“Concerning Remasters and Remakes, Fatigue and Exceptions”
6 min read
There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is my favorite Zelda game.
Cowboy Bebop is my favorite anime.
Both are getting remakes. Yet… I am looking forward to playing the former whereas I’ve taken part in the public outcry against the latter. What I want to know is why?
Why am I excited for the remake of the original Game Boy classic but not for what is widely considering to be one of the greatest animes ever produced? And note, this discrepancy extends far beyond these two examples.
I’m not big on Disney remaking its entire animated canon as live action films, after seeing a few of them and realizing I didn’t want to see anymore. I picked up Final Fantasy VIII Remastered day one. I’m not thrilled about rumors of The Lord of the Rings trilogy being remade. I scoffed at Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch getting a remaster and I threw up in my mouth a little hearing talk of remaking Home Alone. I quite enjoyed It Chapter One and plan to see Chapter Two soon. The court is still adjourned when it comes to Final Fantasy VII Remake, due to a variety of factors. And The Princess Bride? That movie deserves an awful remake.
My controversial movie opinions aside, my skepticism and unashamed giddiness seem to have no consistency, and I suspect the same is true for many of you out there. A new remake is announced and we find ourselves running headlong toward the camp best suited to our tastes: the fan club that intones without question “Shh, just let people enjoy things” or the picket-sign protestors who complain about Hollywood (or some other amorphous, anthropomorphized entity) destroying entertainment and/or their childhoods.
And let’s just get this out of the way: remakes are good in that they welcome a new audience to the content but not all remakes are created equal. I’m not so hyperbolic that I oppose all remakes, nor do I automatically accept all of them with glee.
Now I can’t explain why everyone does things the way they do or why they have the opinions they have. I’m responsible for my actions and my opinions, so I asked myself why I rushed to fit myself into the square peg or the round one so readily, upon every new announcement. Is there something wrong with me or is this just what the modern life of the consumer is like?
What occurred to me in asking these questions of my Self are the following:
- Being upset by a remake depends on my own perception of the “untouchable perfection” of the original subject.
- Being skeptical depends on my own perception of the skill and remake history of the remakers.
- There’s a spectrum of changes made to the original subject to consider.
- There’s a difference between film and games, typically in regards to availability.
- There’s a matter of the time that passes between the original subject’s release and the proposed release of the remake.
Point one, this explains the lack of a link between Link’s Awakening and Cowboy Bebop. I definitely consider the second to be an example of concise, mysterious, beautiful storytelling perfection. It doesn’t *need* a remake (and maybe that statement is itself indicative).
Point two, when Netflix announces something like new Dark Crystal stuff, and I get over the shock that I’ll be living in a world where more Dark Crystal stuff exists, but then I remember it’s Netflix, a company whose original works I’m not a tremendous fan of, after being disappointed by some outings like Castlevania. It’s not like Link’s Awakening is being remade by, say, Hulu. Meanwhile, Netflix is seemingly building an empire on 30-somethings’ nostalgia, and once that became transparent, I didn’t want much to do with that pandering. I did like Enter the Florpus, though, but I don’t trust them to do right by Bebop, especially since the nature of the remake is different.
Which leads to point three, there’s the matter of a remake being so like the original that it seems pointless (looking at you, Disney) or a remake being too different so as to raise suspicions of being different just to be different. As if mere difference ensured quality. So when a character is completely rewritten or seems like an intentional miscast, or when the subject jumps from animated to live action, there’s skepticism to be had. When you produce something as authentic as DuckTales: Remastered, though, then that’s a thing of wonder.
Point four has to do with availability, right? So look: you can watch Cowboy Bebop nearly anywhere right now. Heck, YouTube had the episodes up for free not too long ago. They’re not exactly hard to find and they’re not on Betamax or something. Meanwhiles, Link’s Awakening received a DX version but playing these games requires outdated technology, something which not too many people hung onto.
And point five, Link’s Awakening came out decades ago at this point, on top of its availability. Some adults today weren’t even born when it released. It might as well be a brand new Zelda game to them. Same thing with FF8R, which not only wasn’t available in a whole lot of places but was released years in the past. Yet when a game from last generation gets a remake just a year and some change after its original release, I just think that’s a little silly to me. These are typically remasters, not remakes, but occasionally the differences seem so minimal as to be pointless.
And there you have it. That’s my psychohistory, my analysis of why certain people get upset or happy about certain remakes and remasters. You may not agree with all my points, but in that case, you write your own dumb article about it, ok? In all seriousness, though, maybe ask yourself why some remakes bother you, all of them do, or not at all. What are some remakes you’re looking forward to, if any?
