If you could remake a game.....

[Masquerade]

If you could have an old game remade (and i mean huge final fantasy/pokemon kind of funding here) what game would you pick and what changes would you make? The game would have the really modern fancy shmancy graphics and all that jazz. It could be avalible on practicly any console.

 

Personally i would pick both of the alter ego games to be remade because a) they are completely awesome and there is so much that you could do with them using todays gameing technology! you could be able to see you alter ego living their life and changing as they grow and make a family. As for the change i think it would be awesome if you could pick the time period that your person could be born in like the industrial revolution or the 60's or whatever.

[Dantius]

I wish to be eaten by a grue in glorious HD on multiple monitors at about 60 FPS, and with full surround sound.

[Lilith]

Pure black at 60 FPS looks pretty much the same as pure black at 30 FPS

[Randomizer]

Eamon and if you have to ask what it was then you are way too young,

[Android]

The only game that I can think of that has not seen any spiritual remakes is Myth.

 

The second game was more of an expansion, and the third one was just plain bad.

 

My vision of Myth in the world of modern computers is that you could actually have whole armies clashing, rather than small groups at a time.

 

But I don't see it happening.

[Alorael at Large]

I'd love to see a Myth remake, or an acceptable sequel, but the game really isn't about armies clashing. That setup works best when the point of the game is assembling the armies that clash, and Myth really doesn't do that.

 

—Alorael, who wants Wasteland with a modern engine. Not that he's ever played Wasteland, mind you, but he hears it's a classic.

[keira]

Tempest. Just because I kicked ass on the old port of it that came with my ancient Win95 machine.

[Student of Trinity]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Eamon and if you have to ask what it was then you are way too young ...

... and you had better hurry up and fix that!

[inni]

I would do the opposite and make every Mario game like the old ones...

[Erebus the Black]

Castle of the Winds?

[Alorael at Large]

Actually, I think Fallout 1 and 2 are in need of remaking. No, they're not so ancient that they absolutely need it, but the engines were clunky then, they seem even clunkier now, and there are fantastic games under the clunk. I know there are those who disagree and think the engine is fabulous, but I also think they're in the minority.

 

Really, when old games were fun to play, they're either still fun to play or not worth playing. When they were great games with flaws, it would be nice to use hindsight to repair the flaws as much as possible.

 

—Alorael, who also wouldn't say no to an Alpha Centauri remake. It's not necessary, as the game is currently playable and still immensely fun (much like Myth 2!), but seeing it with Civilization V's level of graphics would be worthwhile.

[Enraged Slith]

Old classics should stay that way. It adds to their charm.

[Sudanna]

Originally Posted By: Fine Particulate Matter

Actually, I think Fallout 1 and 2 are in need of remaking. No, they're not so ancient that they absolutely need it, but the engines were clunky then, they seem even clunkier now, and there are fantastic games under the clunk. I know there are those who disagree and think the engine is fabulous, but I also think they're in the minority.

Really, when old games were fun to play, they're either still fun to play or not worth playing. When they were great games with flaws, it would be nice to use hindsight to repair the flaws as much as possible.

—Alorael, who also wouldn't say no to an Alpha Centauri remake. It's not necessary, as the game is currently playable and still immensely fun (much like Myth 2!), but seeing it with Civilization V's level of graphics would be worthwhile.

There are some pretty extensive conversion mods for Civ 4 along those lines. I imagine that it won't be long until Civ V gets the same.

[Erebus the Black]

How about "Kingdom, The far reaches" and it's sequel?

It might look real snazzy in HD.

It was a simple game albeit very hard, you could get killed for so many things, even for going to the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

I remember I really liked the game, from the demo to the actual first episode.

 

to freshen your memory

You start at a wizards tower (you being the apprentice) him telling you that you need to go on a quest and he gives you a bag of scrolls and asks you which spells you want him to make next.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Jhon Thomas

Castle of the Winds?

Only as far as the graphics, and to make it compatible with Win7. Keep the random dungeon generator, that gave it great replay value.

Originally Posted By: inni

I would do the opposite and make every Mario game like the old ones...

Ummm...Just which old game? Mario's been around since the early to mid-1980's, and the earliest ones are barely two-dimensional.

[Student of Trinity]

I loved those old one-dimensional games. Especially the first-person shooters. Aiming was so easy.

[Xoid]

Originally Posted By: Alorael

Actually, I think Fallout 1 and 2 are in need of remaking. No, they're not so ancient that they absolutely need it, but the engines were clunky then, they seem even clunkier now, and there are fantastic games under the clunk. I know there are those who disagree and think the engine is fabulous, but I also think they're in the minority.

Just the engine itself, or also the mechanics behind it? The mechanics could certainly be tweaked but SPECIAL wasn't that bad overall.

[Alorael at Large]

SPECIAL is great! It's also reasonably engine-agnostic, as it works in the turn-based, 2D originals and in the newer, semi-real-time, 3D, first-person sequels.

