Another smaller/lower effort opinion piece for you. Got another big video in the works as a deep dive on a specific game, so stay tuned. But in the mean time, these smaller videos will come out whilst you wait. Hope you enjoy :) (also first)
The only reason republicans dont act more like russia and democrats hide from republicans is because on our side of the fence their subject to our laws imagine judges letting people get away with murder because their scared of communists and wonder why they only have dumb people left willing to debate them ideocracy's danger at its finest
For actual conservation I would love for remasters and remakes to include the original games so you can have the best of both worlds. Still, gotta keep emulation close by.
That is the only good solution. I quite like the Final Fantasy VII Remakes, but I feel they must have the original game pre-installed in them as a bonus if they are to act as true preservation, since FF7R is more of a pseudo sequel than a remake.
@@Ardrid_ the FF7 shit feels so corrupted to me. the original game is loved for a lot of reasons, was considered one of their best stories and iconic characters... skip 10+ years of fans asking fro a graphical update and they finally decide to start something, and its a sick an twisted different groups version of the game and story. my one big example is how the story and group is portrayed in the original vers the remake. the avalanche is an eco terrorist group, fighting shinra to save the planet, there is a clear theme that the government is bad, but our heroes arent good either. in the remake fucking cloud and jesse and her dad have this shitty lovey dovey cutsey tootsey storyline as cloud gets sent to cause a distraction where he murders the fuck out of ground level grunts. as hes on the ground LITERALLY CHOPPING PEOPLE INTO PIECES 2 other avalanche people show up to kick jokes and act like we are in a comedy. the visision and theme is broken as fuck and the new players and game creators have no idea what theyve done. its flawed and corrupted
Comic artists had to come together, particularly from the mid 80-90s to be credited for their work, get their work returned to them and not destroyed stolen or sold by the publisher. Someone esteemed by the industry needs to lead devs and gamers alike against publishers to preserve games on a large scale. It’s not blue sky thinking. We just need a leader people will rally behind like Jeff Keeley or Reggie Fisame. someone of that stature. The movie industry is the same. They burned original film negatives for decades until creatives fought back. Ego and greed driven talentless executives and ‘leaders’ have always been the same, it’s just gaming’s turn. Scorsese has been doing it for decades for film.
This is not true, though. No one thinks this. That definition is for Adaptations. When people hear 'remake' they think of the same game being updated with better graphics/sound.
@@MA-go7ee "...the same game being updated with better graphics/sound." That's called a remastered my dude. remaster definition: to create a new master of especially by altering or enhancing the sound quality of an older recording
And for what it's worth, I think it's disingenuous to point to Nintendo taking down Yuzu and say "Emulation is getting harder and harder as companies clamp down." The Switch is their CURRENT SYSTEM THEY ARE ACTIVELY MAKING GAMES FOR. I have 100+ NES, SNES, N64 or Gameboy games on my phone right now, they're not coming for those! Emulation of ABANDONWARE is not at risk, and is absolutely about the preservation of art. That said, I'm absolutely terrified of the main points of the video and everything else is totally valid. I just thought that sentence was a bit "the sky is falling."
@@JUnit41484Plus, the Yuzu devs were asking for it by making the newest versions of the emulator only available through Patreon, which means they were profiting off of it (A big no-no for emulators). And that one tweet where they bragged that a ton of people were playing TOTK a week before it officially released was just hubris.
Kind of annoying how little ps1-ps3 games are available on PS4/ps5. Sony need to fix this going forward. The legacy playstation library is important. They did a great job on PS3 but that is all cut off from the current ecosystem. And PS3 was quite a long time ago now.
If the remake is faithful, then yeah it pretty much is preserving that game. Even better if the remake heavily improves the original experience. As for FFVII, the original game is already on all modern platforms in 1080p HD and with quality of life improvements, so accessibility for that particular title isn't an issue. The original FFVII has actually aged a lot better than some people think outside of the shoddy and outdated graphics. The gameplay and battles are still incredibly fun and despite the more cyberpunk setting you can definitely tell that this is still the same classic Final Fantasy style, unlike the newer titles. It definitely feels like a sequel to FF6 in that same sort of "retro" style despite the leap in technology. The animations aren't even that overly long outside of summon animations, unlike FF9 which just CHUGGED performance and animation wise and required speed up to be playable.
I think that old arcade games really encapsulate this whole ordeal of formal and informal game preservation [along with emulation as a whole as part of INFORMAL...and whatever it takes for formal preservation to catchup]: The arcade games in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise are ridiculous in the fact that these games, brought over as little minigames to spice up the main game, are the first time some of those SEGA old arcade titles have been ported in years or decades to consoles...if not *ever.* For starters, Yakuza 6 and 7 were the only ways you could play VF5 in modern hardware...and if you don't own a PS4 to play Final Showdown, then *it still is.* And progressively there had been more few rare picks, specially when Gaiden dropped and SEGA had the tech for emulating Model 3 games. Fighting Vipers and Motor Raid with Judgement. Sonic the Fighters with Lost Judgement. Daytona USA 2 and Fighting Vipers 2 in Gaiden, and SpikeOut/SEGA Bass Fishing/Virtua Fighter 3tb in the latest Infinite Wealth. Out of those 8 games [as I'm not counting VF5], 3 of those were still stuck in X360/PS3 [FV, STF and Bass Fishing- SBF being the only one that also got ported to Steam as well], 2 hadn't been ported since the Dreamcast era [FV2 and VF3], and *THREE had never been ported before*: DUSA2, Motor Raid and the ORIGINAL version of Spikeout. You could argue that Spikeout Battle Street for Xbox was kind of a port...but I would call it akin to a "remake" in that it aims for the same gameplay and actually contains almost all of the same levels/enemies/gameplay but with a coat of paint and differences in presentation. That's only the ones salvaged by Like a Dragon, because a bunch of other Model 1/2/3 and older SEGA arcade games at best got ported to the Wii [the HOTD games and Gunblade/LA Machineguns] and X360/PS3, but at worst...and also at most by a wide margin, have *NEVER* been ported or are stuck in consoles like the DC and PS2. And then there's cases like Virtual-On Masterpiece Collection, having all four entries of the franchise, being a Japan exclusive. And THAT was just SEGA. There's so much cool arcade games that are legally inaccessible either because of cabinet gimmicks [light-gun games], licensing [MVC1 and MVC2 are a HUGE example of how that has got in the way of a forever awaited return], defunct developers, and how developers not only wouldn't have the interest but also the skill to figure out how to port those, like Konami's wacky ahh assortment of arcade games running on strange boards like Thrill Drive on the Konami Viper. Think about how many games are only available through emulation due to those arcade game oddities or licensing. *Now think about how there's still a handful of games out there, arcade or not, that are completely unemulated as of today, meaning that they are COMPLETELY UNPLAYABLE TO ANYONE THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN TO OWN A VERY EXPENSIVE PIECE OF THE ORIGINAL HARDWARE.* And the kicker is that there had been a fair amount of time between the original SEGA arcade game releases, the time when unofficial emulators were started, then were polished...and when those ports got released. Model 3 games had been unemulated until 2012-2013 in a rough state and only had been getting polished the past years. If you had wanted to play Daytona 2 and Spikeout without unofficial emulation though, then you had to pray that you found an original cabinet...or had been waiting over 20 years just to see these damn games finally ported officially. And once again, that's not even talking about games in licensing hell like Scud Race and SEGA Rally. ...I apologize for the surprisingly long comment, but there's definitely a conversation to be had about game preservation being really, REALLY low beyond the big known titles if we were to only count officially re-released games as preserved, and even there's still some *unemulated* cases out there. Yet you can ask anyone about most of the GC and PS2 library on some of their favorite games that aren't purchaseable anymore. Yeah. Its kinda rough out there. My heart goes out to the F-Zero fans waiting for a GX port and also the Need for Speed fans having to resort to the seven seas to play the older gems from the franchise as those are perpetually shafted out of sale- which is arguably even possible to say that its caused by the heavy car and music licensing, a bigger bummer than assuming that its because of laziness/invoking FOMO since you know that licensing is often considered not worth dealing with again for publishers regarding re-releases.
Arcade Games in regards to game preservation is actually something thats extremely obvious of me to talk about in hindsight now that you brought it up. Its even more dire than home console game emulation since arcade machines were produced in the 10s of thousands in the most successful cases rather than the millions. There's less arcade machines for say Virtua Fighter 2's arcade version out in the wild than copies of Virtua Fighter 2 on Sega Saturn. The best way currently to play VF2 is through the PS3 port of the game, which thankfully runs very well on the RPCS3 Emulator, but if you want to play the ORIGINAL version of VF2 in arcades... you need an arcade machine, because not even emulation can run VF2 well (MAME can boot the game and its technically playable, but the sound and graphics are glitchy as hell and it crashes often even on the highest spec PC's). And thats just for POPULAR arcade games, games like SoulCalibur 3 Arcade Edition were only produced in very sparse amounts and has never been re-released by Namco. Thankfully, there is a Namco System 256 emulator that runs SC3AE fairly well currently, but its no replacement for the original as of yet. Its easy to get the same experience through emulation of home console games because as long as the emulator is good enough and you have the correct controller on hand, the game should feel almost exactly like the original did. But arcade games are often built for specific control styles, button layouts, and that's not even considering Driving games and Shooting games. Unfortunately, its incredibly likely that some games are inevitably going to be lost to time. We're just not at the point yet where that's beginning to happen, but there will come a point where the last SC3AE arcade machine stops working.
