In the middle of cleaning out my room, I stumbled across several old video game magazines that I had saved (for example, the Nintendo Power that previewed Zelda: Ocarina of Time). With all the movie remakes in the works, I wish that video game companies would really start focusing on remaking some old classics. And by remaking them, I mean reworking the sound and updating the graphics – and that’s it. Classic storylines and solid gameplay should never be tampered with (a mistake movie studios make in terms of classic characters and plotlines and…well, I have seen very, very few good movie remakes).
This is my urgent list of games that I need to see remade – or shall we say, touched by the magic wand of new technology? Keep in mind that I’m not a hardcore gamer, and I’m sure there are plenty of other great titles that need to be released. I just have some little favorites.
1. Chrono Cross.
The storyline zigged and zagged. It was overwrought and confusing. But it was amazing. Dragons and secret identities and a lost technological city? Betrayals and frustrated love? Fighting a monster named FATE and finding out that if your character had only died as a baby, this two-worlds-instead-of-one situation could have been avoided? A final ultimate, musical way of achieving a perfect game ending? And a mind-blowing opening song named “Time’s Scar”? This game utterly blew me away.
This game had great graphics – for its time. I’ll never forget the hole in the ground that I thought was a bush. In the next ten years, I would love to see a new Chrono Cross. The original score was beautiful and could just use some fleshing out, perhaps. Kid could lose that Australian accent everyone was annoyed by, and we could have some beautiful voice acting. The fighting system could use some tinkering, especially since some elements eventually became too powerful and Continue+ was too easy. I remember a nice innovation in Chrono Cross was the ability to avoid random battles because the enemies were always onscreen, but I would have liked a charm to be able to avoid battles, period (particularly in Continue+).
I also wanted a remake of Chrono Trigger, but that is already in the works, so I am very happy I received a DS for my birthday. I just wish the character designs were different; Akira Toriyama’s style just says DBZ, no matter what context it’s in.
2. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
The GameCube Master Quest version had more fluid graphics and harder dungeons, but this game deserves a quality remake, with Wii graphics and real orchestra music. Sometimes I wish for voice overs, since games like Kingdom Hearts sound fine to me, but then I fear, oh, I fear what would happen to Zelda with voice overs…
I don’t think I need to explain why else Ocarina of Time deserves a remake. Sometimes I wish I had amnesia just so I could play this game all over again. Sometimes I think the ten years since it came out would have made my memory fuzzy in regards to the plot, but it’s still fresh in my mind. If possible, I would have liked to play some adventures as Zelda during those seven years Link is trapped in the Temple, but that’s another story.
3. Final Fantasy VII
This is a no-brainer. Everyone has been asking for it. Especially since the PS3 technical demo came out.
FFVII was innovative and brilliant when it came out, and unfortunately I didn’t have a PS so I never actually played it. (I did buy it a few years ago but haven’t made it too far into the game. Those graphics and the blocky LEGO-like characters are unbearable.)
Nonetheless, I think Square Enix should re-evaluate the fact that every new FF character seems to have the same face shape, nose, and lips. There are other ways of being beautiful, and sometimes not being J-Rocker pretty can be fine, too.
December 18, 2008 at 5:32 pm
http://truthoffiction.wordpress.com/2008/12/18/the-future-of-past/