 

—Alorael, who feels a bit similarly about the Infinity Engine. The AD&D rules powering it work fine even if they are a couple of pencil and paper game editions behind. The engines themselves aren't quite terrible, but they could survive upgrading.

[Zummi]

Hide and Seek to Hide and Seeker Missiles.

[Xoid]

I remember someone taking Baldur's Gate II's assets and trying to shoehorn them into Icewind Dale II's updated Infinity Engine (higher resolutions, updated lighting and particle effects, D&D 3E ruleset, etc.). I think it's the same guy who was behind WeiDU, but don't quote me on that.

 

He had some moderate success, and could probably get it mostly working had he a ridiculous amount of time. Pretty sure that's not quite what you meant though. IWDII is getting pretty long in the tooth too, truth be told. I haven't been able to get it working in years.

 

Seems to be a problem common to games of that era: you can get things that are just old enough to run via emulators or compatibility settings, you can run the newest stuff natively, but there's a big gap between the two. I own so many games that I can't play because they're too complicated for an emulator to run them fast enough and there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of getting them to run natively since they depend on bug-for-bug compatibility with older versions of Windows, Direct X, and in some cases even drivers.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: meAzuma

Hide and Seek to Hide and Seeker Missiles.

I would prefer upgrading Global Thermonuclear War to global thermonuclear war.

[Erebus the Black]

Originally Posted By: Xoid

I remember someone taking Baldur's Gate II's assets and trying to shoehorn them into Icewind Dale II's updated Infinity Engine (higher resolutions, updated lighting and particle effects, D&D 3E ruleset, etc.). I think it's the same guy who was behind WeiDU, but don't quote me on that.

Yeah bringing BG into the D&D 3.5Ed would probably make it more playable, however 4Ed might brake it.

I remember trying to play it and giving up very quickly because everything was going so fast and not knowing if the spell I ordered to cast was finished and I can cast another one or if the potion I wanted to quaff was quaffed or not etc.. it was unmanagable

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Xoid

Seems to be a problem common to games of that era: you can get things that are just old enough to run via emulators or compatibility settings, you can run the newest stuff natively, but there's a big gap between the two. I own so many games that I can't play because they're too complicated for an emulator to run them fast enough and there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of getting them to run natively since they depend on bug-for-bug compatibility with older versions of Windows, Direct X, and in some cases even drivers.

If you're willing to pay a few dollars for the service of making your old games run on new computers, Good Old Games is in the business of patching old games to run on the latest version of Windows, and they've recently been adding Infinity Engine games to their store.

[Tirien]

Originally Posted By: Jhon Thomas

Yeah bringing BG into the D&D 3.5Ed would probably make it more playable, however 4Ed might brake it.

So it would be slower?

[Lilith]

a turn-based RPG built from the ground up to use 4E D&D rules would be the best thing

 

apparently there's a bunch of weird licensing stuff that would need to be sorted out before anything could happen though, since WoTC's business relationship with the company currently licensed to produce computer games under the D&D license has gone sour

[Alorael at Large]

Remaking a D&D 2E game to work with 3/3.5 rules would be a huge pain. You'd have to update all the rules, items, and characters, and you'd have to decide how to alter or substitute everything that changed between editions.

 

Updating to 4E would be more or less impossible. The rules underwent an extensive overhaul, starting from the basic paradigm of how the game should play out. You could tell the same story, but you'd have to completely replace the mechanical bits.

 

—Alorael, who agrees that 4E seems ideally built for running CRPGs. Infinity Engine games, alas, are built to run on rules sets that aren't.

[Xoid]

I'm sort of sceptical... *reads their About Us page* ...sold!

 

I've been wearily eyeing GOG for quite a while but never had both the time and inclination to do my homework on them. I just went through their catalogue and while they don't have the one game in particular I'm thinking of, I am impressed that they have such good taste. (Arcanum? Baldur's Gate? Blake Stone? Blood? Blood II? Castles? Castles II? Painkiller? UFO: Aftermath? No really, I am impressed, and those are only the games I already owned and not... *ahem*.)

 

The major reason I've never purchased some games is because their rightful owner passed on and they're now owned by some rich fat-cat—I have absolutely no compunction about pirating works when their creators aren't going to get reimbursed for it anyway. The fact that these games are recompiled to run natively on newer versions of Windows makes the purchase worthwhile even in those cases.

[Alorael at Large]

I'd be happily paying for games with Cider wrappers. It seems odd to me that nobody is re-releasing the classics for Mac, especially the classics that never ran on Macs in the first place. It seems even odder given that fans are definitely taking over that niche; while it's very nice, it would be even nicer to pay a little bit of money and have all the optimization taken care of for me.

