Video game remakes and demakes - Remakes, demake shitmakes.

[albert chan]

Video game remakes like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro sold well because it was made for the fans that appreciated the original games. I didn’t even know Mafia had a remake until now, funny enough.

The reason, I think, video game remakes won’t sell well these days is because just like how everything is needed to be made into a sequel, the remakes of original games that are not familiar with today’s youth won’t be given the time of day. It’s the same thing with the recent remakes to Super Mario 64, Sunshine and Galaxy.

A lot of people loved it and heard about it, but how many of today’s younger fans will take the time out to play this, instead of Among Us and Fall Guys?

 

[BananaSplit]

the remake was made mostly by Japan studio itself.

It's not, mr. "very very very very well versed in japanese games". DeS remake is mainly made by Bluepoint, an american texas company (that also butchered Shadow of Colossus in a similar fashion), and a lot of the assets were outsourced to asian countries like China, Malaysia and Vietnam. Japan Studio has also little to no say on the matter because I wouldn't doubt one second Miyzaki would complain about the design changes considering how often they screw with the lore.

 

[SSF2T Old User]

You do have a point but thing is if am correct isn't 6th generation of consoles emulation somewhat of a mixed bag the dreamcast and gamecube emulation runs like a charm whlie the ps2 and notoriously xbox are a living nightmare to emulate WITH certain games only also is it me or why has sony emulation has became awful ever since the ps2

You're not wrong about the XBOX.

The Xbox is infamous in the emulation scene for being the worst case of false advertising. For the projects currently available and active there's a high barrier to entry for the effort involved, and it's the same reason why consoles using off-the-shelf hardware (or reused hardware) are easier to emulate. To users, being "basically a PC" and "x86-based" is a selling point despite that not being the case as the Xbox has a number of proprietary elements that are nothing like standard PC hardware (like the eighth-gen "x86-based" consoles). Many aspects of the Xbox's architecture aren't openly documented, making it a major pain to have to figure it all out. For example the APU, one of two sound processors on the MCPX southbridge chip of the Xbox chipset, is incredibly powerful and uses complex processing steps that are difficult to figure out using clean-room reverse engineering.

The good news is the efforts currently underway are starting to see real effects. While it's true that Cxbx-Reloaded will have the upper hand with a primarily HLE-based approach on Windows, XQEMU will have the advantage of going by the book. XQEMU also has the potential to tap into hardware acceleration that Cxbx-Reloaded would have to write a kernel mode driver for, and SoullessSentinel wrote "I don't think our users would like the idea of disabling security features such as driver signature enforcement and installing an untrusted kernel driver just for an emulator."

Source of quote.

And in regards to the PS2

Despite a large interest in PS2 emulation due to its sizable collection of games, it is still one of the hardest consoles to emulate for a number of reasons.

First of all: many people believe that since the main CPU (Emotion Engine) runs at a clock speed of 294Mhz (299Mhz on later revisions), it would make emulation easy on recent hardware. But this is not the case, because the clock speed of the emulated CPU is not necessarily indicative of the ease of emulation. Specifically, the PS2 CPU contains a multitude of custom sub-components and chips such as the FPU co-processor, 2 Vector Units, IOP, SPU2, Graphics Synthesizer and SIF which together work asynchronously to comprise the 128-bit Emotion Engine. In order to emulate them perfectly with correct timing requires an enormous amount of power. Moreover, the PS2 just like PS1 uses the MIPS architecture instead of standard x86 code, thus making emulation slower.

Another big problem is the emulation of PS2’s own floating point unit (FPU) because it doesn’t follow the IEEE standard. To keep it simple, just changing a couple of numbers will cause glitches to occur to the game’s graphic (VU) and logic (EE), resulting in things like broken AI, odd behaviors or graphical bugs. While PCSX2 allows for the option of either clamping/rounding on both VU and EE as a solution to fix these glitches, it remains by far not the most accurate way to emulate the PS2 FPU.

To conclude on the problems with PS2 emulation, we come to hardware rendering. The PS2’s graphics pipeline acts very differently from modern GPU cards and emulating it in HW mode with any degree of accuracy is difficult. This is due in part to the versatility of PS2, fact that it doesn’t use fixed shaders, or that even the games themselves do not use a consistent formula to achieve different graphical effects. Various type of emulation enhancements like display resolution scaling leads to the typical “black lines glitch” because of the use of a non-integer resolution. While the OpenGL backend on PCSX2 greatly improved on many of these issues, most games still require “software rendering” to fix many common glitches, which in turn slows down the emulation. Although Games using mip-mapping (Ratchet & Clank, Ace Combat, etc...) and games running on the Snowblind Engine are playable in OGL HW mode with minimal problems on high-end PCs.

In summary, it is not possible to achieve close-to-perfection PS2 emulation with actual PC hardware, and even if it was possible, the results would most likely be unplayable. The PS2 is simply a very complex machine that even game developers struggled to work with.