@@Ardrid_ It is very surprising to me that you happened to acknowledge specifically not just VF2 but also specifically SCIIIAE. It IS emulated in Play! which is the only emu that runs NS246/256 as PCSX2 does not support them...but Play itself is relatively slower/more demanding due to how it hasn't been out and polished as long as PCSX2 is. And if there's people that often show footage of "Arcade Edition", either its from real hardware or a hacked version of the console SCIII that adds the extra characters back...but per se isn't *exactly* the real deal. Reminds me of people assuming that F-Zero AX is the same as F-Zero GX but with a different menu [It has different tech and physics from GX *and* has beta GX tracks if you use codes to access them, unlike "AX-in-GX" which controls exactly the same as GX], mailly because of how the real AX was also unplayable outside of real cabs until many years later where Nintendont added support for it, and then a handful more years later for the Dolphin Triforce branch getting updated to work with the game. With Virtua Fighter 2, MAME is actually NOT the most ideal way to emulate that or any other Model 2 games. It has only been emulated out there for years outside of the PS2 and PS3/X360 ports due to Model 2 Emulator by ElSemi. But I know that some modern rigs also happen to have issues with it due to how old it is. VF2 is one of those games that did get ported to some of the Yakuza games...but yeah, imagine that the only way to grab that one in modern platforms is to grab Yakuza 5, Like a Dragon or LAD Gaiden- and none of those have online like the PS3/X360 ports did. And yeah, imagine having a bunch of Yakuza games that, okay, sometimes they add brand new games, but so far there's never a single game that bothers in having *everything* as some entries omit previously seen titles. So if you want both VF2, VF3, FV2 and VF5 in modern platforms...get ready to shell out for three separate games [LAD for VF2/VF5, IW for VF3, Gaiden for FV2]. No wonder why people would like to see a proper arcade collection just to have everything in one place without having to go through entirely different games just to play them.
@@ArcadeStrikerI wish Namco Released a Soul Calibur Collection of Arcade Versions on the Ps4, Ps5 X series but alas Tekken is the Cashcow not Soul Calibur
This is a fact, remakes and remasters are not "preservation", the honest ones admit that what they want is the replacement of the old game because their brains can't handle "old mechanics". Ports and emulation is the only preservation of the original games
"Because their brains can't handle old mechanics" More accurately, because most gamers are so narrow minded they aren't willing to try, much less appreciate, anything that doesn't conform to contemporary design trends. Turn based? Outdated. Lives? Outdated. Set difficulty? Outdated. Fixed camera? Outdated. It makes me sad that most people just seem to want games to be as homogenous as possible.
This is a really interesting discussion to have. I love remasters that let you play the original versions of the games, because the developers recognize that they are making a new creation which is not a true preservation of the original experience. I think an interesting branch to this are obsolete ports being the only purchasable versions of games. Before this new Remaster (which is not out yet and may have its own issues) Battlefront 2's PC port was based on the severely handicapped 2005 PC port. The PS3 Yakuza games on PC suffer from gameplay bugs introduced by a higher framerate (thankfully fixable though modding). There is also a long breakdown on how Sonic Adventure's PC port is based on a long line of careless and broken ports, all inferior to the original Dreamcast version. With the Resident Evil Remakes, I love how in Japan, they are called Biohazard: RE. It's a great reference to the international title, and advertises how they are not the same as the original games. I think anyone who thinks that they should be replacements to the originals don't understand their purpose; even the developers said that they created RE4 Remake in a way not to be a true replacement to the original.
better comparison to the beginning of the videogames industry is the history of arcade and amusement machines on a totally unrelated note, the state of electro-mechanical arcade machines is horrendously bad, to the point where we dont even know where certain games originally came from
I hate when developers and publishers releases a remake/remastered of an original game and then straight up REMOVE/DELISTED the original game Like Rockstar Games replacing the GTA Trilogy or Blizzard replacing the original Warcraft 3.
Well good thing the original FF7 is easily playable on modern platforms. Regardless of what your opinion is on Remake/Rebirth, don’t act like those games are erasing the original from memory.
I don't think FF7 is the best example here. Considering the OG is available on most modern platforms (albeit with QoL features), and with 7thHeaven on PC, the OG has really never been in a better state.
I love Remake & Rebirth to death but they will never replace my love for the original, not because FF7 PS1 is some "perfect" game but because it really does have it's own unique feel as do the Remakes vice versa. Also another example of preservation becoming more difficult is Nintendo making unique consoles for unique playing games. I'm not saying Nintendo should stop doing this heck no, it's just that it's hard to emulate and preserve the 3DS and WII U experience without...well, a 3DS or WII U. Anyway don't know what else to say other then i completely agree. Honestly fantastic video Ardrid.
Currently I think the best setup for DS/3DS/Wii U preservation will probably end up being using a steam deck connected as a second monitor to a TV or other monitor to use touch controls like those originals. But even that solution is quite janky and doesn't really replicate the original system well enough for a means of preservation. I hope they can somehow become more accessible, but I doubt it.
I never understood the part of "preservation", remakes always felt like an update, or a 2nd attempt at the same idea they had a long time ago, and this is only in the case the same studio and devs do it because more often than not a remake is made by different people, people who have no reason to understand what were they aiming for at the time and are pretty likely to fail at that. Remakes at the end of the day are ways to make content more accessible, but is never going to replace the original, tho there are games those kind of did, have you heard of Leisure Suit Larry? I used believe this was the first one th-cam.com/video/9mNVFnCknyU/w-d-xo.html and one day I learned THIS th-cam.com/video/Fp0nfDW2iJo/w-d-xo.html is the original one no one ever talks about whenever LSL comes into conversation
I will actually go on a hate campaign if PlayStation have Bluepoint remake Bloodbourne instead of just porting the game to pc and ps5 with a fixed frame rate. Bluepoint's remake of Demon Souls actually pissed me off. They threw the original soundtrack and artstyle in the bin, completely disregarding the intention of the original developers and says the people who disagreed are just nostalgic. It doesn't help that the original demon souls is trapped on the ps3 and no longer has online functionality. It's gross.
Oh yeah I heard about them changing the music of Demon Souls Remake. Thats is honestly insane to me, imagine if a film company remastered a beloved film but then changed the soundtrack. A lot of what happens in remaking/remastering games is very similar to what happened when Lucasfilm released the 1997 cuts of the Star Wars Original Trilogy, with the added and changed scenes with CGI. It doesn't matter if you think you're adhering to the creators original intention or you think that change will make the product better, the thing exists as it does and deserves to be preserved the way it is.
@@Ardrid_ Wow, this situation reminds me a lot of what happened to the Persona 1 PSP port. I remember enjoying the soundtrack to that game, then looking it up on youtube only to find something completely different. Apparently, they changed it for this port for some reason - probably to appeal to the newfound Persona 3-4 fanbase, since it's from the same composer of those games. When I found out this, I felt like I was robbed of an experience. Whenever people praise or talk about the game's soundtrack, it's never about the PSP OST, so I feel excluded from the discussion in a way one normally shouldn't. The worst thing about this, however, is that it's still the best way to play this game currently. The localization of the PS1 version sucks. It changes lots of the characters' names and designs, and is written in a very archaic, unnatural way. Thankfully, there's a mod that fixed the PSP OST, but only partially since it's incomplete. This just goes to show how accurate game preservation is entirely up to independent hobbyists.
To think that the original pong will go into the public domain in 2068 is insane and tells you how young this industry is when steamboat Willy became public domain 3 months ago if we consider the film industry started 1890 the time between then 1928 the year where steamboat Willie released it 38 years in that same time video games went from pong to red dead redemption 1 steamboat Willie was the fist big sound cartoon and red dead a deep and complex story voice acting sound and music equal to movies a wide colour pallet and being at there point were games were seen as art you feel how fast moving this medium is when a year later Skyrim and Minecraft released what adrid considered a turning point for games and 5 years before that video games were still had a lot of inherent controversy because of people thinking that caused violence and weren’t art I don’t need to reiterate my point
At least Square has made Final Fantasy VII wildly accessible to modern audiences, the Remake trilogy is not a replacement like some other titles. Spyro and Crash trilogy comes to mind, Demons Souls, etc
i'm glad to see more people start talking about this issue as i am deeply passionate about video game preservation, in particular minecraft. while it is the best-selling game of all time, the first 19 versions of the game are entirely missing, with many many more later versions missing, even as recently as 2017, with some features in the game only hypothetically possible due to the versions necessary to obtain them being missing, let alone all the mods, videos, images, and other associated media of the game's early life that has been washed away in the sands of time. the early versions of the game are COMPLETELY different from the modern game in basically every way, and the experiences of playing them are in no way interchangeable
“You dont sell it, then i don’t have to buy it” and I agree with the remake thing pikmin 1 and 2 remake are not the GameCube version, like i would not get a switch game running on my pc but gamecube, wii, wiiu hell yea i will
i mean forget about aesthetics and gameplay effects(although i would also like to add that some remakes are horrendously unsympathetic to the original aesthetics), preservation is about how it really was; the complete experience of a work of art or technology
One example i can think of with technology changing the atmosphere of a game would be the PSX version of Mega Man X3 and the SNES version. The SNES version had the chiptune the MMX series was known for, but the PSX replaced it with Synth. And yeah it sounded better quality wise and some tracks are great, but then there are some stage themes that just do not fit at all as synth music. For example, Zero's theme in the SNES version has that MMX Soundfont as people call it, but the PSX version of Zero's theme sounds like it's from Street Figther, like a remix to Guiles theme instead of a theme for a completely different character from another franchise.
