How to Not Mess Up a Remake

"What's old is new again."

It's a statement that comes up a lot and for obvious reasons - remakes are easy money.  Simply by the flow of time, you have people who just aren't exposed to certain things the first time around and it's just easy enough to repackage those things and sell them brand-new to the folks who just haven't experienced them as well as the people who have and want to see what the 'new' experience is like.  We've seen a lot of the remake and remaster situation this generation because we've reached a point where a -lot- of people haven't been around for as long as we have, or at least not been in it as some of us have, which just means it's easy to capitalize on.  Well, easier since, well, remaking/remastering a game is honestly a very simple process.  Yet...some companies just seem to completely miss the point.  So here's a nice little refresher course on how to properly make a remake.

If you change something big, try to make it optional - Yes, everyone knows the whole point of giving a game a remake is giving it another go while not making it a wholly different game, but that doesn't mean you should change -everything- about it.  Or if you do, then it's a good idea to leave the original there as well to give new and old alike an idea of just -what- you changed and be able to quantify just how much work you put into it.  Dragon Fantasy Book I (which I still need to review >_<) was absolutely wonderful about this, in that the guy remade the map assets and music from scratch to make it better looking and sounding, -but- they also included an option to turn it back to 'retro' to see how the game was in its original state.  (they also patched in the ability to pick between retro visuals and sounds if you were so inclined)  Compare this to, oh say, Chrono Trigger DS wherein Squeenix completely and totally changed the script without including the original.  Also the new script was terrible, thus making it all the more groan-worthy that there wasn't an option to not stomach it.

For the love of God, don't make it worse - This one should be the most goddamn obvious of them all, but it's hilariously sadly one of the ones that gets tripped over the most.  If a game ran like X on this platform, it's just....just a given that you can figure out -some- way to make it run like at LEAST X if not X+1 on more advanced platforms.  Since everything is more advanced now than what you're remaking at the moment.  If you can't, then don't fucking do it.  The more recent examples have been the Jak and Daxter HD Collection on Vita and the infamous Silent Hill HD Collection debacle, but those aren't the only ones.  Hell, it'd take a while to name all the worst ones.  But one of the particularly bad ones, I think, is Squeenix's handling of Final Fantasy Tactics:  The War of the Lions which was a remake of Final Fantasy Tactics.  While I personally didn't have too much of an issue with it, there were many, many folks who complained of some slow-down that happened during magic casting and the like.  It's a valid complaint.  Where it gets egregious is when that slowdown is still there in the next port of it (on the iPhone) and is also still there in the next next port (on the iPad) when that port came six months later.  Did fucking nobody QA this damn thing at any point?

Realize what it is you're doing and market it appropriately - Remakes and remasters can be really, really exciting since you're basically getting new fans while also allowing old fans to relive the fun of whatever it is you're remaking.  But a remake/remaster is never, ever, ever going to be, on the whole, more exciting than a new iteration of the particular game or series.  (Yes, even THAT remake that will never happen, shut up)  So never forget that.  Promoting the announcement of your remake for days, even weeks leading up to said announcement is just the height of cruelty and is completely unnecessary.  I doubt I need to remind everyone about the whole The World Ends With You debacle.  A week-long countdown site for an iOS remake that wasn't even a universal app.  Who in the actual fuck thought that was a good idea?

Give the most complete game you can - If your game released and then you did something else with it, tweaked it, added DLC (which obviously isn't a thing -yet- but will be in future remakes) or whatever, include that shit.  Different regions get different versions of a game meaning some regions don't get -everything- of a game.  So if you're remaking/remastering that game, make every version standard as the version that had the most content.  Never, ever, ever, ever, ever even consider the notion of selling these extra bits of content additionally, squash any rumor that's saying you're thinking about doing it, or at least let people know you're giving them the whole game when somebody fucking asks you about it since that also gives you a chance to explain your strategy.  Because, you know, we always assume you actually have one, being that a remaster/remake is still a release.