 

—Alorael, who just tried to get Baldur's Gate working again on his Mac. It runs, but not quite right and not quite completely. It's much more effective to use Wine to emulate Windows rather than using the built-in Rosetta to translate from PowerPC. (Although it really looks like the major problem is changes in the Unix side of OS X more than anything else.)

[Lilith]

just use boot camp already, old windows xp install cds are a dime a dozen

[Aoslare]

boot camp is terrific, seriously

[Alorael at Large]

I have Boot Camp. And Parallels, too! But I don't like having to boot up another OS, and I really resent having to boot in another OS, so I avoid actually running Windows as much as possible.

 

—Alorael, who can accept that Boot Camp is an ugly necessity for new games. For old ones, he feels entitled to his choice of operating system.

[Locmaar]

Running Windows from a bootcamp partition in VMWare Fusion is a pretty convincing alternative.

[Alorael at Large]

I run Windows from a Boot Camp partition in Parallels on occasion, but I don't have to like it.

 

—Alorael, who can somewhat justify his position by pointing out that decade-old games should not require roughly half of a modern computer's processing capacity or RAM.

[inni]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

Ummm...Just which old game? Mario's been around since the early to mid-1980's, and the earliest ones are barely two-dimensional.

I was thinking around SMW era, the new "2.5d" platformers are much too shiny.

[Celtic Minstrel]

The only problem with GoG is that they have very few games I would be interested in (I see RealMyst — I already have the Myst trilogy, so I wouldn't want Myst or Riven — King's Quest, Space Quest, Empire Earth, Heros of Might and Magic, Baldur's Gate — which I've never played but recall liking the sound of — and Caesar 3), and that they don't (yet) cater to the Mac even for games that were released on the Mac in the first place (I know HoMaM was, since I had a demo for it, and KQ/SQ can run on ScummVM which is available for Mac; no idea about the others).

 

For old games I would like remade... well, I never really played role-playing games when I was younger; about the only ones I was ever exposed to were Exile, Realmz, and Ultima III (and one called Sword Dream which didn't really amount to much but had the distinction of having an editor). And the only one I really consider good among those has already had a remake. If by "remake" one means a "rerelease" such as GoG does, I'd probably ask for abandonware games such as Commander Keen 6 or Jazz Jackrabbit 2.

[Locmaar]

Originally Posted By: Littoral Metaphors

I run Windows from a Boot Camp partition in Parallels on occasion, but I don't have to like it.

—Alorael, who can somewhat justify his position by pointing out that decade-old games should not require roughly half of a modern computer's processing capacity or RAM.

I meant convincing alternative performance-wise. Owning a Mac usually implies not liking Windows as an alternative. Not always, but usually...

[Android]

On a somewhat related note, anyone have an opinion on Dwarf Fortress? Is it worth getting into for a person who has little time to dedicate to gaming?

[Nioca]

Eh. Tried it once. Spent about two hours fine-tuning the initial team (got bored halfway through that), loaded it up, found out that all of the skills I chose were wrong, couldn't seem to do much of... anything, really, couldn't figure out the controls... etc. Not to mention the fact it took half-an-hour just to generate a map. And I have loads of free time.

 

So, if you've got limited time and even more limited patience, Dwarf Fortress is not the way to go.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: inni

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

Ummm...Just which old game? Mario's been around since the early to mid-1980's, and the earliest ones are barely two-dimensional.

I was thinking around SMW era, the new "2.5d" platformers are much too shiny.

Whew. I was thinking SMB1 for the old (actually, ancient by today's standards) 8-bit NES. I'm glad you weren't thinking that far back in time.

[Student of Trinity]

When we were kids, my brother got the Donkey Kong model of this. This was maybe 0.5 D, in the sense that it was really only a grid of something like 12 x 12 little LED pictures, and movement was just that they would light up and switch off in sequence. Of course, that's all that's really happening even in today's high res games; but at 12 x 12, there wasn't really any illusion of continuous movement — more a sort of willing suspension of disbelief.

 

The really lousy thing about that game, though, was that my brother was much better at it that me. Sitting in the back seat of the car, begging your little brother for a chance to play his game, then having to look at his list of unattainably high scores, and failing pathetically. That's clearly bad game design, there.

[Aoslare]

No, that's bad brother design.

[The Mystic]

Then it's a good thing I don't have a brother. My sister, on the other hand....

[Student of Trinity]

I'm afraid I don't believe in sibling design. The evidence in this case is just too compellingly in favor of a combination of heritable characteristics, random variation, and imperfectly efficient natural selection.

[Erebus the Black]

How about Anvil of Dawn? (http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/304/Anvil+of+Dawn.html)

[Erebus the Black]

another good game I've DLed from abandonia is Albion.

It sometimes has a top view and sometimes a first person engine, and by the look of them the first person view could really use a makeover. However Blue Byte have announced that they won't be making a sequel nor a remake so I wouldn't hope.

[Earth]

fans make remakes of old games like Ultimas etc so .............