Ironically, the best thing about remakes, is that they show you how good the original games were, even with their limitations. I don't think people would have realized without the remakes, so there's a silver lining for you. Sometimes it has unexpected issues. One example is character design. In the the NSane Trilogy Remake of the Crash Bandicoot games, I noticed that Crash is wearing blue sweatpants. In the old PS1 games, I always had assumed Crash was wearing blue jeans, and even in some PS2 games, Crash seems to be wearing jeans. It's rather trivial, but illustrates a point. Games with bad graphics leave more to the imagination. In the original, Crash is just wearing blue pants, the fabric could be whatever you imagine it. In the remake, it is definitively sweatpants, not jeans. I also think older games gave you more freedom of movement. It seems a lot more difficult to use glitches and exploits in the remake versions, which make newer games feel more on rails than the classics. There's more frequent uses of invisible walls and overall feels more rigid. I think it's also why there's no cheat codes in newer games. The physics just aren't as fun to play around with. I enjoy remakes, but I plan on keeping my classics too.
Suprised you didn't mention the halo 1 remake. It ruined the atmosphere by redoing a lot of the graphics work, but it did let you play the original style with the click of a setting, which is a decent way of doing things imo
There are notable, even exemplary remakes that buck this disturbing trend. The Metroid Prime Remaster and Halo 2 in the Masterchief Collection are near perfect examples of how to remaster/remake a game in good faith.
FF7 Remake and RE2 Remake are not made to ""preserve"" the original games. They are reimaginings for a reason. The original games are still sold on modern consoles. Your argument makes no sense. If you were talking about, say, Persona 3, a game which has not had a modern rerelease for a long time, then an argument is to be had because Persona 3 Reload doesn't preserve all the content from the original Persona 3, despite it being the "definitive" version. Same for the Final Fantasy 10 remasters which have a worse graphical fidelity but are the only option on modern consoles. But these are remasters. Remakes are not meant to work as games preservation.
Look at comic books. They were limitations to colors because of news print paper. Artists used this limitation to great affect. The “feel” of a comic differs in news print over a graphic novel reproduction. NO ONE talks about this different in comics. It’s lost. The same will hold true with video games. Out with the old. In with the new.
It's probably better to view remakes and remasters as being a new way to experience old games and bring in new players. While ideally the original versions are still available for people to play. Like in 2004, the original Metroid game was remade in Zero Mission but the original version was still included in the remake and was also re-released on its own later the same year. This satisfies both camps as it ensures that the remake is free to liberally adapt the source material without having to worry about being a 1:1 recreation, while those who just want to play the old game isn't left behind.
Very well spoken! I believe that remakes and remasters can be a good way to preserve games when done right. But way to often its not done right. And is more or less a new game vaguely following the orignal as you mentioned. A good example is Final Fantasy 10 vs Final Fantasy 12. In FFXII's case the original devs came back to remaster the game. And they didn't go overboard with graphical overhaul and changes. The graphics and artstyle are the same only in higher resolution with a sprinkle of better lighting and shadow effects. Some quality of life improvements which they wanted to have in the original game, but didn't have time to implement or complete. And the addition of fast forward speed which in hindsight was a good idea. And a re-recorded orhcestal soundtrack, which is better imo, but you can choose between the original ost and remade ost in the games options, which is great. The game adds options but doesen't take away or remove anything from the original game. Its almost more like a "Gold edt" than a remaster really. FFX however is in many ways inferior to the original PS2 version. They lost the scource code to the orignal game so parts of it had to be rebuilt from scracth. The game is ridden with glitches and bugs which weren't in the orignal. And all the faces are messed up and look worse than in the PS2 version. They also look kinda different. The soundtrack also got an orchestral remake. But it sounds different and has a completely different tone that doesen't fit well with the rest of the game and its atmosphere, unlike FFXII. Another example of a remake done right imo is Age of Empires 2: Definitive edt. It's technically a new game in a new engine. Like the Shadow of the Colossus remake. But it looks, plays and feels excatly like the original from 1999 except for more expansions/content added. The game looks like I remember the original looking in 1999 and is looking sharper and better at the same time. My only gripe is that they re-recorded and replaced the original campaign cutscenes with new ones in order to match the newly made/added expansions 20 years later. It wasn't neccessary and it should at least been available to coose in the options which ones you wanted to play. Like the OST in FFXII.
You reminded me a video I watched on Sabersparks channel. The limitations of the old hardware created a certain aesthetic style. This style has certain effects on players. Latest graphics cannot replicate the effects of the old style. They have their own charm and feel.
This is why i don't really want "faithful" remakes, i know that most of the time they won't feel the same anyway so i would rather see what new things can be done with an old game in a remake.
Well, if there's a company that is trying hard to make people forget about the original games of a franchise is Capcom with Resident Evil. With what you mentioned, the way they post on social media, "forgetting" that the original tank control games exist (apart from 1, which they always post the old remake, because the game doesn't have a "modern" recreation). They're even "forgetting* that Code Veronica exists and will even skip it's remake apparently. The originl trilogy is not playable anywhere, apart from directors cut from the first game on select PS programs.
I think a difficulty inherent with preservation is how often they're locked to unique hardware. Every DvD player from any manufacturer (in your region) can play practically any DvD, but an Xbox game is only playable on an Xbox, which was really only made for a few years before the next generation came along. Cabinets are even worse being hardware itself. PC games are a little bit better, unless they're glued to a server to operate. Good luck getting server code when that shuts down.
13:07 This statistic can be further explained besides just Remakes. Games are critically endangered because a common business practice for older games after it was completed and released was to delete everything they had of it. I highly suggest getting into Kingdom Hearts as this series can encapsulate so many interesting discussions about the industry. It's interesting you talk about "Not the same as the original" and "How they replace the original". That always happened long before Remakes were even considered. Let me ask you this: What is the original Final Fantasy 7? This isn't a pedantic question because if you wanted games to truly preserve the original vision then you'd have to take out Ruby Weapon, Emerald Weapon, and the hidden Zack Flashback in Nibelheim because the original Japanese Version of Final Fantasy 7 did not have them. Japanese fans were utterly pissed Western Audiences were being more cared for and had to buy a second international copy to even see these new changes with Zack and the new bosses. Kingdom Hearts is also a very interesting talking point as the Japanese Version versus the International Version is extremely different. Before I get into it I want to point out there is no Japanese Dub of Kingdom Hearts 1 there is only the English Voices with Japanese Subs. There was a clear focus on who they wanted to be more accessible towards when working with Disney. So when the International Version came out we got 3 exclusive Bosses not in the Original Version. We got Ice Titan, Sephiroth, and Kurt Zisa who is a FAN MADE DESIGN from a competition they held in Japan that's only on the International Version of the game. When they finally made Final Mix in Japan they added more Lore and another Boss Fight as well as all the changes from the international version but still no Japanese Dub which allowed English Fans to buy Final Mix and still follow along just fine. Then comes the Kingdom Hearts HD collection which didn't use the same source code as the other versions because they LOST THE SOURCE CODE so they had to rebuild it from the ground up. So all versions of KH1FM on modern consoles are in fact a Remake in every sense of the word despite changing nothing about the graphics or the core gameplay. So what is the "True" Kingdom Hearts 1 experience? Is it the original Japanese Version with the least amount of content? Is it the International Version? Is it the Final Mix version as many fans agree for that to be the definitive full experience the devs want you to have? Or is it the KH HD collection since there is no longer an original source code to even preserve anyways? Then don't even get me started on every version of Street Fighter 2 that has existed. What's the "True Street Fighter 2" experience? Things like that are hard to define especially with the History of Videogame Development. The very games you played at arcades and old SNES titles aren't even the "Original" like you think it is. For a large chunk of these games the original version is objectively the worst version. I'm sorry to bring it up a lot but Kingdom Hearts 1 original version had many issues that needed to be fixed and since it came out in an era in which updates to games via the Internet weren't really a thing they just had to release it in a slightly different version underneath everyone's noses. Really look at Original Japanese FF7 content and ask yourself "Do I prefer this one over the new one?" It's been a question on gamers mind ever since Pong started to have different versions with different controllers. Remakes are not the problem only the symptom. While I do agree for Remakes like FF7 do endanger fans intended experience with the original story it's just not their fault in themselves. It's every new version of a Videogame, remake or port, that makes preservation extremely hard and almost a fools errand to even try. I highly doubt you can convince people that Original Japanese FF7 is the true starting experience and have them play it. Matter of fact nobody even really needs to do that since there are better versions with more content than the original. Next time you pick up any game really ask yourself "What was the first release version like?" 99% of the time is extremely different and most players are so far removed from any real Videogame History that they already think they're playing the Original Versions.... So how can anyone hope to preserve Videogames when even you can't be expected to play the Original releases?
