Game Remakes & Remasters: Rip-off or important?

Depends on which remake are we talking about. Straight ports? Fuck off. Actual rebuilds with QoLs, revised scripts, and some little, non-invasive new things? Definitely bring them in ♥

In fact when I think about "remake", I think about what have they done to Live a Live on the Switch. THAT is a gold-standard that remakes should strive for!
 
What do you think are game remakes & remasters: rip-off or important?
I think it's good to have little flashes of insight as to how things were. Remasters and remakes are welcome as long as proper guidance is provided to make the new experience worthwhile. The ff pixel remasters were hot garbage for me. Curious how good the hd treatment for dragon quest is. Such a style would have for final fantasy perfectly. These remasters bring back so many memories. Little slices of sweet nostalgia are bittersweet in lieu of a world that has gotten a bit too complicated. It's nice to be reminded of our youth bc it feels like a joy that no one can truly take from you. I'm all for it provided it's done right.
 
Remasters, I think it's a form of creative bankrupcy. The name itself is a scam, as it's a term that should have stayed in the music industry. AI upscaling textures is NOT remastering an audio mix. It's even not uncommon to have worse audio quality in "remasters" than the original.

Proper remakes, I think it's just a marketing hook. Because monkey brains will only take something they already know rather than trying something new. At best they're innovative (like The Thing or Prey). At worst they're just derivative of the original.

It's only telling the level of enshitification of the industry, when there is so many "remasters" or remakes shoved down our throats. It's like the final form of comparative advertisement, when the only good new thing in your game is to be able to switch on the fly between old graphics that were never meant for modern screen, and *brand new AI upscaled* pixels you paid 70 bucks for.
 
Honestly, most of the time I could care less about remakes, even if they add extra content.
I'm stubborn so I like to experience a game as it was first released, unless that version is too archaic or untranslated.
I also dislike the fact that devs may change or remove things in re-releases. And personally I'm not a fan of the 2.5D graphics that are so common nowadays. At first I didn't mind them, but now they bother me.
However, I wholeheartedly support efforts to translate and port games to PC and more modern systems. A lot of titles were stuck in Japan, or were available on a specific console. Now I can finally try out the Rhapsody series in English.
 
shouldn't change the spine of the original imo

FF7 rebirth - not for me
Star Ocean second story R - yes thanks
 
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can't think of any remake or remaster that hasn't been botched in one way or another. even dating back to the snes/genesis era.
super mario all-stars looks ok but feels like a bootleg version of the nes games.
every modern remake does something to change the game in a way that loses the original spirit. resident evil 2 remake for example takes a perfect survival horror and makes it an action game with some jumpscares.
remasters (as in, taking a game and just upscaling it, without changing anything else save some QoL changes here and there) are mostly fine, ratchet and clank hd collection on ps3 runs and looks fantastic, even with some graphical glitches here and there. but some of the QoL changes that they do on some games can be questionable if there is no way to disable them. for example, the way you can move the menu with the right stick on kingdom hearts is great (and i argue better than having camera control there instead of L2/R2), but you can't do it on 1.5.

though, thinking a little harder i can think of exactly 1 game that did it correctly, and that is resident evil for the gamecube (don't know what they did with the other versions).
 
In a vacuum I don't think remakes/remasters are bad. I wouldn't call the Etrian remakes great but I think they are fine (I now play them more than the originals) and were nessicary for getting the games off of the 3/DS systems since any new games won't be on them either. Kept a lot of the games the same but added som QOL things like strafing or being able to see the skill trees.

On the flip side you have stuff like the Sonic Colors "remaster" which just fucks so much up on a game from the Wii.

As long as the originals still exist I'm fine with the occasional remake/remaster
 
can't think of any remake or remaster that hasn't been botched in one way or another. even dating back to the snes/genesis era.
super mario all-stars looks ok but feels like a bootleg version of the nes games.
every modern remake does something to change the game in a way that loses the original spirit. resident evil 2 remake for example takes a perfect survival horror and makes it an action game with some jumpscares.
remasters (as in, taking a game and just upscaling it, without changing anything else save some QoL changes here and there) are mostly fine, ratchet and clank hd collection on ps3 runs and looks fantastic, even with some graphical glitches here and there. but some of the QoL changes that they do on some games can be questionable if there is no way to disable them. for example, the way you can move the menu with the right stick on kingdom hearts is great (and i argue better than having camera control there instead of L2/R2), but you can't do it on 1.5.

though, thinking a little harder i can think of exactly 1 game that did it correctly, and that is resident evil for the gamecube (don't know what they did with the other versions).
I think the only remakes i'd consider good are wild arms: alter code F and Ys the oath at felghana, both felghana is superior to it's original, and alter code F is either superior or on par with the original, and both are basically 2 decades old at this point.
 
