When is it OK to remake a classic game? | Hacker News Reader

When is it OK to remake a classic game?

rockpapershotgun.com

67 pointssmacktoward42 comments

I'm really disappointed in rockpapershotgun.com's adblocker strategy. They make you click on "I'm a bad person" in order to continue without disabling adblocker. While somewhat funny, I'm firmly on the side of ending bad ad implementation. The advertising industry needs to improve (I actually like the rare good ad), as most of them are trashy. Anyways, rant aside over.

I take a complaint about adblocking as a sign that the creators of the website do not understand how the Web works. Users get to choose what web browser they use and configure it to show or hide any element that they want. If you want to force some specific layout, use a page description language and render the output yourself. Otherwise you're just signalling you're clueless about the medium you're publishing in.

I'm also convinced that they haven't thought it through very far. The type of user who wants ads blocked is highly unlikely to click on one, and has been done a great disservice if forced to view the ad.

If the model is pay-per-impression, they are doing their advertisers a huge disservice (and will probably run impression value down to nothing).

Either way, the site is behaving poorly and for no obvious benefit to itself.

> I'm also convinced that they haven't thought it through very far. The type of user who wants ads blocked is highly unlikely to click on one, and has been done a great disservice if forced to view the ad.

No, they thought further than you. If they don't punish adblocking, they risk that eventually it becomes default in browsers, and then no one will see ads, not even those who would click on them.

Adblockers will become the default and sites that punish users will disappear.

I hope so, but I fear it's just a pipe dream. There's too much money involved.

Doesn’t the same idea apply to the creators? They get to choose what content they serve, and they can make that content complain about whatever they want.

Where did I say they couldn't? I just take it as a sign they don't understand the medium.

Since both sides can do as they please, serving code that attempts to change behavior when advertising elements are blocked is no more a misunderstanding of the medium than using code in the client that attempts to block elements that look like advertising.

brave (the browser) doesn't show this message as I tested. Safari + ublock will see the message.

Firefox with uBlock does not display it either.

Chromium + uBlock doesn't show it either.

I'm willing to admit that I'm a bad person for blocking their ads if they're willing to admit they're bad people for potentially exposing their own readers to malware shoved through an ad network they've chosen to do business with.

But of course they won't do that. It is constitutionally impossible for anyone in their position to admit that malware comes through ad networks.

If you actually pay money for their content, the ads will (and malware in them) will stop.

Really? Because last I checked they didn't. I'm a subscriber and I use uBlock and feel totally justified in doing so.

If you look at filmmaking, a remaster and remake are two clearly distinct things. A remaster is just a high quality rerelease, while a remake is a completely new production and interpretation of the same basic story or script.

The kinds of game remakes this article talks about are somewhere in between, which can be awkward. The redrawn graphics frequently interfere with gameplay in subtle ways, as Brian Moriarty’s example from Loom. And while they can make a classic more approachable to a contemporary audience, they are usually limited to new graphics, which can make the untouched aspects of the design seem even more quaint.

I think it could be interesting to see more actual remakes in games; take the most memorable aspects of an existing game (story, characters, core gameplay ideas, etc) and see where modern game technology and design ideas can take them. At least for story driven games, this seems to be pretty uncommon.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to the long-delayed Final Fantasy VII Remake, which should offer exactly this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII_Remake

I've heard good things about the new DOOM remake, which seems to be in that direction.

It's not a remake... it's an actual sequel. And it is fantastic.

I can see the art being preserved as a critical feature for adventure games, but with StarCraft remastered it seems everyone loves the new art. The most important thing for that game was to keep the gameplay exactly the same while supporting newer displays.

SC:R's art direction was "It should be like putting your glasses on."[1] It's about as conservative an art direction as can be had short of changing nothing.

[1] https://starcraft.com/en-us/articles/20695698

They also consulted with original authors about their intentions, rather than pain over what they'd done blindly.

The main problem with Monkey Island is that the narrative of the art has changed. If you fill in the details of the original artwork, it was in the realm of realism - not this modern cutesy mobile game semi-cartoon scourge. The protagonist has also been completely changed.

I didn't have the patience to push through these games as a kid; even as someone who doesn't have the usual attachment to Scumm games, seeing a masterful work of art changed makes me uneasy.

I always thought that if you modernised the art style of monkey island, it would look something like the Broken Sword series.

Lack of detail can often create stronger imagery because the reader/viewer's brain fills in the textures. With a lo-fi King's Quest I imagined gallant heroes on trusty steeds. The same way that cartoons can be more expressive than live action and how books can have more vivid imagery than movies. Who could possibly do justice on screen to the character of Ignatius J. Reilly?