I hope this handy little guide helps anyone who is thinking about releasing a remake or remaster of a game in the future.  It's a complicated thing, I know, but it's rewarding and valuable if you put in the right effort.  But if you're repeatedly making big mistakes in your remakes or remasters, then perhaps you should consider either not making those mistakes or not constantly torturing your fans with shitty remakes and remasters.  Of course, it's not like there's any company that is fairly consistent in releasing bad remakes and remasters, right?

this post is very tongue-in-cheek and I am very proud of it

Silent Hill: Book of Memories Demo, You Say?

So, I have actually been waiting with something resembling morbid curiosity for the last few months as word of Silent Hill:  Book of Memories started to track out there and impressions started popping up, mostly from people who hadn't experienced the game in any fashion beyond looking at things for it.  My interest in it is basically that it is a game for the Vita, as I'm not much of a fan of roguelikes, and I've always experienced Silent Hill on the outside, shall we say.  In layman's terms, I mean that I am a giant chicken baby and have never played a Silent Hill game proper beyond enough time to play Silent Hill 1, get scared by the giant moth thing that very well may have simply been a giant moth at the very start of the game and presumably I shut off my PS2 (since, yeah, BC) and cried in the corner like a small child.  Also I played like half of Origins on PSP and just got bored with it.  So I am only a Silent Hill fan in the sense that most people are football fans - not once have they ever really picked up a football, nor have they really 'experienced' the game, nor the team sensibility, but they have something of a vested interest in it anyway.  (Yes, I just mentioned Silent Hill and Football in the same breath.  That just happened.)

Impressions have been a wide bag between people who are Silent Hill 'purists' shitting all over the game because it is clearly not a Silent Hill game, to people expressing interest because it's certainly not a combination you would -expect- to hear, to people just saying "Huh, I guess that looks pretty good" or similarly, "Huh, that doesn't look very good".  Basically what I'm saying is that there is no real consensus out there yet for how we are all 'meant' to feel about the game as it often happens so I'm free to really just say what I think without wondering if I'm bucking the trend, going with the flow or what have you.  Not that I -care- one way or another about that sort of thing, but it is something that does get brought up every now and again, so it is a thought that crosses my mind every now and then.  It's just a liberating sort of feeling being out there with a game that is still kind of up in the air so far as "it could work" goes since the real proof for this kind of thing is strictly in the playing of it.

I am all at once impressed, intrigued and confused by Silent Hill:  Book of Memories after playing around with the demo for a good half hour, I believe it was.  As a game, it's fairly accomplished - a roguelike dungeon crawler that presents you with a certain artistic direction and at least a semblance of a reason as to why you're actually crawling through said dungeon.  As something to do with Silent Hill, and again I am no means an expert here, it's....not so great.  It's one of those setups where the game is there and it feels like they just sort of attached a name to it instead of trying to establish it as a new IP.  I'm a dude in a place bashing the Hellhounds and Nurses to death with 2x4's and lead pipes, but it's less like Silent Hill 1/2's: Aaaaahhhh what the fuck is happening aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh run away, kill it I dunno haaaaaaalp, and more like Silent Hill Homecoming/Origins':  Alright who's next?  The guy about to leap out from over there?  Okay, gonna smash ya.  It's all the paint with none of the aesthetic, is the point I think I'm trying to get across here, but I suppose that's not necessarily a bad thing.

That it's somewhat loosely attached to Silent Hill doesn't detract from the game itself, and it's kind of an interesting theory behind it from what little bit I've been exposed to with the demo.  At the start of it, we're introduced very.....very slightly to a main character, perhaps -the- main character, who has a book delivered to him on his birthday from Silent Hill which apparently sends up no red flags other than that he doesn't know anybody from Silent Hill.  The Postman just sort of chuckles and states "Oh, I don't know.  People get around these days...." before leaving.  Inside the book, our demo hero discovers that it chronicles his entire life to that point, his memories on every page of the book up to and including the meeting with the post man and the delivery of the book.  Being a stunning paragon of common sense, he decides to write something in this book of his memories because that never goes poorly, and then goes to sleep.  He 'awakes' in the Nightmare that is the Silent Hill dungeon layout of Book of Memories and the game sort of just goes from there.