Something I learned in asking myself these questions is that everyone is an individual and may react differently, though we share many opinions. Everyone is unique. If you’re excited about something and I’m not, I’m not voicing my opinion to rain on your parade or say you can’t like something. And vice versa. No bandwagoning. No shaming.
But you know what?
Making Ein a husky is stupid.
Red formerly ran The Well-Red Mage and now serves The Pixels as founder, writer, editor, and podcaster. He has undertaken a seemingly endless crusade to talk about the games themselves in the midst of a culture obsessed with the latest controversy, scandal, and news cycle about harassment, toxicity, and negativity. Pick out his feathered cap on Twitter @thewellredmage, Mage Cast, or Story Mode.
I’m not a big fan of remasters or remakes…for the most part. As you touched upon, it is great that they make them, to introduce older games to new, younger audiences, but really it’s the people who played the originals who are really going to buy it, and that’s mainly because of nostalgia. Video games are so different today than they were decades ago, that most younger gamers would play stuff from yesteryear and just completely fail to understand why a game was so good back in the day. They are used to a whole different type of game.
The big problem I have is that there seems to be just as many remakes coming out as actual new games and ideas. In fact, a few years ago at e3 when Nintendo showed off that Metroid Prime 4 announcement “trailer,” I could immediately tell it was something Metroid related, and I got super excited, then when the “4” popped up on screen, my immediate thought was, “Oh, they are remaking Fusion, that’s cool I guess.” It was at that moment I became disgusted with the video game market. Remakes and remasters are so common that I have been conditioned to expect one of those over a brand new game.
Remasters I won’t touch, unless it’s a game I missed. For example, Twilight princess remaster I have never played, despite loving the poo out of the original. HD graphics just don’t do anything for me. Most of the time I don’t even notice them, so what is the point of paying for the exact same game?
Remakes, I can jump on board with, if it’s not the exact same game. I hate the ones that are exactly the same as the original, but with modern graphics. Again, what’s the point?
But I love and respect when the developers do something different. The recent Resident Evil 2 remake and the upcoming FF7 both caught my eye, simply for being different. Now I have a reason to play these. I want a brand new experience. I don’t need to play the same thing over again. If I did, I would just go play the original.
As for the developers though, it’s really a lose-lose. They are going to be criticized mercilessly no matter what path they choose.
I’m still on the fence about Link’s Awakening, but I think I will buy it, simply because it has been so long, and it does look incredible. That’s much more excusable than The Last of Us, GTA V and God of War 3 being remastered about three times within 5 years of their releases.
You hit on the crux of the matter which is that they have to walk a fine line. If you get too close to the original, you don’t give an audience any reason to look at your version and if you change too much, you alienate anyone from giving it a look because it doesn’t even remotely resemble anything having to do with the original. It can come off as something you had no faith in that you named the same to get recognition dollars.
That said, when it doesn’t work I find I’m of two minds. Yes, people behind it should go back and see why the original experience was better. With a movie, it could be the story being the best it could be already. It could be the acting was more convincing. It could be it got the proper tone. Any number of things or a combination of them. With a video game, sometimes the old mechanics were what made it great. Alien Syndrome was a fantastic top-down run n’ gun. The remake was a mediocre dungeon crawler. There were a host of other problems, but right off the bat, it was going to disappoint people who thought they were going to get a more modernized version of the original experience.
But in most of these cases, the people making the remake don’t want to make a bad experience. Totally Games probably thought an Alien Syndrome Diablo clone would be a great idea. Maybe they thought the dungeon crawling aspect in a survival horror space theme would work. And to be fair, had it been a much better game, maybe they would have been right. Maybe people would have picked it up for their Wii conceding it wasn’t the Alien Syndrome they would have wanted, but it was still a good experience.
Sometimes though we can take our fandoms *too* seriously. Yes, these are terrific experiences we take with us through life. Yes, we want the following generation to experience it and enjoy it as much as we did. And yes, sometimes a remake is so bad it betrays everything that made the original so special to us. When that happens most of us go “Okay, well I didn’t enjoy that. It sucked. But I can go back to the original one.” But others threatening people, committing crimes, need to see something is missing in their lives. That level of animosity is completely uncalled for. They made a piece of entertainment you didn’t like. They didn’t put your loved one in the hospital. They didn’t even kill the media you liked. Look, it’s right over there on your shelf.
