Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Keeping earth matters in mind. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Also, to everyone who wrote in to tell me I suck for not pointing out that one of yesterday's letters grossly overstated the N64 cart's max size in MB, and used Ogre Battle 64, the "biggest" N64 game of all time to illustrate my shortcomings as a letters host, I just want to say... nyeah. RE 2 was much larger, easily outweighing OB64's 40MB with its crushingly huge 64MB cart. So... shows what you know.

That out of the way... Let's do this column-thingie.

Forcing niche culture down their throats - sideways

To begin, I'd like to mention that I have bigger hands than anyone else I know, and the Game Boy Advance fits comfortably in them. Also, although the screen is too dark, I am looking forward to adding the Portablemonopoly.com frontlight to it once they ship. We hackers area all alike! What an evil bunch!! The GBA was the first console... does it count a console?... that I ever bought. It still feels strange, knowing that I have a fairly expensive piece of electronic equipment which exists solely for playing games on. Maybe it's because I grew up playing text games on unix boxes - knowing of both Unix history (developed so some geeks could play network games) and Unix use (horribly unfun servers and workstations). The only other console I want to get now is a Playstation 2, although I'd have to buy a television, because it has such a huge library of games I want to play. And thus my point: If it weren't for the remakes and rereleases, I'd never *see* most of the games people talk about on this site and others. I can't be bothered to hunt down ROMs and whatnot, so I'm left having to read as much as possible so I can fake my way through any conversations that might come up. I suppose that I am the target audience for these remakes and rereleases, rather how I doubt George Lucas really wants all the old Star Wars fans to be constantly nitpicking his editorial changes to the original trilogy - he's reinventing it for a "new generation". Do we really want to make a lot of little kids track down used, barely functioning Super Nintendos and suchlike just so that they can understand and appreciate our niche culture? No, we want to make it easy for people to become fans of the RPG genre so that the developers are more supported. The developers may be making quick cash by rereleasing the games, but I'd be suprised if people who already owned the original in one form or another made up any significant percentage of the total group who purchase the remake. Indignation on their part, righteous or otherwise, is irrelevant. I just want a chance to play the games! *sn http://chumpco.com

I just... shudder to think that someone's first brush with FFVI should be the FFA re-release.

While FFIV was arguably a better game for its shiny new FFC translation and was virtually unfettered by noticeable load times, FFVI was a poorly-ported blasphemy. It pains me to think that someone, somewhere, is getting acquainted with the world of FF through that thing, counting each and every AutoCrossbow bolt as they drag themselves across the screen with excruciating slowness, silently damning whatever "hardcore" friend of theirs made such a ghastly recommendation.

Preserving the classics

We don't need no steeenkin remakes!! Only we do, really. When FF4 came out for the SNES, I was (checks copyright screen) in eighth grade. My best friend got it, and I hated him for years out of sheer, spiteful jealousy. I was still playing River City Ransom on my old 8-bit machine, living a broke kid with broke parents' life, and completely unable to upgrade. A few years pass, I get a job, and I can finally afford a small TV and an SNES. And all the FF4s (and 6's) are sold out, and nowhere to be found. So then I had to save up more money, buy a computer, find emulation software, and that wasn't anything like being the same. So now, at the dawn of a new century, when I'm a married homeowner with a kid and a career and much less leisure time than I need to enjoy video games, when the opportunity to buy Final Fantasy Chronicles and Anthology came out, yer damn right I jumped on it. The re-releases gave me a second chance at something wonderful. The Three Musketeers is an incredible book; it has intrigue, action, romance, and terrific adventure. If it were a video game, Alexandre Dumas' contemporaries would have worshipped him for it. You and I would have never heard of it. But it's stayed in print for the past few centuries because it's just that damn good. Some video games deserve a similar fate. Love your column. It's better than Ann Landers. --del Erin, Slap some arms on me and call me Deadeye Duck, a Bucky O'Hare reference. Never thought anyone'd remember that. Re-releasing older games, whether it be on home consoles or portables, is indeed a very good thing. Especially in the case of RPGs, as they are (commonly) most appreciated for their stories. A great story or a great movie will see hundreds of printings or re-releases throughout its time, so why not games? That is, if games are the next big medium like we all claim them to be. Sure, sometimes changes may come about to the story, but that's a given. Relating back to books, many pieces of literature have been declared contraband, destroyed, and re-written. Tolkein's hot item The Fellowship Of The Ring had to go through god-knows-how-many revisions before it got to its current state- Hell, even the Bible lost something in the translation how many thousand years ago. Recreations are a wonderful way to preserve classics, if not just for the fans of the game but also the people who didn't have a chance tho play it the first time. -Pisces, brandishing a "No More Banned Books" sign.

