rerelease

[Esn]

I think they tried to make him loko more like guybrush from the sequels so that it matched, nothing wrong with that, I dont think the original monkey island was ever intended to look realistic anyway, it was always meant to have a cartooney vibe.

So you're saying the reason they didn't make it cartoony originally is because the artists who did the original pixel art weren't talented enough to make it in the way they were intending to? I'm not sure I buy that. On the other hand, do I think the guys from Telltale did it in a cartoony style because they didn't have any artists in the company who had the skills to do it in the original more realistic one? A look at the art styles of all their previous games says "quite likely!"

 

[Exophase]

I hate remakes, almost without exception*. They always seem to fail to capture the spirit of the original. Even worse is when they contain terrible retconning and the like. It drives me crackers.


*There are only two that I have EVER found to be worthwhile. Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land for the Game Boy Advance which is incredibly polished, and Star Fox 64 3D which is vastly superior to the flimsy, dull, childishly-acted, embarrassing-to-play-in-the-presence-of-others, poorly-handling N64 original, and finally makes it worth playing for the first time ever.

Have you played Metroid: Zero Mission? In my opinion that is a fantastic remake that is much more enjoyable than the original game, although I'd consider it such an extensive change that it's almost more sensible to call it a "reimagining" or something.


I'll draw the line at actually consider Super Castlevania 4 to be a remake of the first one. That does remind me, I should try the X68000 version sometime, since that'd qualify as a remake and possibly even a potentially good one.

Sword of Mana on the GBA (remake of Seiken Densetsu aka Final Fantasy Adventure on the GB) was some in-between. They tried to keep close to the original but altered dungeons and enhanced the story... it didn't feel like the same game, it was weird.
A bad remake. They shouldn't have added that much.

I played about halfway through this one before I got pulled away from it and didn't come back. IMO it was a fairly solid game that fit okay within the rest of the Mana games - and this kind of highlights a useful function for these remakes, in strengthening a franchise. Zero Mission was bolstered by what it added to the other Metroid games as well. I really don't have a problem with the game being "too different" if it's all for the better, I don't see any value in keeping things the same just for the sake of keeping things the same.


But then if you're doing an almost completely different game you have to ask what the original actually is contributing, that makes it compelling to base off of in any way. Seiken Densetsu stands out as actually having one of the best plots of the original Mana series, IMO anyway (and I've only played the first three), so it makes sense that they'd want to start with this. Sword probably diluted things too many by adding a lot of confusing details to it.


The other aspect that they wanted to carry over was the music. The original game had an absolutely incredible soundtrack by Gameboy standards. Sword's remixed version was just... weird. And pretty low quality. Big step backwards here; I generally enjoy listening to the original's more. Unfortunately a lot of GBA games suffered from lazy soundtracks that were marred by technical inadequacy, a fine consequence of having a lower end system where most of the sound has to be done in software.


But it still seemed like a pretty decent game.

Final Fantasy IV on the NDS was a spot-on remake. The exact same gaming system, same worldmap, same monsters, same everythiing. But with enhanced graphics, enhanced music, etc.
It felt like the same game but upgraded to current tech.


Good remake

I still want to play this sometime. DS 3D tends to look.. not so great to me, and what little I played of FF3 had pretty poor graphics.. With FF4 all I saw was a clip from the opening airship scene that actually looked great by DS standards (nice use of anti-aliasing in particular) but I don't know if the character models are really any good.

Makaitoushi SaGa (Wonderswan Color, remake of SaGa aka Final Fantasy Legend I on GameBoy):


For me, it was one of the best remakes ever. It was the EXACT same game - just with a bit better music and better (colorful!) graphics!


Still very retro, but great!

Have you played a fan translation of this or something? Or is the game really even enjoyable in Japanese? I'm assuming you don't know Japanese.


Then you have the WSC version of FF4 which seems more like a demake. Okay, I haven't actually played it, but I've listened to the soundtrack and it's a barely Gameboy quality. That goes for all of the music I've heard from Square WSC games (like FF2), they don't seem to be good at getting anything out of the sound chip here.

