Brendan Jacques
Connector Staff
Last week, Nintendo announced that they would be following up their hugely successful 3DS remaster of “Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” by giving the same treatment to its sequel, “Majora’s Mask.” This announcement was followed by every Zelda fan on the Internet simultaneously declaring, “Well it’s about time!” Fans, including myself, have been clamoring for a rerelease of this game for quite some time, to the point where it was inconceivable that Nintendo would ever choose not to. At the same time however, this announcement got me thinking: are remakes like this healthy for the gaming industry as a whole?
Let me explain. Many on the Internet would argue that the AAA gaming market is hitting a massive period of stagnation. Almost every big game to be released this holiday season is a sequel or reboot of one age-old franchise or another, each one doing the same general song and dance as the last one in line. That’s not to say any of those games are bad (most of them are probably very good), it just screams of a lack of creativity that developers can’t create something new. It’s the same problem that’s hitting Hollywood right now: they know exactly what’s popular at the moment (in Hollywood’s case, superhero movies), and instead of branching out and trying new things they’re just digging around for anything with the vaguest name recognition to bring back from the dead.
This is even more true when it comes to remasters of games, which I define as the rerelease of older, “classic” games on current generation consoles with improved graphics. In that case, not only are developers so desperate for cash that they refuse to put the effort in to make a new game series, but now they’re repackaging a “classic” game that most people have already played in order to score “nostalgia dollars” from fans of the original. What makes it worse is the recent trend from Microsoft and Sony of “remastering” games from the Xbox 360 and PS3 onto their new consoles into “better HD,” which just seems like a deliberate cash grab.
However, even considering all the problems I just listed off, I don’t feel that remasters, as an idea, are necessarily bad. During the 1980s and ’90s, when gaming was still in its infancy, it was incredibly tough to find particularly great games. With the amount of shovel ware titles littering store shelves and little means of differentiating a good game from a bad one other than by word of mouth, many games were buried and forgotten. And even with the few truly great games, whether or not getting said game was even feasible came down to how many copies existed; if there were too few copies, you’d be out of luck.
But with the rise of the Internet age, video games have been able to reach a state of near-immortality. As I write this article, if I wanted to, I could turn on my Xbox, go into the marketplace and download any game released for the console since 2005 without restriction. This rise in accessibility has led to the return of long-forgotten masterpieces, and led to the advent of independent gaming, which is the entire reason I’m able to write for the newspaper today.
Sadly, while some games from before this generation have found new life on the Internet, just as many have been left behind and forgotten. Whether it’s because the gameplay is archaic by today’s standards, or the graphics aren’t appealing, too many are willing to dismiss older games on the basis of their age. Even if a game is incredibly fondly remembered, like “Majora’s Mask,” it may be too hard for the layman to actually get a copy of the game to try without buying now-ancient consoles and hardware.
This is why remakes are important when done right. It allows once-beloved games to get a chance at the spotlight once again, upgraded for present day standards and available to a new generation of fans who may never have known the game existed beforehand. It allows aging gamers to revisit their favorite childhood games with an adult mindset and see how their game has changed and, more importantly, how it’s stayed the same.
As it stands, remakes, like anything in life, are something to be taken in moderation. The concept of rereleasing a game solely for the sake of banking on nostalgia may be the core of why they’re released (as much as it hurts to say, Nintendo isn’t exempt from this either), but it doesn’t need to be the extent of their purpose. As long as I’m not being cheated for an experience I’ve already had, I’m more than willing to see beloved games from yesteryear return with new life, and personally I’m looking forward to playing “Majora’s Mask” for the first time myself. The return of an old friend from years gone by or the arrival of a treasure you never knew existed is something to celebrate.