> Who could possibly do justice on screen to the character of Ignatius J. Reilly?

I'm going to say ... lots of people. It's basically Reality TV trash in literary form.

I have never understood the literary lovefest that "Confederacy of Dunces" seems to incur ...

I've never heard of a Reality TV character who is as trashy as Ignatius but has also read the Great Books and earnestly believes himself to be a Great Man

I had some difficulty with SC1 due to the graphics. I couldn't judge depth very well due to the weird perspective and blurry sprites. Sometimes I mistook passable terrain for impassible terrain, or misjudged the size of buildings.

Redoing the graphics doesn't actually fix the awkward perspective, but I think it will help mitigate it. You want people to fill in the details that don't matter, but the details that are important to the gameplay should be clear.

The idea of a re-releasing a classic game with running commentary is interesting, but I can't imagine that there's much of an appeal for commentary during the gameplay. Conversely, I did enjoy watching "We Play Doom With John Romero" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUU7_BthBWM

The commentary works really well in the Monkey Island remake; it’s not very intrusive. There’s just a button in the corner that you can toggle if you want to hear it for the current screen.

The entire game is a bit cinematic, so it’s not much different from listening to commentary while watching a film.

I seem to remember this being done well for Portal 2. A special option would add commentary icons to the game which, when touched by your character, would trigger a brief commentary from a member of the staff or cast. Sometimes this had in-game effects; for example, when an animator explained the animations designed for Wheatley, the in-game Wheatley sprite would demonstrate them.

Anytime you want. Anytime is a good time to remake something so long as you’re not in a position of privilege where your decision to remake x has an unfair advantage (I.e. other than just the actual merits of your remake).

In other words, so long as you’re not Hollywood cashing in on a remake of x, y, or z just because you can (eg “why not release a third reboot of the Spiderman series in a span of just ten years?”) and people will watch it just because of who you are and how big your marketing budget is, then by all means. Let your remake speak for itself.

If people will buy your remake for who you are, I don't fee like that's an unfair advantage or a privilege. If anything it's a much bigger responsibility to make it right, since you risk ruining your reputation.

The Spiderman reboots are terrible, but predictable given the value of the license and the terms of the license. Sony's license from Marvel. Sony has to release a Spiderman movie every 2 or 3 years, or they lose the license, and it's unlikely Marvel's new owners (Disney) will license him out again. So, if you don't have a good idea, just go with another reboot.

Actually the SCRUMM Virtual Machine plays a lot of these old games using data files from the original floppy disks or CDs to load the original graphics.

http://www.scummvm.org/

People who follow that find their old install disks, or buy one used on eBay, and put the data files on their hard drive and run SCRUMM to see what the game looks like when it ran on DOS, etc.

So in this instance, they just rebuild the game engine and take data files to play the game as the original artists have intended.

when microsoft "remastered" age of empires 2 for steam ~15 years after original release, there was a small community-built platform that had kept the original game alive. microsoft released a buggy mess that was inferior to the community-supported platform in every way, but it was available to a wider audience and easier to install, so tons of people played it and it brought a lot of people to the community version.

msft also released a paid "official" version of a fan-made expansion that was broken and really never used. after a few years, they improved performance and released two fully new expansion DLCs

so msft started off with a pretty horrible remake (in intention and execution) that actually ended up reviving the community and leading to a pretty decent new product a few years down the road

I recently found my old Age of Empires II CDs and thought about installing them at some point, but then remembered the remastered Steam edition exists and thought about downloading it. I've not done anything yet. Is it worth getting the Steam one now - have the bugs been ironed out? (Running Linux, if that helps)

There are a community of people that run it on WINE pretty well, but there isn't an official Linux port or anything. Looking at the various updates to the game, the source code seems quite old and has a lot of technical debt. It seems like expansions are conservative in the stuff they add.

I got the steam version in 2014 and it was the best $5 I've ever spent, although the performance was laggier compared to the voobly platform (the platform you use to play the cd version). I haven't played the steam one in over a year but it had improved to almost on a par with voobly, and the new expansions were actually pretty cool (although not many ppl played them at the time, but that may have changed)

Can probably get it dirt cheap for the holiday sale

There is a pretty active casual and competitive scene, and it's actually a pretty deep game that has aged well

It is indeed on sale. I also just saw Age of Empires IV was announced, and a remake of Age of Empires I. Looks like I've found something to do over the winter holidays!

It's OK to remake a classic game when you've managed to come up with a title for it that is NOT exactly the same as the old one.

Just leave super mario,duck hunt and galaga alone!

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