Wild Arms Alter Code F is actually a great remake of PSX version yes.
It's just sad all the western localization and censorship ruined it to the point most people would never ever touch it nowadays. If any JRPG deserve fan restoration, it's definitely this one.
 
Best of both worlds is to remake a game and also make the original available on the same platform.
 
although I prefer the original experience over modern one, defiantly remake or remastered games are a great way to play old games in this new generation, specially for modern audience.
on one condition, and that is not changing the core of what make this game so special
 
Really hot take:

Games aren't art if they need remakes and remasters.
People claim that if a game needs to be released on the newer generation of hardware it needs something to justify the price hike that comes with adjusting to the market or something that will bring fans back, but eh.. no. If a game was good, it should still be good even without the resolution bump that shows off devs were using the visual medium of CRT to blend pixels and make it look cooler than it was.

Also with how many games are designed for the control scheme and quirks of the console, remaking them or remastering them on something else loses that. Like, No More heroes. So much of that game is about the Wii controller. Sure you can change it to be played on a 360 controller, but then it's basically not the same game. Just like it I had to play pacman with gestures. Not the same.

I'd be fine with them if people would call games what they are, toys. But the whole industry is pushing them more and more to tell complex stories and be elevated at which point. Yea, you can remake or remaster that story, but is the original authors or teams intentions still? Idk. And like, is the gameplay important to the game if its getting changed for the story to have a visual upgrade?

I have complicated feelings about games really.
 
Really hot take:

Games aren't art if they need remakes and remasters.
People claim that if a game needs to be released on the newer generation of hardware it needs something to justify the price hike that comes with adjusting to the market or something that will bring fans back, but eh.. no. If a game was good, it should still be good even without the resolution bump that shows off devs were using the visual medium of CRT to blend pixels and make it look cooler than it was.

Also with how many games are designed for the control scheme and quirks of the console, remaking them or remastering them on something else loses that. Like, No More heroes. So much of that game is about the Wii controller. Sure you can change it to be played on a 360 controller, but then it's basically not the same game. Just like it I had to play pacman with gestures. Not the same.

I'd be fine with them if people would call games what they are, toys. But the whole industry is pushing them more and more to tell complex stories and be elevated at which point. Yea, you can remake or remaster that story, but is the original authors or teams intentions still? Idk. And like, is the gameplay important to the game if its getting changed for the story to have a visual upgrade?

I have complicated feelings about games really.
I think this is something that most "art forms" one day had to pass through. Most of them started in a very pragmatic way with a clear purpose, almost like a tool for something, but over time it was more established as a means of expression that went beyond just to be consumed to achieve some means to an end. Video-games are just still stuck in this weird limbo.
Granted, i just dislike the term "art" in general, and the proof of how it does more harm than good is this eternal discussion of if something can be considered art or not, almost like something needs some sort of "higher validation" to be truly appreciated or have meaning. I think things should just be things, just expression, video-games included(if i'm able to make any sense lol)
 
(...) If a game was good, it should still be good even without the resolution bump that shows off devs were using the visual medium of CRT to blend pixels and make it look cooler than it was.

Also with how many games are designed for the control scheme and quirks of the console, remaking them or remastering them on something else loses that. Like, No More heroes. So much of that game is about the Wii controller. Sure you can change it to be played on a 360 controller, but then it's basically not the same game. Just like it I had to play pacman with gestures. Not the same.
I agree with this part, though there are times in which a 'remake' is better than the original. This usually occurs with films or series.
I personally consider videogames art, but it is also a form of entertainment. Same thing with cinema and music. Even TV shows can be thought provoking and inventive lol.
And there are games that are genuinely just meant to be art pieces or toys. I am interested in them but a lot of people reject such things. They're not for everyone as they tend to be experimental. Sometimes they are pretentious or pointless so there is little incentive to go through them, but I still like to take a look at these kinds of projects because I find inspiration in random things.
Examples of art games: Alice: An Interactive Museum, Bad Milk, the works by Tale of Tales and the company Molleindustria, etc.
 
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