Source of quote

Personally, I believe you should own the actual hardware and games for anything after the N64 and PS1 because of the above reasons (and in SEGA's case, try to either get your hands on an actual Saturn and Dreamcast or get a BEEFY computer since emulators for those are resource HEAVY). I still have my PS2 that I got way back in the 2000's and thankfully it still works like a charm. If I desperately want to record any footage from it, I can always get a capture card or something, so it's not a big deal.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

I never liked remakes... or "reboots" or "remasters" "revisions" or anything else that takes a game, even one that was already good, and adds shit to it.

I'm a classic guy through and through. I thought the Spyro and Crash trilogy looked like shit compared to the original PS1 games. Unnecessary art direction, clutter, and fluff in all the levels. The Dragons from the first Spyro game already had a personality (minus the "THANK YOU FOR SAVING ME" ones, which were like half the fucking game), and the controls for the Crash trilogy are fucked up (you can't make certain jumps and landings like you could in the PS1 games since the hitbox for crash changed).

I will defend the trilogy remakes on the basis that they run at 60 fps now since I'm a spoiled PC fag. That being said I dropped Crash 2 since I was getting salty at a lot of the shitty perspectives they set the camera at.

Mafia DE is fucking great and is definitely my GOTY, although it was a real shit year for me this year when it came to original games.

 

[AbyssStarer]

The SMT3 Nocturne remake looks fantastic graphically, although they ported the game to run in Unity for some odd reason, it has very noticeable performance issues, and it's 60$ in Japan because Atlus.
A shame they seemed to not put as much effort as they could have into it, since it's a fantastic game. I'm still excited to play the game again whenever a finished translation patch or the western release comes out, since it doesn't cost 60$ to download games on a hacked Switch.
Day 1 DLC for a rerelease of a 17 year old game is pretty disgusting though.

This is how Atlus tends to handle remakes. They put in as a little effort as possible, maybe a bit more content made by the B-team, and push it out on the market with Atlus tax tacked on. With Nocturne they were able to get away with even less than they could with their 3DS remakes though.

 

[c-no]

It's not, mr. "very very very very well versed in japanese games". DeS remake is mainly made by Bluepoint, an american texas company (that also butchered Shadow of Colossus in a similar fashion), and a lot of the assets were outsourced to asian countries like China, Malaysia and Vietnam. Japan Studio has also little to no say on the matter because I wouldn't doubt one second Miyzaki would complain about the design changes considering how often they screw with the lore.

With how the faces look, I'll never understand why they couldn't have the widows peak Thomas had in the original.ans put in the remake, or why Old King Allant no longer looks pissed off when confronting you, or why Patches looks luke he's ready to eat your ass. Having them outsourced and not brushing up on source material beyond level layout and dialogue may as well be one explanation.

 

[NumberingYourState]

"Demakes"? I played THPS4 on the PlayStation 1 and it felt so weird playing what felt like "disc three" expansion of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. Not that that's a bad thing, but it's a very jarring, if unappealing contrast in all honesty.

 

[Judge Dredd]

When you said demakes, I was expecting things like remaking Half-Life 2 in Half-Life's engine.

Doom 4 Vanilla and Doom 4 for Doom.

Or Duke Nukem Forever 2013, which remakes the old Duke Nukem trailer levels in the build engine.

Or these animations that recreate what modern games might look like if they were made for older consoles.

 

[Marissa Moira]

It's not, mr. "very very very very well versed in japanese games". DeS remake is mainly made by Bluepoint, an american texas company (that also butchered Shadow of Colossus in a similar fashion), and a lot of the assets were outsourced to asian countries like China, Malaysia and Vietnam. Japan Studio has also little to no say on the matter because I wouldn't doubt one second Miyzaki would complain about the design changes considering how often they screw with the lore.

That's not quite correct. Bluepoint did everything on the tech and coding end as far as making the game stable and have it play stable. All those things you listed as Outsourcing happened under Japan Studio, they managed those. if you work for a large studio as a smaller company you're going to be handing off everything to them and you'll be having daily feedback from what they want changed or made, they're very much involved. Gravity Rush 2 was handled the same way because there was many things surrounding it that were outsourced to surrogates, but it's still a Japan Studio game.

If you want to talk about Butchering Shadow of the Colossus it was the PS3 version that did that. Wander was bugged to hell and couldn't properly grab onto things and they also fucked with the time trials. the PS4 version probably plays the best out of any of the releases with how they fixed the controls and made Wanderer's grab actually work.

 

[Foltest]

When you said demakes, I was expecting things like remaking Half-Life 2 in Half-Life's engine.

Doom 4 Vanilla and Doom 4 for Doom.

Or Duke Nukem Forever 2013, which remakes the old Duke Nukem trailer levels in the build engine.

Or these animations that recreate what modern games might look like if they were made for older consoles.

I didn't thought of projects liek this when I said demakes. Will check them out.
What I meant, was remakes that are objective worse then the game it is based on.

 

[Back me up!]