You have to take a remake on its own merits. Yes, it should do everything it can to respect the reason it even exists. But it should still be different with its own improvements and flaws.
I think gameplay mechanics and hardware factor into the pass/fail of a videogame remake.
Examples of “Pass”-Ninja Gaiden (XBOX), Prince Of Persia: Sands of Time (Gamecube), Double Dragon Neon (PSN),
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (PS3), Tomb Raider (XBOX360)
Examples of “Fail”-Silent Hill Shattered Memories (Wii), Flashback (XBOX Live), Secret of Mana (PS4), Castlevania Chronicles (PS1)
I love that sign guy. And I agree with your balanced position on the theme.
In the case of Cowboy Bebop, that anime is a tough act to follow or recreate!
I’m not sure if it would even work out.
Cowboy Bebop is the equivalent of the Holy Texts of anime. There is nothing they could to to improve it beyond reassembling EVERY SINGLE PERSON ASSOCIATED WITH THE ORIGINAL and making additional episodes of no less quality than the originals, but even that would make me wary in today’s social environment, where everything must be changed to meet certain narratives and avoid offending people who won’t watch your show or buy your product anyway.
I remember some twenty years ago I decided to check out this anime I kept hearing people talk about on AOL. Cowboy Bebop. I decided to don my pirate hat and, using Napster (iirc) I downloaded the first episode via my 56k modem. I watched that one episode and proceeded to use said 56k modem to find and download EVERY EPISODE IN THE SERIES over dial up. Fortunately I would eventually pick up the DVD box set from my local Gamestop (one of the best $120 I’ve ever spent) which not only got me all the episodes in high quality format but also got me the first OST, which lead me to buying ALL THE OST discs I could find. I have memories of watching the entire series with my daughter when she was old enough. She fell in love with Ed and even went by the name Ed around our church for a while (we were new at the time and she was working with the little kids whom she told her name was ‘Ed” and it stuck for everyone).
I gave up that box set to my daughter when she moved out, but she ended up buying me the Blu-ray series set, which I plan on watching with my brother who has never seen it, assuming I can find my damn disc 3.
Even if reports come back that the series is good, I may never watch it. It simply does not need to exist.
I agree that everyone can react how they want. It’s why I’m generally fine with remakes and remasters. If I don’t like that something is being remade, I won’t watch/play it. The Princess Bride is a classic film so I get why people are up in arms… but I’m also like “Just don’t watch it, folks.” Nothing is going to make that remake disappear from pop culture faster than it flopping at the box office. When people think of Total Recall, I bet they still think of Arnold Schwarzenegger instead of Colin Farrell. I do, anyway.
I think one thing to add as well is that gaming technology has moved on considerably more than animation technology has. Or at least, it has in more “obvious” ways; animation, of course, incorporates a lot more CG than it did back in the past, but it’s still fundamentally something you sit down and watch.
Link’s Awakening for Switch looks, feels and plays differently to its Game Boy counterpart, whereas any Cowboy Bebop remake will still (probably) look recognisably similar to its source material; the differences are less obvious and feel less “necessary” to move with the times.
In GB Zelda, you’re playing on a tiny monochrome or low-colour screen at low resolution in handheld mode. In Switch Zelda, you might be playing on a huge TV with a nice sound system or at the very least on the Switch’s lovely built-in screen. The graphics are sharper and stylised in a different way, and the music and sound effects have no hardware limitations on them.
Watch Old Cowboy Bebop and then New Cowboy Bebop and you’re still sitting on your couch watching an anime that you clicked on a thing to start playing.
In other words, Link’s Switchwakening feels like a “new” thing, whereas Cowboy Bebop will always feel like a remake of something that is already reasonably readily available.
Rationally speaking, it’s still an inconsistent mindset to have, of course, but I think that might explain the psychology of it somewhat.
You’re definitely onto something here with the differences in the advancements in technology. Nintendo producing both the GB and the remake versions but it being a full-on ground up remake between two pieces of tech removed from each other by decades is different from what will essentially be two series to sit down and watch on any tv or device.
What we do know about New Cowboy Bebop though is that they’re making it live action, telling a new story, including all new music, expanding the universe, adding characters, and even making Ein a different dog breed. At least that’s what I’ve read. In terms of content, it seems to me that this is less an adaptation to live action as it is some kind of non-canon prequel, midquel, or sequel, however that’d work. It terms of content, then, it bears more differences to the source material than does the Awakening remake but in terms of the consuming of the entertainment, it bears fewer.
I think?