I love this video and have the same feelings. I love FF7 Remake and Rebirth but I know they’re not actually FF7. In fact the devs even clarify that it’s not meant to replace the original at all as it is its own thing. I feel the same about RE4 Remake. I played that 1st before playing the original RE4 from 2005 and loved it. It was my GOTY last year. But deep down I knew something was off about the game. Something was missing. So I went back to play the original and it clicked. The game I played in 2023 wasn’t RE4. It never will be. I still love the remake tho. But yeah remakes will never replace original games. They are not preservation. Even 1 for 1 remakes like Dead Space and Demons Souls still have something missing from the original Anyways thank you for this video. It was very well done 👌🏾
9:40 I disagree, I think the games identiy is everything else besides its flaws. Like theres only so much you can do to improve on pixel art, I'd rathed the games be in their ultimate state then forcefully bound to standards we've surpassed
It is indeed something else, no matter how substantial the changes, something has been altered about the game in any remake. For me I care more about game availability than preservation since I’m not a game collector or historian. The role of emulation in gaming should be reaching an all time high.
When it comes to old games, What I like as a remaster, is to have the option to play at high res (even higher than 4k), I'd like to play them in 240fps in the future (I have a 144hz tv) and add Filters to both 2d and 3d elements in a game 6xbrz is good enough for now, until I start playing in 8k. For NES games (and games of that generation and earlier), I like the blocky pixel art. Yeah, I don't like the bilinear filtering you put on those NES games lol.
I agree that remakes are not preservation, these are refreshed versions of the old. I do think that the older original versions should preserved on a digital market that is openly accessible for everyone to buy the original games while still having access to the remakes or remasters and reboots. The gaming industry need to align itself with the gamers freedom to choose what they want to buy instead of re-flushing the fucking games and pretend nothing happened.
Resident evil 1-3 originals are no where to be seen legally and re3make sucks. On the bright side Emulation is only hard for Nintendo games, Sony and even Microsoft don’t really give a shit
I wonder about the trend of only releasing localized versions of older games as full remakes, because “making a new translation would basically be a brand new product” *coughs in Nintendo with Fire Emblem Gaiden and the Famicom Detective Club games*
Tired of remakes honestly,the game industry is dead on creative ideas.i feel like ive been in the 90s for rhe past 5 years.i guess thats 20 years so it makes sense but damn.i buy these new games but then never feel like playing them cause they are remakes.i kinda prefer ff7 is different even if i dont agree with those changes.gaming sucks at the moment,old school is in
While I feel like some of the examples used weren't exactly precise to what makes some remakes worse than the original games, many remakes try too hard to modernize the way a game feels, like the upcoming silent hill 2 remake, when that feel, in regards to controls, are integral to the experience found in those games, silent hill isn't as scary without the stilted movement, so having the player be able to just strafe away from an attack removes any form of risk from just running into an enemy blindly, which forces the player to take their time.
FF7 remake and FF7 Rebirth are not really "remakes". it is more like an alternate timeline, even it is connected to OG FF7. It is almost like Sephiroth change timeline. Pretty cool in my opinion. It felt new game. If you don't like the new FF7, you can play OG FF7 on PS4/PS5 at a cheap price.
True but I would've loved to see a FF7 that has Remake's graphics, but being 1 to 1 the original with some added epilogue content, like Xenoblade Definitive Edition.
I agree with many of your points here, but I disagree strongly with how you view remakes. You say FF7 Remake and the RE remakes are not remakes. But they are closest things we actually have to video game remakes. Remakes are SUPPOSED to be whole new games. What we usually get are remasters. And while yes, remasters are often viewed as replacements in both video games AND movies. (Which is why it's often hard to view the original versions of movies these days too. We usually only have the remasters.) Remakes are not viewed as replacements in either industry. Both the originals and remakes of both FF7 and the RE games are available on modern consoles. And your issue with Resident Evil 4 just being called Resident Evil 4 doesn't prove anything. Movies do the same thing, and more often. I don't understand why video games always feel the need to throw some stupid subtitle on the end of everything, even if it's only a remaster. I can't think of any movies that feel the need to do that. Disney's live action remakes use the same name as the originals but no one, not even Disney themselves, view them as replacements. Edit: The only remake I can think of that COULD potentially be viewed as a replacement is Another Code Recollection. Since the original Another Code games were not ported over. But since it's impossible to port those games over since their gameplay is so closely tied to the original hardware, there's nothing that can really be done with that. That's part of the problem with Nintendo using gimmicky gameplay on their consoles. It makes it really hard to preserve those games after they abandon those gimmicks.
The RE games are Remakes yes. The FF7 games aren't. They fundamentally change core plot.elements. How can it be a remake if Wegde survives? His death (Along woth Jessie and Biggs) fundamentally MAKES Berret's character in the original FF7. Now his character will almost certainly lose that arc in the Remake. I'm not saying the Remake games need to be 100% 1 to 1. What I'm saying is to ADD to the story that is there, and give more attention to details that wasn't in the original, but don't change major plot elements. That's not what a Remake is SUPPOSED to do.
@Xxandrew01 Even if major details of the story are changed, it's still a remake. Plenty of movies have done this in remakes too. Whether fans are happy with those changes are irrelevant. It's still a remake. Plenty of movies make far bigger changes than having a relatively minor character not die. I love FF7 Remake, although I'm not happy with what the ending might imply about future games. I don't want it to stray TOO far from the original. I'm still pretty early in Rebirth. But Wedge surviving is not a big deal to me. I don't see how it's going to alter Barrett's character arc that much. Jessie still died. Although the ending of the first also seems to imply Biggs survived too. I don't think it's a big deal, although it depends on how they handle it later. So far, I haven't seen it stray so far that it's a problem. But still gotta wait and see. Like I said, still only on chapter 2 of the second game.
I agree with most of the things you have mentioned, but I do feel like it's worth mentioning that FFVII "Remake" is a sequel to the original and it's not pretending to be a remake (even though the title says otherwise, but that's a tongue-in-cheek reference to what Sephiroth is doing). Also, Square does go the extra mile to re-release their games on modern hardware relatively untouched, it's easy to find their older FF games on PC storefronts and even mobile storefronts
@@hurricane7727 yeah, you right. They also don't tell people that it's not the full story. There's no "part 1" in the title. But, again, they purposely used the word "remake" in a different way than the average Joe would expect. Kind of reminds me of Obi-Wan's famous "from a certain point of view" line lol
You literally can download all games ever made from torrents, that's all the preservation you need, if someday the internet stops existing we are going to have worse problems than videogames.
Oh then here's the Hard Mode of this discussion. MMOs lifecycles. Should original FF14 be preserved? When should a game stop updating? It's truly not a simple solution because the real problem is gamers lack of industry knowledge and shit tastes in games that make these problems much worse. Seems like people will always spring the bear trap so long as the treat in the center looks tasty 🪤
Another smaller/lower effort opinion piece for you. Got another big video in the works as a deep dive on a specific game, so stay tuned. But in the mean time, these smaller videos will come out whilst you wait.
Hope you enjoy :)
(also first)
Ooh big video? Excited
The only reason republicans dont act more like russia and democrats hide from republicans is because on our side of the fence their subject to our laws imagine judges letting people get away with murder because their scared of communists and wonder why they only have dumb people left willing to debate them ideocracy's danger at its finest
American capitalism at its finest we sell our values to compete with 3rd world countries values
For actual conservation I would love for remasters and remakes to include the original games so you can have the best of both worlds. Still, gotta keep emulation close by.
That is the only good solution. I quite like the Final Fantasy VII Remakes, but I feel they must have the original game pre-installed in them as a bonus if they are to act as true preservation, since FF7R is more of a pseudo sequel than a remake.
@@Ardrid_ the FF7 shit feels so corrupted to me. the original game is loved for a lot of reasons, was considered one of their best stories and iconic characters... skip 10+ years of fans asking fro a graphical update and they finally decide to start something, and its a sick an twisted different groups version of the game and story. my one big example is how the story and group is portrayed in the original vers the remake. the avalanche is an eco terrorist group, fighting shinra to save the planet, there is a clear theme that the government is bad, but our heroes arent good either. in the remake fucking cloud and jesse and her dad have this shitty lovey dovey cutsey tootsey storyline as cloud gets sent to cause a distraction where he murders the fuck out of ground level grunts. as hes on the ground LITERALLY CHOPPING PEOPLE INTO PIECES 2 other avalanche people show up to kick jokes and act like we are in a comedy. the visision and theme is broken as fuck and the new players and game creators have no idea what theyve done. its flawed and corrupted
@@Ardrid_FF7 is still purchasable on modern systems tho
Isn't there some sort of patent that would interfere with that?