I suppose likening remaking a game to reprinting a book is a reasonable metaphor. The first English translation I ever read of Le fantôme de l'Opéra, for lack of a more eloquent descriptor, sucked Zebra testes, and I was left wondering why in the hell anyone had ever regarded this rank piece of crap standout enough among Gaston Leroux's work to adapt it eight zillion times over for stage and screen. Upon reading another interpretation in my native tongue, though, I was sufficiently impressed.

Likewise, FFIV was much easier to take seriously when the PSX version's script liberated its characters from saying things like "Oh my!" when all hell is breaking loose and they should by rights be tearing at their Ribbons and stringing together chains of obscenity that'd make Deadeye Duck blush.

Great setup, ICEMAN

Erin, thank you for giving me this opportunity to make it close to the topic. Now, I haven't gotten to most of the remakes out there, but I have played Chrono Trigger on the PSX and I found it foul as reclaimed water. It's kinda disheartening how the word "omake" seems to always have positive connotations with gamers. Not only were the cutscenes really low-budget and really, really poorly planned (Crono looked different in each one, and bad in all... When Frog split the mountain with Masamune, Crono reminded me most of ICEMAN from Top Gun. In fact, Frog's the only one whose face didn't come out looking deformed, somehow)... damn, a bit overmuch on the usage of parenthetics... ahem, anyway, not only that, but whoever put this shyte together didn't even bother to edit out the scenes in the game engine. Woo, you get to watch everything TWICE. How's that for continuity?! And the one bonus ending there was... it was just such a joke. I usually need a reason to play my RPGs over again, and that's basically all that I got out of this game. If I'd have just popped in that old cart, though, I definitely would've had a lot more fun, in less time (i.e. insane load-times), for less money. What I'm trying to say is that I'm all for remakes, but in execution, they're usually a mistake. I can only hope that Square will be a little less lackadaisical if PS2 revisits FF7, so that I could finally get over the illusion that I'm playing with Legos. Oh, but I did like SSSC a great deal. machka drek well, at least they didn't ruin Zeal by trying to animate THAT (or the Ocean Palace, or any other of the game's cool locales)...

When I got FFC I rushed to play through FFIV and snort the heady fumes of its upgraded translation, but I haven't touched CT but for a brief popping-in to view its opening cinema.

I was sorely tempted just now to point out parallelisms between the animation quality of CT's FFC incarnation and Dragonball Z and say "Hey - that's Toriyama for you," but then I came down from my guarana high and realized Akira Toriyama had next to nothing to do with animating CT's cinemas. So I guess all I can say is... I guess Crono's character design just really lends itself to looking like Val Kilmer in the hands of hurried animators.

Victor Ireland - can I have your [redundant] children?

Erin, For the most part, I have to say that remakes are a good thing. I was never able to afford a console until I started college, which meant my first system was a Playstation. I completely missed out on the SNES era; without the remakes I wouldn't have had the chance to enjoy Chrono Trigger, or Final Fantasies 4, 5, or 6 (granted, I could have passed on 5.) There have to be plenty others like me, especially when you factor in the Lunar games -- I doubt many people had a chance to play those on the Saturn. I'm glad DW4 is coming to the PSX; the first three are the only reasons I'm even considering the undersized GBA. Having the Playstation versions of these games has made me quite happy, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. That said, sometimes things go just a wee bit too far. Is releasing Lunar on the GBA really necessary? Yes, it's justified under the same argument I give above, but only to an extent. Let's look at the money issue. GBA: $90. Lunar Legend: Probably $40, judging by usual GBA game prices. So a total of $130, assuming you buy from scratch. A PSOne: $100. Lunar SSSC: According to ebgames.com, it's being re-released this month; rumor is at $30. Memory card: $15. A total of $145, assuming, once again, that you have to start from scratch. So you're paying $15 extra, but isn't that worth it for the ability to play on a screen that won't strain your neck and eyes, especially when the game will have actually cutscenes instead of stills? And of course if you're not starting from scratch, the re-released LSSSC is cheaper right-out. This one seems like a simple case of unneeded redundancy. But don't get me wrong -- I actually hope it does well. The more remakes succeed, the more will be done, and more decent games will be available for me to play. After all, these remakes tend to not take huge resources to do, so they don't cut into the new games much, if at all. -- Chaomancer Omega

I've been looking at Lunar Legends and saying "Pft!" a lot; I suppose because I just assume everyone in the entire universe owns a PSX and would much rather make fun of Ghaleon's purple frock through the magic of FMV than stills on a dark little handheld. But when I think of the joy I felt - the sheer idolatrous love for Victor Ireland that welled within me - upon hearing L:SSSC's opening theme and knowing that, at long last, I wasn't missing out anymore.... my leaden heart is warmed with the knowledge that an unfortunate few who may have missed the PSX remake are feeling something similar as they clutch their GBAs to them and squint at LL's dark little opening cutscene.