I didn't thought of projects liek this when I said demakes. Will check them out.
What I meant, was remakes that are objective worse then the game it is based on.

Which is funny cause there are demakes that ARE better then the original, mainly the Rockman 7 Famicom and Rockman 8 Famicom that turn Mega Man 7/8 into NES games.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Doom 2016 got some really badass demakes in the form of mods.

There's Doom 4 Vanilla, which, as the name implies, you can play on vanilla Doom, and the result is damn impressive.

Then there's a Quake mod called Slayer's Testaments, and like the Doom 4 Vanilla mod, it's amazing how much they were able to fit into the Quake engine. It's even got a form of the glory kill system. Plus it's really neat seeing low-poly renditions of Doom 2016's enemies.

 

[Fougaro]

Speaking of remakes, I'm surprised no one has mentioned the humanitarian disaster that was Warcraft III: Reforged on which we even have a thread. Meanwhile Electronic Fucking Arts of all people had a redemption arc by releasing a well-done and well-received remaster of the first two Command & Conquer games Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert. 2020 is indeed a wild year where Blizzard became a laughing stock while EA redeemed itself.

 

[elzaw]

RE3R is definitely a DEmake and I'm tired of RE Engine fanboys defending that shit. RE2R had problems but it brought back something the newer games were missing: the horror where a single enemy feels like a threat, strategic approach to boss fights, puzzles and scarce ammo. RE3R threw it all away for the sake of rehashing 4/5/6 formula again. It's not only a bad remake but just a mediocre RE game and a step down from what RE2R did right. And they had audacity to lie it wasn't rushed when they removed locations, downgraded Nemesis, barely marketed it and slapped that crappy multiplayer on top to compensate. Original aged extremely well despite tank controls and still plays fantastically. I have zero hopes CV will ever be done justice, considering Crapcom cares about it even less, but it's probably for the best. I'm sick of theses remakes already.
Oh and I hate new Jill. Sorry for bringing this up again but you have no idea how toxic her simp-y "YOU JUST HATE REAL WAMMENN" fanboys are. It's funny because I actually liked new Claire and defended the actress, despite her being a feminist.

 

[GenociderSyo]

Only demake I've tried was Lucius 1 and it was kinda interesting. I'm really hoping one day Theresia gets a remake it was a great DS game but it just disappeared.

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

I liked the Spyro trilogy thing since it was first time I was able to play it without fucking with emulators.
Dunno if this counts as remake or remaster or whatever, but I really liked the Outcast: Second Contact. I never got my hands on the original back in the day, so I gotta admit I couldn't handle the voxely mess it is nowadays. As far as I understand, they changed very little aside from the visual side of the game, so it's a bit "20 years old ago" clunky, but I loved it and would never get to Outcast if it was not for the remaster thing so that's great.
Generally for very old games I prefer remakes if I did not play them when they were new, provided they're competently made. Nostalgia goggles are a powerful thing.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I liked the Spyro trilogy thing since it was first time I was able to play it without fucking with emulators.
Dunno if this counts as remake or remaster or whatever, but I really liked the Outcast: Second Contact. I never got my hands on the original back in the day, so I gotta admit I couldn't handle the voxely mess it is nowadays. As far as I understand, they changed very little aside from the visual side of the game, so it's a bit "20 years old ago" clunky, but I loved it and would never get to Outcast if it was not for the remaster thing so that's great.
Generally for very old games I prefer remakes if I did not play them when they were new, provided they're competently made. Nostalgia goggles are a powerful thing.

Outcast was always clunky because PC devs hadn't figured out third person games yet. The max supported resolution was 512x384 because it was software rendered, even on the fastest plus overclocked CPU at the time it didn't always run great despite 20-30fps being completely acceptable at the time. It was still a fantastic game like you say and nailed the otherwordly feel.

It was just a shame the devs couldn't figure out how to do one thing that they set out to do when making it: letting the player play around with the game for a bit as a fast start, then add the section with the mandatory talking and story. Shouldn't start an action-adventure game by making the player listen to NPCs for thirty minutes, which is exactly what they did and it sucks. I think they cited A Link to the Past as the way to start a game.

 

[TurkishOreo]

This is how Atlus tends to handle remakes. They put in as a little effort as possible, maybe a bit more content made by the B-team, and push it out on the market with Atlus tax tacked on. With Nocturne they were able to get away with even less than they could with their 3DS remakes though.

God i hope Rule of Rose gets remaked but with the team held at gunpoint if they dont put in the effort.

 

[AbyssStarer]

God i hope Rule of Rose gets remaked but with the team held at gunpoint if they dont put in the effort.

Rule of Rose wasn't made by Atlus, just published in NA by them.

 

[Foltest]

Speaking of remake done good, people have already mention RE2:R as an example of a good one, and I have to agree. I never played the og one, but I loved the remake. They took the silly story from the orginal and make it better. gameplay was tight etc.
As a horror game, it was excellent. No shit tank control. Only your skills.