Or did it expire already?
Imagine TLoU Part 1 having TLoU Remastered and TLoU (PS3) on the disc 💀
"you will own nothing and you will lose everything we will control everything you will pay it no question asked and be happy "
Comic artists had to come together, particularly from the mid 80-90s to be credited for their work, get their work returned to them and not destroyed stolen or sold by the publisher. Someone esteemed by the industry needs to lead devs and gamers alike against publishers to preserve games on a large scale. It’s not blue sky thinking. We just need a leader people will rally behind like Jeff Keeley or Reggie Fisame. someone of that stature. The movie industry is the same. They burned original film negatives for decades until creatives fought back. Ego and greed driven talentless executives and ‘leaders’ have always been the same, it’s just gaming’s turn. Scorsese has been doing it for decades for film.
Remakes are more like song covers, most of the time they are meant to be Different interpretations of the original work.
This is not true, though. No one thinks this. That definition is for Adaptations. When people hear 'remake' they think of the same game being updated with better graphics/sound.
A cover of a song still sounds like the song. Game remakes barely keep the same few notes in the song
@@MA-go7ee
"...the same game being updated with better graphics/sound."
That's called a remastered my dude.
remaster definition:
to create a new master of especially by altering or enhancing the sound quality of an older recording
Emulation is moral obligation against company not making their product available to the public.
And for what it's worth, I think it's disingenuous to point to Nintendo taking down Yuzu and say "Emulation is getting harder and harder as companies clamp down." The Switch is their CURRENT SYSTEM THEY ARE ACTIVELY MAKING GAMES FOR. I have 100+ NES, SNES, N64 or Gameboy games on my phone right now, they're not coming for those! Emulation of ABANDONWARE is not at risk, and is absolutely about the preservation of art.
That said, I'm absolutely terrified of the main points of the video and everything else is totally valid. I just thought that sentence was a bit "the sky is falling."
American capitalism at its finest we sell our values to compete with 3rd world countries values
@@JUnit41484Plus, the Yuzu devs were asking for it by making the newest versions of the emulator only available through Patreon, which means they were profiting off of it (A big no-no for emulators). And that one tweet where they bragged that a ton of people were playing TOTK a week before it officially released was just hubris.
Honestly I think that something like Crash Banidcoot or Sypro would be better because you can still play the original FFVII
Yeah, I hate that I can’t buy the original Spyro trilogy on the PS5
@@ignitusz2015I bought Spyro Trilogy on the Ps3 when it was there
Kind of annoying how little ps1-ps3 games are available on PS4/ps5.
Sony need to fix this going forward. The legacy playstation library is important. They did a great job on PS3 but that is all cut off from the current ecosystem. And PS3 was quite a long time ago now.
Well good thing you can play final fantasy 7 on literally anything
I don't think anyone was ever arguing that remakes are game preservation, rather just a fun reimagining of the source material.
If the remake is faithful, then yeah it pretty much is preserving that game. Even better if the remake heavily improves the original experience. As for FFVII, the original game is already on all modern platforms in 1080p HD and with quality of life improvements, so accessibility for that particular title isn't an issue. The original FFVII has actually aged a lot better than some people think outside of the shoddy and outdated graphics. The gameplay and battles are still incredibly fun and despite the more cyberpunk setting you can definitely tell that this is still the same classic Final Fantasy style, unlike the newer titles. It definitely feels like a sequel to FF6 in that same sort of "retro" style despite the leap in technology. The animations aren't even that overly long outside of summon animations, unlike FF9 which just CHUGGED performance and animation wise and required speed up to be playable.
I think that old arcade games really encapsulate this whole ordeal of formal and informal game preservation [along with emulation as a whole as part of INFORMAL...and whatever it takes for formal preservation to catchup]:
The arcade games in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise are ridiculous in the fact that these games, brought over as little minigames to spice up the main game, are the first time some of those SEGA old arcade titles have been ported in years or decades to consoles...if not *ever.*
For starters, Yakuza 6 and 7 were the only ways you could play VF5 in modern hardware...and if you don't own a PS4 to play Final Showdown, then *it still is.* And progressively there had been more few rare picks, specially when Gaiden dropped and SEGA had the tech for emulating Model 3 games.
Fighting Vipers and Motor Raid with Judgement. Sonic the Fighters with Lost Judgement. Daytona USA 2 and Fighting Vipers 2 in Gaiden, and SpikeOut/SEGA Bass Fishing/Virtua Fighter 3tb in the latest Infinite Wealth.
Out of those 8 games [as I'm not counting VF5], 3 of those were still stuck in X360/PS3 [FV, STF and Bass Fishing- SBF being the only one that also got ported to Steam as well], 2 hadn't been ported since the Dreamcast era [FV2 and VF3], and *THREE had never been ported before*: DUSA2, Motor Raid and the ORIGINAL version of Spikeout. You could argue that Spikeout Battle Street for Xbox was kind of a port...but I would call it akin to a "remake" in that it aims for the same gameplay and actually contains almost all of the same levels/enemies/gameplay but with a coat of paint and differences in presentation.
That's only the ones salvaged by Like a Dragon, because a bunch of other Model 1/2/3 and older SEGA arcade games at best got ported to the Wii [the HOTD games and Gunblade/LA Machineguns] and X360/PS3, but at worst...and also at most by a wide margin, have *NEVER* been ported or are stuck in consoles like the DC and PS2. And then there's cases like Virtual-On Masterpiece Collection, having all four entries of the franchise, being a Japan exclusive.
And THAT was just SEGA. There's so much cool arcade games that are legally inaccessible either because of cabinet gimmicks [light-gun games], licensing [MVC1 and MVC2 are a HUGE example of how that has got in the way of a forever awaited return], defunct developers, and how developers not only wouldn't have the interest but also the skill to figure out how to port those, like Konami's wacky ahh assortment of arcade games running on strange boards like Thrill Drive on the Konami Viper.
Think about how many games are only available through emulation due to those arcade game oddities or licensing. *Now think about how there's still a handful of games out there, arcade or not, that are completely unemulated as of today, meaning that they are COMPLETELY UNPLAYABLE TO ANYONE THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN TO OWN A VERY EXPENSIVE PIECE OF THE ORIGINAL HARDWARE.* And the kicker is that there had been a fair amount of time between the original SEGA arcade game releases, the time when unofficial emulators were started, then were polished...and when those ports got released. Model 3 games had been unemulated until 2012-2013 in a rough state and only had been getting polished the past years.
If you had wanted to play Daytona 2 and Spikeout without unofficial emulation though, then you had to pray that you found an original cabinet...or had been waiting over 20 years just to see these damn games finally ported officially. And once again, that's not even talking about games in licensing hell like Scud Race and SEGA Rally.
...I apologize for the surprisingly long comment, but there's definitely a conversation to be had about game preservation being really, REALLY low beyond the big known titles if we were to only count officially re-released games as preserved, and even there's still some *unemulated* cases out there. Yet you can ask anyone about most of the GC and PS2 library on some of their favorite games that aren't purchaseable anymore.
Yeah. Its kinda rough out there. My heart goes out to the F-Zero fans waiting for a GX port and also the Need for Speed fans having to resort to the seven seas to play the older gems from the franchise as those are perpetually shafted out of sale- which is arguably even possible to say that its caused by the heavy car and music licensing, a bigger bummer than assuming that its because of laziness/invoking FOMO since you know that licensing is often considered not worth dealing with again for publishers regarding re-releases.
Arcade Games in regards to game preservation is actually something thats extremely obvious of me to talk about in hindsight now that you brought it up. Its even more dire than home console game emulation since arcade machines were produced in the 10s of thousands in the most successful cases rather than the millions. There's less arcade machines for say Virtua Fighter 2's arcade version out in the wild than copies of Virtua Fighter 2 on Sega Saturn. The best way currently to play VF2 is through the PS3 port of the game, which thankfully runs very well on the RPCS3 Emulator, but if you want to play the ORIGINAL version of VF2 in arcades... you need an arcade machine, because not even emulation can run VF2 well (MAME can boot the game and its technically playable, but the sound and graphics are glitchy as hell and it crashes often even on the highest spec PC's).
And thats just for POPULAR arcade games, games like SoulCalibur 3 Arcade Edition were only produced in very sparse amounts and has never been re-released by Namco. Thankfully, there is a Namco System 256 emulator that runs SC3AE fairly well currently, but its no replacement for the original as of yet.
Its easy to get the same experience through emulation of home console games because as long as the emulator is good enough and you have the correct controller on hand, the game should feel almost exactly like the original did. But arcade games are often built for specific control styles, button layouts, and that's not even considering Driving games and Shooting games.
Unfortunately, its incredibly likely that some games are inevitably going to be lost to time. We're just not at the point yet where that's beginning to happen, but there will come a point where the last SC3AE arcade machine stops working.
@@Ardrid_ It is very surprising to me that you happened to acknowledge specifically not just VF2 but also specifically SCIIIAE.