Port Whine

About the whole GBA thing yesterday: http://www.lik-sang.com/catalog/product_info.php?category=0&products_id=1496 You people will soon have no excuse (cept for the whole price thing). "We're living in a remake renaissance. FFs IV, V and VI were all neatly groomed and sent to the PSX." Neatly groomed? Your kidding right? The FF ports on the PSX were pretty bad. Yes it was great to get FFV in it's pretty much original form on the PSX since it had never come over here before (course I had already played the translated ROM, oops), but the FF's and CT incarnations were more ports like FF7 on the PC, than remakes. All they did were slapped on a few movies and added some kewl s3kr3ts. Plus the loading times were bad and it still had the same crappy SNES translations I think. Enix however actually puts some time and effort into their remakes on home consoles. With the DQ remakes on the SNES and PSX they did a full graphical upgrade for each (yeah DQ4 isn't still up today's standards but just compare it to the NES version), lots of extra features (especially DQ3 and DQ4), and they even tweaked the money/experience system for each. Enix saved their quick cash schemes for the GBC since DQ12 and DQ3 were only ports of the SNES remakes. I have no problem with companies doing remakes of old games but if I'm going bust out some cash to play a game over again I want a real remake and not just some extra movies and secrets. And I don't know about the US in general but the Japanese certainly like their remakes since the new DQ4 remake for PS One is killing the GC's Super Smash Brothers. http://www.geocities.com/chtang.geo/toptenDengeki.htm Pendy http://dqnn.alefgard.com Erin, Well, I haven't actually played the revamped FF IV so I don't know just how bad the load times and such are. Granted, the load times in the revamped FF VI damn near killed me, but I must admit Final Fantasy IV was my first love. I was looking very much forward to FF IV getting a retranslation and I've heard that they did a pretty decent job. I think that if the games are chosen carefully, are in demand for a rerelease, and the company does a good enough job in the rerelease, I think it's a pretty good thing. The idea of Dragon Quest IV being graphically overhauled (even if the graphics by today's standards are still ass-ugly) is nice, especially since I never played the original. Re-releases can also be of games from sad systems that never got enough love (Panzer Dragoon Saga for Saturn anyone?) Re-releases like Final Fantasy VI are, to me at least, just a blatant cash-in. The load times in the fights were horrendous and there was nothing added (except for that Beastiary thing I think). Sure, there were probably some people that didn't get to play it, but c'mon give us a little more! So, in short: re-releases are good, but direct ports of old games just plain suck. Give us a little more and we will love you forever. - Purple Monkey Dishwasher

Classifying the PSX releases of FFs IV and VI as "remakes" is not, I suppose, very accurate, and I was perhaps sloppy in my diction yesterday.

That said, I'm heartily looking forward to the new & improved DWIV. Truth be told, it's a game I've previously missed, and my attempts to retro-educate myself have consistently taken a backseat to playing what's new and tasty. DWVII, while admittedly quite horrendously ugly, plays with a delightfully old school smoothness, and much dancing and drinking was in order when I first learned IV was going to utilize the same engine.

You remade your bed and now you can lie in it!

Bless you Erin! This has been bothering me for a while now, and I'm in desperate need of a tirade. Okay, Lunar was pretty bitchin' when it was on the Sega CD (though Lunar 2 was WAY better if you ask me.) Then those guys at Game Arts said, "look look, now we can finally make Lunar the way we wanted to in the first place! Buy it! Buy it!! It'll be so cool." And it was pretty cool, but well... not THAT cool the second time around. (And after seeing parts of Lunar 2 on PSX, I thought I might do better just to leave it in the realm of fond memories on the Sega CD.) But hot damn if they're going to make that same bloody game all over again! That's just laziness. If they were going to port a title, why not remake another portable Lunar, like Lunar Magic School, or something. Something we haven't played TWICE already! Aaargh the hubris, the GALL of those people. After two Grandia games (neither of which were all that exciting, really) and endless remakes of Lunar games, I'm beginning to despise Game Arts. Never mind Working Designs, the shady, pop-talkin' man on the street corner that peddles their wares. Make something new, you BAStards. Fshew, I feel a little better now..... but on the other hand I'm looking forward to Dragon Warrior IV on the PSX. DWIV is a great game that nobody's seen for many years, and it's receiving a significant overhaul. If you're going to do a port, that's the way to do it. Make an old game like new, not just tweak the same game a little bit and give it a quick paint job. El Cactuar

Yes, DWIV is an honest-to-goodness remake of a kind I wouldn't mind seeing more of. Enix has consistently given players the chance to catch up on what they may have missed - and without making us count bolts from an AutoCrossbow to ease the monotony.