Something that I believe is a first for the series as a whole is that it features a merchant who is, in fact our friendly post man who has a shop on possibly every floor of the dungeon that just requires a little finding.  The currency is memory remnants which is something that I'm not even going to bother trying to wrap my mind around and for an amount, he will sell you obvious things like weapons to carry, first-aid kits, upgrades to your backpack and the like and you can also bring him things to sell - basically what was mentioned already.  What's a little finnicky for me personally is the fact that the weapons in the game are finite - you can find a few in just about every other room, but that's because they have a durability meter indicated by what color the weapon is - green is good, red means it's going to break.  As such, I'm not quite sure where the compulsion is to buy a weapon from the Postman when it is going to break and money is not something that just everything drops like in your average dungeon-crawler.  Though I'm not about to get upset that I can grab some weapons scattered around the floor and make them into money for little to no reason.

What I -can- say about the game is that I'm pretty much going to keep playing the demo for a time - see if it actually saves progress like I think it does in the books scattered around the floors, or if I have to start anew each time.  Neither would hamper my interest so much as it's only a demo and I want to experience it a few times over before I'm fully equipped to deliver anything resembling a verdict on it.  Still, I think one of the main purposes of a demo is to present a game that you might be interested in playing and Wayforward has certainly crafted something here that I am interested in playing, albeit for free and as a demo.  Whether I will put money down for it is up in the air as, if I do, it will certainly be down the line a bit unless I catch a windfall, and my desire to do so will hinge on repeated playthroughs of the demo to get used to the roguelike thing all over again.  My main beef is the random dungeons since it rarely feels like there's anything 'crafted' to them - it's just interchangeable rooms and hallways randomly pieced together and I'm not really for that.  Still, like I said, I'm planning on playing BoM some more, and that's probably some high praise right there.

Konami Won't Patch Silent Hill HD Collection on 360, But...

The Silent Hill HD Collection has, in all honesty, kind of been a ridiculously news-worthy thing ever since it was first announced as a PS3 Exclusive which obviously didn't pan out, but may just have been an omen now that we have the joy of hindsight.  From there, the game went on to have a whole snafu about voiceovers, get delayed several times, release in a rather buggy-state, and then get panned by Silent Hill's art director.  All this in the scant few months since it was released back in March, and it's still not done coming up in bits of news here and there.  The latest, however, is a bit of a doozy when compared to the rest of it, which should tip you off, considering the latest news is that the PS3 version of the game will be the only one patched.  While I've been lead to believe that the PS3 version was, initially, buggier than the 360 version (which I whole-heartedly believe) and that the 360 version is actually playable, it's still kind of a big deal.  As is what Konami is doing about it.

This isn't the first time a game on the 360 has been completely refused a patch to fix it, and that process alone is just as bad as it was when Polytron decided they needed the money more than they needed to have a fully-working game out there.  I'm sure it won't be the last time it happens either.  And I'm also sure that people won't connect the dots because we don't learn when these types of things happen.  I'm sure that at least a percentage of the very same people excusing Polytron because "wah wah, money" are openly shitting on Konami for doing the very same thing for what could be a legitimate problem.  They are citing "Technical Issues" for the reason why the 360 cannot get the patch and as vague as that is, it could be completely legit.  These HD Collections are games simply being tooled to work on the consoles we have now, rather than being completely rebuilt, so it's entirely possible that some things have simply been held together with the equivalent of duct tape and chewed gum, so trying to introduce something else might just bring it all down.  Is that a valid excuse?  No, of course not.  Is it possible that "Technical Issues" means simply that there aren't enough 360 copies out there to pay for what will likely be patch after patch?  Of course.  We will never know, so not coming out and saying that it is flat-out about the money is a good move for Konami.

What also helps their case is that instead of just saying "Well, it sucks but thanks for the money!", they are offering an opportunity to exchange your game for another Konami product and while there's not an -official- list anywhere that I could find, it seems that it is rather large.  If you've had your eye on the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection or Castlevania:  Lords of Shadow (Limited Edition, even) and don't already have it, you might be able to grab one of those up (for PS3 or 360), as well as being able to trade across for the Collection on PS3 to get the one that'll get 'fixed'.  Or any of two dozen other titles for the PS3, 360 all the way back to the PSP and original XBox if you are so inclined.  I'm basing this off a list cross-posted from a forum, which is why I'm not linking it, so take it with a grain of salt, but the exchange bit, at the very least, is very true.  All it takes is a little bit of talking to customer service and presenting the receipt which serves as another reminder as to why you should always keep those things.