SaGa 2 (remake for NDS) was not very well done in my opinion: While they kept the original game they added so much more confusing goodies that it wasn't fun anymore.

I'm sorry to hear that - I was hoping it'd get fan translated eventually. Although honestly I'd probably still be better off judging for myself. I did listen to the soundtrack which was solid.

 

[Prometheus]

I hate remakes, almost without exception*. They always seem to fail to capture the spirit of the original. Even worse is when they contain terrible retconning and the like. It drives me crackers.


*There are only two that I have EVER found to be worthwhile. Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land for the Game Boy Advance which is incredibly polished, and Star Fox 64 3D which is vastly superior to the flimsy, dull, childishly-acted, embarrassing-to-play-in-the-presence-of-others, poorly-handling N64 original, and finally makes it worth playing for the first time ever.

Have you played Metroid: Zero Mission? In my opinion that is a fantastic remake that is much more enjoyable than the original game, although I'd consider it such an extensive change that it's almost more sensible to call it a "reimagining" or something.

I have played it, but I didn't get on very well with it for some reason that I can't seem to remember at this point. I agree that it's too different to call it a remake, though. :lol:

but I've listened to the soundtrack and it's a barely Gameboy quality. That goes for all of the music I've heard from Square WSC games (like FF2), they don't seem to be good at getting anything out of the sound chip here.

That's pretty true of WonderSwan sound in general. BanDai seemed to do well with it, though, but you'd expect that since it was their console.


Two examples that I think are worth a listen, myself, are the soundtrack for Rockman & Forte - Mirai Kara no Chousen Sha (a very obscure Mega Man title, and one of my favourite oddities in the series - it makes nice use of the WonderSwan's configuration for some stages, and it has some neat enemy ideas that haven't been revisited since), and the one from Rockman.EXE WS (a side-scrolling game based in the Battle Network universe). Both of these games were licensed to BanDai for development, rather than being made in-house at Capcom. The first has a "demake" of the soundtrack from the SNES game, Rockman & Forte, which it is a follow-up to (the SNES title is officially numbered "8.5", which pretty much makes the WonderSwan one "8.75" or something ). The second has a soundtrack that's original to it, which for some reason reminded me of Commodore 64 music in some places (probably because of that "warbling" thing that seems to get used a lot).

 

[NoeleyC]

I think they tried to make him loko more like guybrush from the sequels so that it matched, nothing wrong with that, I dont think the original monkey island was ever intended to look realistic anyway, it was always meant to have a cartooney vibe.

So you're saying the reason they didn't make it cartoony originally is because the artists who did the original pixel art weren't talented enough to make it in the way they were intending to? I'm not sure I buy that. On the other hand, do I think the guys from Telltale did it in a cartoony style because they didn't have any artists in the company who had the skills to do it in the original more realistic one? A look at the art styles of all their previous games says "quite likely!"

While I wasn't too gone on the art style of the remake of Monkey Island 1, as it was too different to the original, I thought the graphical style on the second seemed closer to the original. Also it allowed you to use the new voiceovers with the original graphics, so that was a nice bonus!

 

[ikreos]

Wow that cartooney style is horrible. Glad I stuck to the original on the Amiga.

 

[EvilDragon]

Makaitoushi SaGa (Wonderswan Color, remake of SaGa aka Final Fantasy Legend I on GameBoy):


For me, it was one of the best remakes ever. It was the EXACT same game - just with a bit better music and better (colorful!) graphics!


Still very retro, but great!

Have you played a fan translation of this or something? Or is the game really even enjoyable in Japanese? I'm assuming you don't know Japanese.

Yep, Fan-translated


I don't know any Japanese


Check here

SaGa 2 (remake for NDS) was not very well done in my opinion: While they kept the original game they added so much more confusing goodies that it wasn't fun anymore.

I'm sorry to hear that - I was hoping it'd get fan translated eventually. Although honestly I'd probably still be better off judging for myself. I did listen to the soundtrack which was solid.

It IS Fan-translated. That's how I played it


Check here


You have to search the net for the patch though, as the group broke up (they wanted to translate SaGa 3 as well)