Of course, I'd always regarded the PSX updates of Lunars SSS and EB much the same way....

Just because

Erin, I've always wondered - why did Square choose to port the best from its flagship Final Fantasy series to the original Playstation? Granted, there was a monstrous userbase, but it's really not about money - it's not as if Square made bucketloads off of either Anthology or Chronicles. Simply put, every single remake failed to live up to the original. Imagine what a PS2 port of FFVI, for example, would've been like. Instead, we're stuck with a game that I, having become intimately familiar with the original, simply cannot sit down and make any sizeable progress towards (much less finish). "Ports" by nature should at the very least be equal, technically, to their original titles. For crying out loud, there's slowdown during BATTLE in FFVI for Playstation! Both sets of re-releases may look nice completing some gamers' Final Fantasy collections, but for me, these shoddy ports are a far cry from the legendary days of the SNES. -Matthew

Well... I just assumed that, seeing as how all they'd done to those games re-released in FFA and FFC was add some cinemas and toy with translations, there really was no point in releasing them to PS2. The PSX format was perfectly capable of handling what they wanted to do, and as you said, its user base is much larger, even more so when you factor in the PS2's backwards compatibility. FFA and FFC were essentially ports, after all, and not remakes, and wouldn't have utilized the PS2's additional power, so releasing them to the largest consumer base possible makes some semblance of sense, no?

But yes, they are shoddy ports. With lots of slowdown in FFVI. Lots. Long live the SNES.

Wargh!

Hey Erin, Re-releases are definitely a good thing. Let me tell you why. A long time ago, a friend of mine had a copy of FFIII and Chrono Trigger that he didn't want. So he gave them to me... for free. Oh, those were the days. I can't begin to count the hours I wasted on those two little carts. Anyway, fast-forward to about two or three years later. The PSX was out, but I didn't have one just yet... I was satisfied with my SNES. One fateful night my little brother snuck into our den and decided to do a little late night gaming. Well, my mom caught him and sent him back to bed. He left the SNES out in the middle of the floor. The next morning, my mom tripped over the cords. She was already pissed off about the incident the night before, so she decided to throw my SNES out with the morning trash. She also threw away some of the games that were laying around with it: Earthbound, FFIII, Chrono Trigger, and Kirby Super Star. By the time I found out, it was too late. My two favorite games in the world were gone forever. When FFA and FFC came out, I bought them on their release dates. Sure, the games were ported, and sure they didn't run as well, but I was satisfied. After a few months of counselling, I've also managed to forgive my mother (I reduced the lawsuit to a mere $140, which is about what it would have cost me to buy FFIII and CT new). So remember: Rereleases are a good thing. They may not be as pretty as the original, but with a bit of patience (damn load times!), they can be just as enjoyable. Tre Perry, defender of blind people everywhere. PS: My bad about the whole Ico/Yorda blindness thing. Oh, and I made that stuff about the lawsuit up.

I.... guh.... dergh.... she....? GAH!

The Glorious Dawntime

Who needs remakes? I just found Secret of Mana in mint condition (with map and manual) for under $40 (after shipping) on Half.com and gave it to my mother-in-law to give to me for xmas. If there is a game I couldn't afford in the past I wait and watch and snatch them up when I find a price that fits my budget so that my wife and I can enjoy them together. I'll stick with the originals...unless they remake Act Raiser and Soul Blazer, although Dark Cloud pretty much has that covered. -Baer

Out of curiosity I take the occasional peak at how much the likes of FFIV and VI are currently going for on eBay. For a time rare and pricy, these two legends now sell for around $30, with their original packaging, manuals, etc..

For anyone still possessing an SNES in working order, I'd heartily recommend the original VI over the PSX port, although FFIV, with its restored items and difficulty and its surprisingly good new translation is perhaps better left to the FFC update.

It really depends on your level of picky purism, and the game in question.

