I will say remakes could pose a potential issue, because in a way they are similar to remakes of movies. So many mainstream movies are remakes and rehashes that it is frightening to wonder if games will eventually take a similar path.

I'm hoping the rate of technological progress (systems, control schemes, technical changes in textures, AI, etc) in games keeps changing at a pace that it won't happen the same as movies. They should actually just make a law that there needs to be five original games for each remake released annually. That will put a cap on the dystopian future where Final Fantasy IV is released every other week!

Final Fantasy IV is already released every week. Seriously, look it up. I mean, Final Fantasy IV being released over and over and over since the PSX pretty much proves that this is nothing new, which is kinda why I thought the thread was silly in the first place.

Anyway, if you have a problem with remakes or ports, it hardly seems fair to blame the company. Nintendo release OoT3D for a system that sold poorly, despite the original version already being available for much cheaper on a system that sold really well, and OoT3D still sold a pretty substantial number of copies. They gave fans every reason not to buy it, and fans still bought five at a time. I'm really not gonna fault Nintendo for this.

I'm looking forward to Final Fantasy IV: Monday the most, because apparently they redid all the dialogue where everyone is kind of down and depressed because it's perpetually the start of a new work week in the world.

Final Fantasy IV: TGIF

Everyone just goes and gets drunk off their asses and the world ends.

Having trouble following most of Jagos's argument so this is all I'm commenting on.
 

On remakes not costing significant amounts of resources: The graphical production in video games is the single most time and money consuming part of creating a video game.

Updating the graphics means that you have to redo the most time and money consuming part of the game.

It does not logically follow that this does not impact other projects or that these resources couldn't be better spent elsewhere.

By how much, and would this be affected by being done by a huge company like Nintendo, who rather than having to buy someone else's graphical engine for every single game have probably built their own that they are able to use for multiple games?

EDIT: How is this cost for remaking Zelda impacted by being on the 3DS, which has substantially lower-end graphics compared to other systems? It may be the most expensive part of the game, but that really doesn't tell us a lot about how much more expensive or how expensive it is compared to development of the vast majority of other games.

I ask this out of genuine curiosity.

Fair enough, though I'd still blame the fans far more than I would anyone else, and I don't particularly mind an upgraded version of games I like from time to time.

which is why I prefer straight ports over remakes. Not saying the remakes cant refine a game, but if I thought the original game wasn't worth rebuying as is, then I wouldn't buy it just for shiny graphics and some mechanical tweaks.

As for rehashing games in a franchise. They make them because people keep buying them, makes sense to go with the safe bet.

Besides while Final Fantasy and Zelda have some over used plot elements, but hey, atleast its not as bad as Madden

I'm not sure on exact numbers on either of these and I'm too tired to look it up, but to be rough, on the first: I wasn't counting the game engine as the graphics. Just the individual rendering of everything, getting the animations right for various characters, the modeling, etc. Some of this is made easier (or harder) by the engine, but isn't really part of what I was talking about.

On the second: DS/3DS games cost lots lots lots lots less to make graphics for. This is the primary reason that a DS game costs roughly 1 million dollars to produce while a PS3 or 360 game costs between 18 and 25 million dollars.

Which should also give you an idea of graphical cost vs all other costs of a game.

I more or less agree. I'd really rather new games be made more often, but do think there are some games that could really benefit by a graphical upgrade.

For instance: I think the DS remakes of SNES FF games were kinda silly, as their blocky polygony shit on the DS look pretty terrible compared to the sprites that would have been in a straight port, and cost much more to produce than a straight port would have.

On the other hand, I really wish Square would do a remake of FF7 because that game was ass ugly when it came out and would benefit immensely from even FF8 graphics, much less current (or next) gen improvements.

Which, I guess, might seem a little hypocritical of me considering the former probably only ran them about 750,000 to make, while the latter would be running them around 25 million (or more) to make if they did it right.

But for me the cost is less an issue as to whether the game was improved enough by the upgrades vs the cost. And as that I tend to find SNES era sprite graphics to be QUITE pleasing, and really have no issue with late PS1/PS2 era graphics, the only games I could really get behind seeing remade are early PS1 era games that look like jumbles of shitty geometric shapes that roughly almost kinda approximate human form.

Edit: And there's also a bit to do with presentation and story telling of sprite games vs early PS1 games. Sprite games were made with dialogue and characters that work well within the constraints of sprited graphics (some might even say they work better than modern, but I'm not among them), while even early polygonal games attempted to create pathos with more cinematic approaches, such as body language and (in the cutscenes) facial expressions. Updating a sprited game, then, would require a reworking of the writing and the addition of body language etc. etc. to really sell the presentation. Things that would annoy purists, and may even end up being worse (square's writing). On the other hand, updating a particularly ugly polygonal work could only improve its presentation by improving the body and facial language in the various scenes on which they were relied upon.

Agree with Krylo on the FF ports mostly.

Have you actually seen FFIV on the PSP though? I thought they did a great job sprucing up the sprites and effects to HD(ish) quality. I guess that's the minimum of what I expect out of a remake.

I don't know if I am abnormal for thinking it, but I actually am the opposite of a retro gamer more or less. I follow the progression of technical achievements in gaming. I want to be playing Mass Effect, Call of Duty, Shogun 2, that level of visuals nowadays. I just feel awful stretching out retro games on this big monitor, and even if they aren't stretched, I still just innately like them less because of how ugly they now are.

It's horribly...vain I guess? Either way, I'm looking forward to stuff like Ico/SotC and Metal Gear HD remakes, just because I missed out on those games and if I booted them up now, they'd look like crap to me.

Nope.

My ex played the DS version that was polygon'd up*. HD sprites are usually pretty awesome looking, though.

*Edit: This one.