It IS emulated in Play! which is the only emu that runs NS246/256 as PCSX2 does not support them...but Play itself is relatively slower/more demanding due to how it hasn't been out and polished as long as PCSX2 is. And if there's people that often show footage of "Arcade Edition", either its from real hardware or a hacked version of the console SCIII that adds the extra characters back...but per se isn't *exactly* the real deal.
Reminds me of people assuming that F-Zero AX is the same as F-Zero GX but with a different menu [It has different tech and physics from GX *and* has beta GX tracks if you use codes to access them, unlike "AX-in-GX" which controls exactly the same as GX], mailly because of how the real AX was also unplayable outside of real cabs until many years later where Nintendont added support for it, and then a handful more years later for the Dolphin Triforce branch getting updated to work with the game.
With Virtua Fighter 2, MAME is actually NOT the most ideal way to emulate that or any other Model 2 games. It has only been emulated out there for years outside of the PS2 and PS3/X360 ports due to Model 2 Emulator by ElSemi. But I know that some modern rigs also happen to have issues with it due to how old it is.
VF2 is one of those games that did get ported to some of the Yakuza games...but yeah, imagine that the only way to grab that one in modern platforms is to grab Yakuza 5, Like a Dragon or LAD Gaiden- and none of those have online like the PS3/X360 ports did.
And yeah, imagine having a bunch of Yakuza games that, okay, sometimes they add brand new games, but so far there's never a single game that bothers in having *everything* as some entries omit previously seen titles. So if you want both VF2, VF3, FV2 and VF5 in modern platforms...get ready to shell out for three separate games [LAD for VF2/VF5, IW for VF3, Gaiden for FV2].
No wonder why people would like to see a proper arcade collection just to have everything in one place without having to go through entirely different games just to play them.
@@ArcadeStrikerI wish Namco Released a Soul Calibur Collection of Arcade Versions on the Ps4, Ps5 X series but alas Tekken is the Cashcow not Soul Calibur
This is a fact, remakes and remasters are not "preservation", the honest ones admit that what they want is the replacement of the old game because their brains can't handle "old mechanics". Ports and emulation is the only preservation of the original games
Remasters by deffinition are preservation lol. Remakes are not tho correct.
"Because their brains can't handle old mechanics"
More accurately, because most gamers are so narrow minded they aren't willing to try, much less appreciate, anything that doesn't conform to contemporary design trends.
Turn based? Outdated. Lives? Outdated. Set difficulty? Outdated. Fixed camera? Outdated.
It makes me sad that most people just seem to want games to be as homogenous as possible.
This is a really interesting discussion to have. I love remasters that let you play the original versions of the games, because the developers recognize that they are making a new creation which is not a true preservation of the original experience. I think an interesting branch to this are obsolete ports being the only purchasable versions of games. Before this new Remaster (which is not out yet and may have its own issues) Battlefront 2's PC port was based on the severely handicapped 2005 PC port. The PS3 Yakuza games on PC suffer from gameplay bugs introduced by a higher framerate (thankfully fixable though modding). There is also a long breakdown on how Sonic Adventure's PC port is based on a long line of careless and broken ports, all inferior to the original Dreamcast version.
With the Resident Evil Remakes, I love how in Japan, they are called Biohazard: RE. It's a great reference to the international title, and advertises how they are not the same as the original games. I think anyone who thinks that they should be replacements to the originals don't understand their purpose; even the developers said that they created RE4 Remake in a way not to be a true replacement to the original.
better comparison to the beginning of the videogames industry is the history of arcade and amusement machines
on a totally unrelated note, the state of electro-mechanical arcade machines is horrendously bad, to the point where we dont even know where certain games originally came from
I hate when developers and publishers releases a remake/remastered of an original game and then straight up REMOVE/DELISTED the original game Like Rockstar Games replacing the GTA Trilogy or Blizzard replacing the original Warcraft 3.
Fact: emulating and pirating IS game preservation
Well good thing the original FF7 is easily playable on modern platforms. Regardless of what your opinion is on Remake/Rebirth, don’t act like those games are erasing the original from memory.
I don't think FF7 is the best example here. Considering the OG is available on most modern platforms (albeit with QoL features), and with 7thHeaven on PC, the OG has really never been in a better state.
I love Remake & Rebirth to death but they will never replace my love for the original, not because FF7 PS1 is some "perfect" game but because it really does have it's own unique feel as do the Remakes vice versa. Also another example of preservation becoming more difficult is Nintendo making unique consoles for unique playing games. I'm not saying Nintendo should stop doing this heck no, it's just that it's hard to emulate and preserve the 3DS and WII U experience without...well, a 3DS or WII U. Anyway don't know what else to say other then i completely agree. Honestly fantastic video Ardrid.
Currently I think the best setup for DS/3DS/Wii U preservation will probably end up being using a steam deck connected as a second monitor to a TV or other monitor to use touch controls like those originals. But even that solution is quite janky and doesn't really replicate the original system well enough for a means of preservation. I hope they can somehow become more accessible, but I doubt it.
I never understood the part of "preservation", remakes always felt like an update, or a 2nd attempt at the same idea they had a long time ago, and this is only in the case the same studio and devs do it because more often than not a remake is made by different people, people who have no reason to understand what were they aiming for at the time and are pretty likely to fail at that.
Remakes at the end of the day are ways to make content more accessible, but is never going to replace the original, tho there are games those kind of did, have you heard of Leisure Suit Larry? I used believe this was the first one th-cam.com/video/9mNVFnCknyU/w-d-xo.html and one day I learned THIS th-cam.com/video/Fp0nfDW2iJo/w-d-xo.html is the original one no one ever talks about whenever LSL comes into conversation
I will actually go on a hate campaign if PlayStation have Bluepoint remake Bloodbourne instead of just porting the game to pc and ps5 with a fixed frame rate. Bluepoint's remake of Demon Souls actually pissed me off. They threw the original soundtrack and artstyle in the bin, completely disregarding the intention of the original developers and says the people who disagreed are just nostalgic. It doesn't help that the original demon souls is trapped on the ps3 and no longer has online functionality. It's gross.
Oh yeah I heard about them changing the music of Demon Souls Remake. Thats is honestly insane to me, imagine if a film company remastered a beloved film but then changed the soundtrack.
A lot of what happens in remaking/remastering games is very similar to what happened when Lucasfilm released the 1997 cuts of the Star Wars Original Trilogy, with the added and changed scenes with CGI. It doesn't matter if you think you're adhering to the creators original intention or you think that change will make the product better, the thing exists as it does and deserves to be preserved the way it is.
@@Ardrid_ Wow, this situation reminds me a lot of what happened to the Persona 1 PSP port. I remember enjoying the soundtrack to that game, then looking it up on youtube only to find something completely different. Apparently, they changed it for this port for some reason - probably to appeal to the newfound Persona 3-4 fanbase, since it's from the same composer of those games. When I found out this, I felt like I was robbed of an experience. Whenever people praise or talk about the game's soundtrack, it's never about the PSP OST, so I feel excluded from the discussion in a way one normally shouldn't.
The worst thing about this, however, is that it's still the best way to play this game currently. The localization of the PS1 version sucks. It changes lots of the characters' names and designs, and is written in a very archaic, unnatural way. Thankfully, there's a mod that fixed the PSP OST, but only partially since it's incomplete. This just goes to show how accurate game preservation is entirely up to independent hobbyists.
@Ardrid_ I don't have to imagine, movie studios do this all the time. They change the color grading on Blu Ray's regularly.
Watching this vid, two games come to mind: Majora's Mask 3D and the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake
To think that the original pong will go into the public domain in 2068 is insane and tells you how young this industry is when steamboat Willy became public domain 3 months ago if we consider the film industry started 1890 the time between then 1928 the year where steamboat Willie released it 38 years in that same time video games went from pong to red dead redemption 1 steamboat Willie was the fist big sound cartoon and red dead a deep and complex story voice acting sound and music equal to movies a wide colour pallet and being at there point were games were seen as art you feel how fast moving this medium is when a year later Skyrim and Minecraft released what adrid considered a turning point for games and 5 years before that video games were still had a lot of inherent controversy because of people thinking that caused violence and weren’t art I don’t need to reiterate my point
At least Square has made Final Fantasy VII wildly accessible to modern audiences, the Remake trilogy is not a replacement like some other titles. Spyro and Crash trilogy comes to mind, Demons Souls, etc
True. In The Reignited Version it Changed Characters up a Alot
i'm glad to see more people start talking about this issue as i am deeply passionate about video game preservation, in particular minecraft. while it is the best-selling game of all time, the first 19 versions of the game are entirely missing, with many many more later versions missing, even as recently as 2017, with some features in the game only hypothetically possible due to the versions necessary to obtain them being missing, let alone all the mods, videos, images, and other associated media of the game's early life that has been washed away in the sands of time. the early versions of the game are COMPLETELY different from the modern game in basically every way, and the experiences of playing them are in no way interchangeable
“You dont sell it, then i don’t have to buy it” and I agree with the remake thing pikmin 1 and 2 remake are not the GameCube version, like i would not get a switch game running on my pc but gamecube, wii, wiiu hell yea i will
Tomb Raider Remaster is a pretty bad example given you can toggle off the remaster graphics when ever you want
i mean forget about aesthetics and gameplay effects(although i would also like to add that some remakes are horrendously unsympathetic to the original aesthetics), preservation is about how it really was; the complete experience of a work of art or technology
One example i can think of with technology changing the atmosphere of a game would be the PSX version of Mega Man X3 and the SNES version. The SNES version had the chiptune the MMX series was known for, but the PSX replaced it with Synth. And yeah it sounded better quality wise and some tracks are great, but then there are some stage themes that just do not fit at all as synth music. For example, Zero's theme in the SNES version has that MMX Soundfont as people call it, but the PSX version of Zero's theme sounds like it's from Street Figther, like a remix to Guiles theme instead of a theme for a completely different character from another franchise.