Adams called it "Aberystwyth"

Erin: Someone, somewhere, might find charming the idea of going back to live in a cave and hunt with pointed sticks. I'll pass, thanks. I really loved Final Fantasy III at some point. I played it over and over and over. Buying the PlayStation reprint turned out to be a horrible mistake. It hurt to play. The same thing happened with the Game Boy version of Dragon Warrior I and II. I'm sure plenty of people enjoy playing those old games. I can't imagine they'd re-release them, otherwise. I prefer shiny new toys, myself. They don't force me to realize how much playing those old games, so magical in memory, really really sucked in comparison to playing today's games. --DarkLao

I just want to mention in passing that thanks to my stupid mid-sentence interjection about Bucky O'Hare, I got enough letters containing theme tune lyrics, etc., to waste nearly two hours reading and downloading crap related to what was really not all that great an animated series. As usual the longing, my friends, is a lot more pleasant than the thing being longed for.

Such is often the case when we play a remake, expecting it to have us rolling around on the living room floor in fits of religious ecstasy, only to have our childhood memories shattered along with yet another pane of our innocence.

Special International Gold Widescreen Director's Cut Edition with the extra 2 healing herbs!

Dear Erin, Hi! To answer your most recent offhand question, yes, indeed I do remember Bucky O'Hare: If your Righteous Indignation has suffered a hit / And our photon accelerator's broken a bit / If you're losing your mind and you're having a fit / Get the funky-fresh rabbit Who can take care of it! Wow, that snippet of the theme song has remained lodged in my mind since my days of youth, although the actual memories of the show (and especially the title character) are long gone. Anyways, for the topic at hand, the current collection of remakes that are flooding the market bothers me for one main reason. When I finally get around to playing a game, I'd like to play the definitive version, mainly because I only have time in my college years to go through games once. This experience, by the customary merits of adding new features in every remake, is usually be found in the last version that is released. But if Square and Co. keep releasing their classics a decade after their debut, and if other RPG companies follow in kind with the current generation of games, I'm stuck feeling that if I just waited five more years, I could really, REALLY get the full Skies of Arcadia experience (now with a 100-level bonus dungeon!). Pewwy

This was one of the angles I had in mind when I proposed this topic, actually.

We gamers (myself included) are suckers for extra features, director's cuts, bonus bosses, etc.. We obsess so entirely over our favorite franchises that we'll often pass up a decent new game in favor of something we've already played 463 times because it's been re-released once again with a new sideline fetch-quest that'll reward us with some kick-ass new item that'll make defeating a final boss we've only defeated 464 times (had to show off the game's nifty closing cutscene to your friends, you know) that much easier.

And, really, how stupid is that?

Relive the magic

Agent Erin, This trend is definitely cash grabby, but for other reasons than simple greed. I have a feeling that some of these companies are a bit unsure of their ability to produce sequels worthy of their respective franchises. A remake is a quick and easy way to make some money while stirring up interest in the next franchise episode. I actually enjoy this practice quite a bit. Some of my most memorable gaming involved Super Mario Allstars for the SNES, and I'd absolutely love to see certain 16-bit games updated for the current generation of consoles. Dillon Kehler We're living in a remake renaissance. FFs IV, V and VI were all neatly groomed and sent to the PSX. Dragon Warrior IV's gotten a makeover. Countless titles are getting cleaned up for a re-release on the GBA. Soooo... How does it make me feel? Ugh! Am I the only individual here who thinks that the long forgotten 8-bit gem, MANIAC MANSION is screaming for a makeover?!? Come on, LucasArts! Let the oldskoolers relieve the moments once again! Imagine Nurse Edna in her full 32-bit glory... Scrumptious! Bring out the petition, I say! -Akflet, who desperately needs to burn something in the microwave (a hamster perhaps?)

All this talk of remaking the past seems to have gotten a lot of us thinking about what fond 8- and 16-bit memories we'd like to revisit, so I may as well just run with the conversational flow and make of it tomorrow's topic!

Closing Comments:

When I look into my personal past for what game I'd like to see realized in the cinematic trappings of today above all others, my soul knows not a moment's hesitation: Chip 'N Dale's Rescue Rangers for the NES.

God. To think I paid for that game with my very own birthday money back then... I could've bought something useful, something proudly bearing the name of Ron Popeil. An electric Inside-The-Shell Egg Scrambler, maybe, or a Dial-O-Matic food slicer.

D'ah!

Seriously, I think most of us have some fond recollection of one dusty old tome of a game or another that we'd like to see done justice with a worthy update.

Entrust the Agent with your wishes - so I can laugh and poke fun and sticks at you where everyone can see.

-Erin Mehlos