Konami is likely going to lose money over this, if not with the straight-exchanges, than the obvious loss of business they'll get from the move for as long as attention spans hold out.  Which is to say probably the next few games they put out won't sell so great, but after that, it'll go back to business as usual for the most part.  For the obvious parallels that I drew to the Fez situations, I can't say that the situation is exactly the same, however which is why, despite how bad a move it is, I can't hold the same ire with Konami that I can with Polytron, and that has everything to do with the size of both 'companies'.  Where buying/not buying a Polytron game affects them directly (or close to it), doing the same with Konami is not affecting the people who make these decisions and is likely only going to burden the people on the bottom.  I imagine the team that put the ports together is being dismantled currently and scattered to different parts of the company where they will hopefully do better work, but any money lost for Konami as a whole is going to come out of the pockets of the people just trying to put together games long before it comes out of the executives.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  This is pretty much why 'I'll never buy another (company) (product) again' doesn't do a whole lot of positive in the long run.

So if the smart thing to do is to just buy what you want to buy, ignoring who has 'wronged you' personally (which is by-and-large the smart thing to do) instead of carrying on with these boycotts, then what are you to do?  Well....the sensible thing, really.  If you own the game, take them up on this exchange offer if you're so inclined or just try to enjoy the game you put down money on.  Do anything you can to make sure the monetary investment isn't something that you come to really regret.  Whatever the case, if you feel the need, just exercise a little more selective purchasing in the future; waiting til it's out to find some reviews speaking to its technical quality before you take the plunge.  It seems entirely too level-headed a move to do, I agree, but like I said, where I could direct my ire at exactly the people who would be effected at Polytron, the same cannot be said for Konami using the same methods.  So while we can decry their decisions, that will just have to suffice for now.

Post-E3 News Dump

As with most E3's, a lot of the news isn't quite revealed until it's over and done with, and when it is, it's usually not the news you want to hear.  It's usually always the stuff they conveniently leave out on stage, as it's all about the excitement, not anything that could potentially be a downer.  So be warned, this all isn't good news.

Silent Hill:  Book of Memories, which you may or may not have even known it was announced, is the first Silent Hill title announced for the Playstation Vita, though the reasons for it and how it's implemented might leave one to worry about it.  You see, it's going to focus on Multiplayer and, in fact, is based off the multiplayer concept they were designing for Downpour, but didn't feel it quite worked.  The exact quote is "We decided if we don't have something that is uniquely Silent Hill and feels good in multiplayer, we don't want to just tack it on; We don't just want to throw something in to say, 'hey, there's a bullet point.'".

Uhhh...?  Then why make a game around it?  He said that Book of Memories was spawned from their continued exploration into it, which would hopefully suggest they figured out a way to make it work and feel like Silent Hill, rather than, y'know, just slapping something together.  Whoever's making it, though, it's not the team working on Downpour.  I'm giving this the most skeptical look I can muster until we learn some more about it.

Update!:  So, apparently, Wayforward is making Book of Memories.  Wayforward is also making Bloodrayne:  Betrayal.  Uhm...

Speaking of Silent Hill, the announced Silent Hill HD collection, consisting of Silent Hill 2 and 3 only, has been outed as a PS3 exclusive.....for now.  There's still not a whole hell of a lot of new news about it beyond that, with the only extra pieces being that there will, of course, be trophies (Oh god, will there be a trophy for Silent Hill 2's 'holy shit' moment? You know what I'm talking about.), but of particular mention is the fact that the collection will feature "all new voice acting" and come out this fall.  That's....a bit odd, as these collections are usually just up-scaling the resolutions and adding other bits, but hey, hopefully that'll turn out well.