Ironically, the best thing about remakes, is that they show you how good the original games were, even with their limitations. I don't think people would have realized without the remakes, so there's a silver lining for you. Sometimes it has unexpected issues. One example is character design. In the the NSane Trilogy Remake of the Crash Bandicoot games, I noticed that Crash is wearing blue sweatpants. In the old PS1 games, I always had assumed Crash was wearing blue jeans, and even in some PS2 games, Crash seems to be wearing jeans. It's rather trivial, but illustrates a point. Games with bad graphics leave more to the imagination. In the original, Crash is just wearing blue pants, the fabric could be whatever you imagine it. In the remake, it is definitively sweatpants, not jeans. I also think older games gave you more freedom of movement. It seems a lot more difficult to use glitches and exploits in the remake versions, which make newer games feel more on rails than the classics. There's more frequent uses of invisible walls and overall feels more rigid. I think it's also why there's no cheat codes in newer games. The physics just aren't as fun to play around with. I enjoy remakes, but I plan on keeping my classics too.
For some reason I started to think about George Lucas remastering the original Star Wars trilogy when he got the tools (CGI) to do so...
I still have the og Re4 on ps4 and it terrifys me more than the remake since you can't move and shoot at the same time 😂
Also the Remake cut Animations and changed Leon's Personality.
Suprised you didn't mention the halo 1 remake. It ruined the atmosphere by redoing a lot of the graphics work, but it did let you play the original style with the click of a setting, which is a decent way of doing things imo
There are notable, even exemplary remakes that buck this disturbing trend. The Metroid Prime Remaster and Halo 2 in the Masterchief Collection are near perfect examples of how to remaster/remake a game in good faith.
Thats cuz those are literally remasters and not remakes lol.
@@aureateseigneur5317 Halo mcc straddles the definition of remake and remaster
FF7 Remake and RE2 Remake are not made to ""preserve"" the original games. They are reimaginings for a reason. The original games are still sold on modern consoles. Your argument makes no sense.
If you were talking about, say, Persona 3, a game which has not had a modern rerelease for a long time, then an argument is to be had because Persona 3 Reload doesn't preserve all the content from the original Persona 3, despite it being the "definitive" version. Same for the Final Fantasy 10 remasters which have a worse graphical fidelity but are the only option on modern consoles. But these are remasters. Remakes are not meant to work as games preservation.
Look at comic books. They were limitations to colors because of news print paper. Artists used this limitation to great affect. The “feel” of a comic differs in news print over a graphic novel reproduction. NO ONE talks about this different in comics. It’s lost. The same will hold true with video games. Out with the old. In with the new.
It's probably better to view remakes and remasters as being a new way to experience old games and bring in new players. While ideally the original versions are still available for people to play. Like in 2004, the original Metroid game was remade in Zero Mission but the original version was still included in the remake and was also re-released on its own later the same year.
This satisfies both camps as it ensures that the remake is free to liberally adapt the source material without having to worry about being a 1:1 recreation, while those who just want to play the old game isn't left behind.
Very well spoken! I believe that remakes and remasters can be a good way to preserve games when done right. But way to often its not done right. And is more or less a new game vaguely following the orignal as you mentioned.
A good example is Final Fantasy 10 vs Final Fantasy 12. In FFXII's case the original devs came back to remaster the game. And they didn't go overboard with graphical overhaul and changes. The graphics and artstyle are the same only in higher resolution with a sprinkle of better lighting and shadow effects. Some quality of life improvements which they wanted to have in the original game, but didn't have time to implement or complete. And the addition of fast forward speed which in hindsight was a good idea. And a re-recorded orhcestal soundtrack, which is better imo, but you can choose between the original ost and remade ost in the games options, which is great. The game adds options but doesen't take away or remove anything from the original game. Its almost more like a "Gold edt" than a remaster really.
FFX however is in many ways inferior to the original PS2 version. They lost the scource code to the orignal game so parts of it had to be rebuilt from scracth. The game is ridden with glitches and bugs which weren't in the orignal. And all the faces are messed up and look worse than in the PS2 version. They also look kinda different. The soundtrack also got an orchestral remake. But it sounds different and has a completely different tone that doesen't fit well with the rest of the game and its atmosphere, unlike FFXII.
Another example of a remake done right imo is Age of Empires 2: Definitive edt. It's technically a new game in a new engine. Like the Shadow of the Colossus remake. But it looks, plays and feels excatly like the original from 1999 except for more expansions/content added. The game looks like I remember the original looking in 1999 and is looking sharper and better at the same time. My only gripe is that they re-recorded and replaced the original campaign cutscenes with new ones in order to match the newly made/added expansions 20 years later. It wasn't neccessary and it should at least been available to coose in the options which ones you wanted to play. Like the OST in FFXII.
You reminded me a video I watched on Sabersparks channel. The limitations of the old hardware created a certain aesthetic style. This style has certain effects on players. Latest graphics cannot replicate the effects of the old style. They have their own charm and feel.
This is why i don't really want "faithful" remakes, i know that most of the time they won't feel the same anyway so i would rather see what new things can be done with an old game in a remake.
Well, if there's a company that is trying hard to make people forget about the original games of a franchise is Capcom with Resident Evil. With what you mentioned, the way they post on social media, "forgetting" that the original tank control games exist (apart from 1, which they always post the old remake, because the game doesn't have a "modern" recreation). They're even "forgetting* that Code Veronica exists and will even skip it's remake apparently. The originl trilogy is not playable anywhere, apart from directors cut from the first game on select PS programs.
I think a difficulty inherent with preservation is how often they're locked to unique hardware. Every DvD player from any manufacturer (in your region) can play practically any DvD, but an Xbox game is only playable on an Xbox, which was really only made for a few years before the next generation came along. Cabinets are even worse being hardware itself. PC games are a little bit better, unless they're glued to a server to operate. Good luck getting server code when that shuts down.
13:07 This statistic can be further explained besides just Remakes. Games are critically endangered because a common business practice for older games after it was completed and released was to delete everything they had of it. I highly suggest getting into Kingdom Hearts as this series can encapsulate so many interesting discussions about the industry. It's interesting you talk about "Not the same as the original" and "How they replace the original". That always happened long before Remakes were even considered. Let me ask you this: What is the original Final Fantasy 7? This isn't a pedantic question because if you wanted games to truly preserve the original vision then you'd have to take out Ruby Weapon, Emerald Weapon, and the hidden Zack Flashback in Nibelheim because the original Japanese Version of Final Fantasy 7 did not have them. Japanese fans were utterly pissed Western Audiences were being more cared for and had to buy a second international copy to even see these new changes with Zack and the new bosses.
Kingdom Hearts is also a very interesting talking point as the Japanese Version versus the International Version is extremely different. Before I get into it I want to point out there is no Japanese Dub of Kingdom Hearts 1 there is only the English Voices with Japanese Subs. There was a clear focus on who they wanted to be more accessible towards when working with Disney. So when the International Version came out we got 3 exclusive Bosses not in the Original Version. We got Ice Titan, Sephiroth, and Kurt Zisa who is a FAN MADE DESIGN from a competition they held in Japan that's only on the International Version of the game. When they finally made Final Mix in Japan they added more Lore and another Boss Fight as well as all the changes from the international version but still no Japanese Dub which allowed English Fans to buy Final Mix and still follow along just fine.
Then comes the Kingdom Hearts HD collection which didn't use the same source code as the other versions because they LOST THE SOURCE CODE so they had to rebuild it from the ground up. So all versions of KH1FM on modern consoles are in fact a Remake in every sense of the word despite changing nothing about the graphics or the core gameplay. So what is the "True" Kingdom Hearts 1 experience? Is it the original Japanese Version with the least amount of content? Is it the International Version? Is it the Final Mix version as many fans agree for that to be the definitive full experience the devs want you to have? Or is it the KH HD collection since there is no longer an original source code to even preserve anyways?
Then don't even get me started on every version of Street Fighter 2 that has existed. What's the "True Street Fighter 2" experience? Things like that are hard to define especially with the History of Videogame Development. The very games you played at arcades and old SNES titles aren't even the "Original" like you think it is. For a large chunk of these games the original version is objectively the worst version. I'm sorry to bring it up a lot but Kingdom Hearts 1 original version had many issues that needed to be fixed and since it came out in an era in which updates to games via the Internet weren't really a thing they just had to release it in a slightly different version underneath everyone's noses.
