solid just works better on the Playstation with big pixels and mouths that don’t move during dialogue. The ‘improvements’ to the remake don’t make it truer to the creator’s original vision; they stray too far without going far enough to make it fresh. There are also some careless updates which show the danger of adding modern techniques to old games without considering how they will cripple the difficulty level. But the two remakes I’ve talked about so far are the more respectable ones. Just like in the world of films, you also get plenty of robotic reboots attempting to fire up a franchise without thinking about the situation or the appeal of the original. Look at Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (1997) and the unrelated reboot Turok (2008). Or Bionic Commando (1987) and Bionic Commando (2009). It’s almost always a bad sign when a remake takes a game’s vague concept and none of the characters or locations, or adds a gritty new attitude to a previously amiable game concept.
So far it seems like it’s hard to pin down what makes a gaming remake worthwhile, which is likely because of the aforementioned lack of a general reverence for old game graphics in the audience in the same way there is for old movie techniques. Unlike the film industry, the videogame business is still young. We only recently got out of its silent era. The standards I set for a good movie remake doesn’t apply to a product that can be re-released in a way that is tweaked so that it’s almost possible to call it objectively better. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (2011) loses nothing from the original and improves everything. The only reason to revisit the original is due to aesthetic or nostalgic fondness for the blocky Nintendo 64 graphics (and being able to play the original on a big screen, not exactly a fault of the game’s re-release).
The only danger in this approach is that an obsession with polishing the gems of the past prevents innovation in new releases. I don’t think that’s much of a worry though. New games – and new films – are built upon the corpses of their predecessors. There may be a Clash of the Titans remake, and a sequel to the remake, but fascinating new ideas like Inception still poke through and they’re the ones that will stand the test of time, and probably be remade in a couple of decades too. By which time they’ll be revered as classics and the remake will be scoffed at in favour of new ideas. Like Inception but replacing dreams with lasers or something. Every console generation brings with it a mix of gaming remakes and unknown franchises ready to be tested – Gears of War (2006), Uncharted (2007), LittleBigPlanet (2007) – and that’s how the new stars are made.
It’s tempting to complain about remakes desecrating our classics, and how in the old days things were better, but the 1976 King Kong remake replaced the tyrannosaurus with a giant rubber snake. So think about that one. Rubber snake, or insubstantial CGI? That’s one for opinions, but I think the snake has more entertainment in it. We can’t know how posterity will judge these past few decades’ efforts at remaking classic films and games. Will they say “that’s so 00’s” in the same fond way we might say “that’s so 70’s”? Or will we just be considered an era that was better when sticking to its own fresh ideas? I guess my advice, for what miniscule worth it holds, is not to take a movie or game’s title at face value. It may bear a famous name, but that might be the only thing it shares with an older, better project. And if it’s a careless remake then it doesn’t deserve your money. Seek out the originals; see where these ideas came from. Don’t forget the past.
By Richard Fallon
Tingo Opinion and Debate Editor