While perhaps not E3 news per se, it's in the same window, and hey, it was shown off before at the -last- E3, so let's run with it.  The above image is the Flare Red 3DS that Japan is getting sometime.  It looks rather nice, but to hear that it's being released to 'invigorate the market in Japan' isn't...well, it isn't a good sign.  Are there really people who looked at the initial 3DS' and went, "Hmm.....nah.  I will wait for red, and not a moment sooner."?  Well, it can't be denied that numbers go up a bit when a new color is put out, but still, you're not supposed to say that in your press release.

Keeping on Nintendo news to finish us out,  there are a few new tidbits of information about the Wii U, answering only a couple questions that were raised by their keynote.  First of all, don't go selling your Wii just yet, because if you like playing GameCube games and don't own one, the Wii U isn't going to help you.  Nintendo confirmed recently that the only games the Wii U will play (in disk format at least) are Wii games and Wii U games.  While not surprising, it is a bit of a downer, if just because it's dashed my hopes of getting some up-scaling on the GameCube port of Skies of Arcadia, which I've always intended on tracking down.

And finally, which was possibly one of the bigger questions about the Wii U Controller since they first showed it off, Nintendo has let you know how many of these things you will need to buy:  One.  That is to say, you could buy more, but you won't be able to use them all; just one.  Again, not surprising, as it's rather impossible to think it could stream graphics to multiple of these devices, but Multiplayer is still a strange thing to think of.  Still, Ubisoft has been so kind to inform us of the implementation of it on one of their new games:  Killer Freaks from Outer Space.  As you can see, the person with the Wii U Controller seems to have a little more on their plate, and specifically the ability, nay, the responsibility to be actively against the second player (Possibly third and fourth?) who is left with the Classic Controller that I imagine you could swap out for the Mote-Chuck combo.  Maybe.

Though it does lead one to wonder just how many games are going to show off like that promo shot, using the classic controller.  Maybe it's an attempt to make everyone think you don't have to swing around the Wii mote, which is apparently something people are fairly adverse to doing.  Despite the crazy numbers the Wii has sold.  Still, it might be a little off-putting to transition into a more 'classic' controller system after a whole generation of waggle.  That might just be me with my tinfoil hat, anyway.

Konami's attempt at best E3 Line-up is respectable

Do you see this image?  This image right here, above this line?  Yeah.  You see it.  And you better get used to seeing it, because it is officially a thing that is happening.  Contrary to what the tagline says, the Metal Gear Solid Collection (Featuring, as it shows on the image, MGS2, 3 and Peace Walker) will be a multi-platform release on both the PS3 and 360, so not only will 360 owners (who presumably never owned a PS2) be able to play MGS3 without buying a 3DS, but they'll be able to take a swing at Peace Walker as well.  Of course, PS3 owners have the edge, seeing as Konami stated that the version of Peace Walker is 'Transfarrable'.  No, I'm not making that word up.  Anyways, PS3 owners who also own Peace Walker will be able to treat the game as one of the upcoming "PSP Remasters" in that you'll be able to move your save from one game to the other.  If that means PW will be locked out of Trophies/Achievements, I don't know, but we'll see.

Also announced by Konami today was a Silent Hill Collection, which bundles Silent Hill 2 and 3 together.  That's about all that's known about it.  Do you need to know much else, though?  It's Silent Hill 2.  And it's Silent Hill 3.  They are together.  On one disk.  The consoles it'll release on are technically unspecified at the moment, but PS3/360 is expected.

And finally, the third Collection announced was....wait for it...

HELL.

YES.

The Zone of the Enders HD Collection will, obviously, feature Zone of the Enders 1 and 2 (Sorry, no Fist of Mars for the GBA.  Let's all shed a solitary tear.) up-ported in the usual Collection style, etc. etc.  It will be amazing.  Because the games?  They are amazing.  And they will be even more amazing when they're in the Haitch Dees.  The collection also touts another "Transfarring" feature, but just for what, it's hard to say, as it's tied to a "Future announcement".  Say...the Sony E3 conference is in the future...

(I am really, really, really hoping this means a Zone of the Enders game in PSV.  I will buy seven. 

....not really.  I will buy one though.)