Really look at Original Japanese FF7 content and ask yourself "Do I prefer this one over the new one?" It's been a question on gamers mind ever since Pong started to have different versions with different controllers.
Remakes are not the problem only the symptom. While I do agree for Remakes like FF7 do endanger fans intended experience with the original story it's just not their fault in themselves. It's every new version of a Videogame, remake or port, that makes preservation extremely hard and almost a fools errand to even try. I highly doubt you can convince people that Original Japanese FF7 is the true starting experience and have them play it. Matter of fact nobody even really needs to do that since there are better versions with more content than the original. Next time you pick up any game really ask yourself "What was the first release version like?" 99% of the time is extremely different and most players are so far removed from any real Videogame History that they already think they're playing the Original Versions.... So how can anyone hope to preserve Videogames when even you can't be expected to play the Original releases?
I love this video and have the same feelings. I love FF7 Remake and Rebirth but I know they’re not actually FF7. In fact the devs even clarify that it’s not meant to replace the original at all as it is its own thing. I feel the same about RE4 Remake. I played that 1st before playing the original RE4 from 2005 and loved it. It was my GOTY last year. But deep down I knew something was off about the game. Something was missing. So I went back to play the original and it clicked. The game I played in 2023 wasn’t RE4. It never will be. I still love the remake tho. But yeah remakes will never replace original games. They are not preservation. Even 1 for 1 remakes like Dead Space and Demons Souls still have something missing from the original
Anyways thank you for this video. It was very well done 👌🏾
9:40
I disagree, I think the games identiy is everything else besides its flaws.
Like theres only so much you can do to improve on pixel art, I'd rathed the games be in their ultimate state then forcefully bound to standards we've surpassed
It is indeed something else, no matter how substantial the changes, something has been altered about the game in any remake.
For me I care more about game availability than preservation since I’m not a game collector or historian.
The role of emulation in gaming should be reaching an all time high.
5:09 it wasn't. It was just console limitations again.
There's only so much you can make a place look like shit before you just don't want to be there
i just wanted to play arkham origins in ps4 without being streamed, but you know, sony hates ps3
Ps3 Version has Online. Wait 40 minutes and it will work.
When it comes to old games, What I like as a remaster, is to have the option to play at high res (even higher than 4k), I'd like to play them in 240fps in the future (I have a 144hz tv) and add Filters to both 2d and 3d elements in a game 6xbrz is good enough for now, until I start playing in 8k. For NES games (and games of that generation and earlier), I like the blocky pixel art. Yeah, I don't like the bilinear filtering you put on those NES games lol.
I agree that remakes are not preservation, these are refreshed versions of the old.
I do think that the older original versions should preserved on a digital market that is openly accessible for everyone to buy the original games while still having access to the remakes or remasters and reboots.
The gaming industry need to align itself with the gamers freedom to choose what they want to buy instead of re-flushing the fucking games and pretend nothing happened.
Resident evil 1-3 originals are no where to be seen legally and re3make sucks. On the bright side Emulation is only hard for Nintendo games, Sony and even Microsoft don’t really give a shit
They should just port the original versions with updated fps and widescreen
I wonder about the trend of only releasing localized versions of older games as full remakes, because “making a new translation would basically be a brand new product” *coughs in Nintendo with Fire Emblem Gaiden and the Famicom Detective Club games*
Well,that sucks for developers!
If you are not going to preserve games,others will!😅
It’s up to the players and collectors to preserve old games. Games companies are only in for the money.
Tired of remakes honestly,the game industry is dead on creative ideas.i feel like ive been in the 90s for rhe past 5 years.i guess thats 20 years so it makes sense but damn.i buy these new games but then never feel like playing them cause they are remakes.i kinda prefer ff7 is different even if i dont agree with those changes.gaming sucks at the moment,old school is in
Ardrid will not attempt to be first this time
Edit: I was wrong
Looks like I won, better luck next time :)
While I feel like some of the examples used weren't exactly precise to what makes some remakes worse than the original games, many remakes try too hard to modernize the way a game feels, like the upcoming silent hill 2 remake, when that feel, in regards to controls, are integral to the experience found in those games, silent hill isn't as scary without the stilted movement, so having the player be able to just strafe away from an attack removes any form of risk from just running into an enemy blindly, which forces the player to take their time.
Thank you captain obvious, I thought this was obvious.
You people made almst all of culture "commercial". You don't own it, so this is what you get.
Bad remasters are preservation, shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne HD doesn't change shit, thats why is bad, but quite litterally is Shin Megami Tensei 3
This reminds me how the Minecraft launcher is one of the few games that give you the option to play older versions by itself with no mods.
It's a Squeakquel.
good video 👍
FF 7 R is a pseudo sequel.
Why are you a snowman..
I have Tekken 1 on the Psp. Its Great!😊
FF7 remake and FF7 Rebirth are not really "remakes". it is more like an alternate timeline, even it is connected to OG FF7. It is almost like Sephiroth change timeline. Pretty cool in my opinion. It felt new game. If you don't like the new FF7, you can play OG FF7 on PS4/PS5 at a cheap price.
True but I would've loved to see a FF7 that has Remake's graphics, but being 1 to 1 the original with some added epilogue content, like Xenoblade Definitive Edition.
@@xenogen372 You will play a half cooked remake and you will be happy
@@xenogen372I think Ever Crisis sorta tried to do that??? Idk
FF7 is a pretty poor example of your point. It's literally on Steam, Switch, PS4/PS5, XBox Series S/X, iOS, and Android.
I agree with many of your points here, but I disagree strongly with how you view remakes. You say FF7 Remake and the RE remakes are not remakes. But they are closest things we actually have to video game remakes. Remakes are SUPPOSED to be whole new games. What we usually get are remasters. And while yes, remasters are often viewed as replacements in both video games AND movies. (Which is why it's often hard to view the original versions of movies these days too. We usually only have the remasters.) Remakes are not viewed as replacements in either industry. Both the originals and remakes of both FF7 and the RE games are available on modern consoles.
And your issue with Resident Evil 4 just being called Resident Evil 4 doesn't prove anything. Movies do the same thing, and more often. I don't understand why video games always feel the need to throw some stupid subtitle on the end of everything, even if it's only a remaster. I can't think of any movies that feel the need to do that. Disney's live action remakes use the same name as the originals but no one, not even Disney themselves, view them as replacements.
Edit: The only remake I can think of that COULD potentially be viewed as a replacement is Another Code Recollection. Since the original Another Code games were not ported over. But since it's impossible to port those games over since their gameplay is so closely tied to the original hardware, there's nothing that can really be done with that. That's part of the problem with Nintendo using gimmicky gameplay on their consoles. It makes it really hard to preserve those games after they abandon those gimmicks.
The RE games are Remakes yes. The FF7 games aren't. They fundamentally change core plot.elements. How can it be a remake if Wegde survives? His death (Along woth Jessie and Biggs) fundamentally MAKES Berret's character in the original FF7. Now his character will almost certainly lose that arc in the Remake.
I'm not saying the Remake games need to be 100% 1 to 1. What I'm saying is to ADD to the story that is there, and give more attention to details that wasn't in the original, but don't change major plot elements. That's not what a Remake is SUPPOSED to do.
@Xxandrew01 Even if major details of the story are changed, it's still a remake. Plenty of movies have done this in remakes too. Whether fans are happy with those changes are irrelevant. It's still a remake. Plenty of movies make far bigger changes than having a relatively minor character not die.
I love FF7 Remake, although I'm not happy with what the ending might imply about future games. I don't want it to stray TOO far from the original. I'm still pretty early in Rebirth. But Wedge surviving is not a big deal to me. I don't see how it's going to alter Barrett's character arc that much. Jessie still died. Although the ending of the first also seems to imply Biggs survived too. I don't think it's a big deal, although it depends on how they handle it later. So far, I haven't seen it stray so far that it's a problem. But still gotta wait and see. Like I said, still only on chapter 2 of the second game.
I agree with most of the things you have mentioned, but I do feel like it's worth mentioning that FFVII "Remake" is a sequel to the original and it's not pretending to be a remake (even though the title says otherwise, but that's a tongue-in-cheek reference to what Sephiroth is doing). Also, Square does go the extra mile to re-release their games on modern hardware relatively untouched, it's easy to find their older FF games on PC storefronts and even mobile storefronts
That's still deceptive though. They aren't telling people it's a Sequel
@@hurricane7727 yeah, you right. They also don't tell people that it's not the full story. There's no "part 1" in the title.
But, again, they purposely used the word "remake" in a different way than the average Joe would expect. Kind of reminds me of Obi-Wan's famous "from a certain point of view" line lol
You literally can download all games ever made from torrents, that's all the preservation you need, if someday the internet stops existing we are going to have worse problems than videogames.
Oh then here's the Hard Mode of this discussion. MMOs lifecycles. Should original FF14 be preserved? When should a game stop updating? It's truly not a simple solution because the real problem is gamers lack of industry knowledge and shit tastes in games that make these problems much worse. Seems like people will always spring the bear trap so long as the treat in the center looks tasty 🪤