Topic: Western Game Devs VS. Japanese Devs on Remastering Games

Upon the release of the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection I was honestly wondering what's the general deal with how both developers from different cultural backgrounds approach remastering/remaking/porting games?

I wanted to ask the community here on Nintendo Life what they think on this sort of topic because when it comes to Japanese game developers, they tend to remaster their games with minimal effort put in compared to their Western counterparts. Now obviously this might differ from studios, we know about Night Dive and their obviously well-regarded FPS game ports like the Quake games and the other obscure classic shooters they've managed to port over to Switch.

Night Dive is a small studio with passionate and very knowledgeable developers who have built an engine that's specifically for reverse engineering old games and making them be able too be tinkered with and be able to port to modern platforms with enhanced lighting and other newer graphical features.

Compare them with other big Japanese companies like Nintendo who have taken on the task of releasing the original 3D Mario games in Mario 3D All Stars as a way of celebrating Mario's 35th anniversary and while Nintendo is known to keep the source codes for most of their old games, they have not put in much effort to upscale or enhance these games. This is especially true for the Mario 64 port since the aspect ratio of that game is stuck in 4:3 with no widescreen support. What's even stranger is Nintendo's approach towards releasing some of their old N64 on NSO with pretty much no graphical enhancements and the need to preserve the games in their old cramped 4:3 aspect ratio with noticeable pixelated textures. Keep in mind that this is a premium subscription service that you have to pay $50 USD annually in order to play these games and not be able to own them outright.

Now Square Enix is a company that has a slightly better track record when it comes to remastering and or remaking some of their old games. For example, their remakes/ports of the Mana series of games are critically well received as well as their other franchises including ports/remasters of the Final Fantasy games in addition to the Kingdom Hearts anthology of games.

I don't necessarily see many complaints when it comes to how Square Enix has handled some of their remasters. So unless I'm wrong, I'd like to hear some community feedback on if any of Square Enix's remasters have any underlying issues.

I could go on about this but I'd like to hear what the Nintendo Life community has to say about this topic I've brought up and if there are any other retro games like Playstation 1 titles that have had either good or bad ports on the Nintendo Switch platform.

While there is probably some cultural reasoning you could find if you really, REALLY looked into, I think these are mostly, entirely coincidence beyond looking at individual companies making individual choices.

And broadly speaking taking the tiniest sample size possible to try to make a narrative is just a bad idea on the face of it. Like by this logic western remakes are bad because the GTA remastered trilogy and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD (not the new ones, the previous attempt) are the example while the Japanese side gets FFVII Remake and Resident Evil 1-4's remakes (maybe less so for 3).

@kkslider5552000 I suppose you're right. I might have made a mistake by generalizing a bit here. Yet, still I believe that when it comes to preservation of some of these old games, Japanese developers tend to take rather cost cutting/limited resource effective decisions in order to re-release these games for modern consoles and give us rather basic touch ups in the form of border wallpapers and concept art galleries.

It's the same I see with other well-known publishers/developers like Sega or Capcom where they released their old arcade and Sega Genesis titles with very little done to enhance the games. Capcom has released a number of these old arcade games as well as fighting game compilations that you could say are just emulated roms with a price tag. I don't even think they've even included old console specific ports of their arcade games that had some unique quirks to them. But that's whole other topic.

It's fair to say that companies like Rockstar games tried to take the easy route with the GTA Definitive Edition Trilogy but after that whole fiasco with the botched remasters they just resorted towards giving simple ports like the recently released Red Dead Redemption 1. So that's one example of a western publisher not doing enough when it comes to remastering some old games. Though even a company with a bad reputation such as Activision has still managed to put in effort into remastering games like the Crash Bandicoot games, Spyro Trilogy, and old Tony Hawk games.

So yeah, I guess it's fair to say that there are some good and bad examples of how some companies approach these things. But I think there's a bigger question of how knowledgeable they are about emulating some of these old games?

I think you're cherry picking a bit by using 3D All Stars as the example from Nintendo and then zeroing in on Mario 64. Sure, that game was low effort, but they put a heck of a lot more work into Sunshine and Galaxy in the same package. I'd have more issues with the sheer levels of FOMO in making it a time limited release.

I could also point to other Nintendo remakes and remasters such as Metroid Prime, Link's Awakening, Xenoblade Chronicles and Advance Wars. I'd think that even Night Dive's best efforts pale compared to those.

A lot of this comes down to time and money. Games that are expected to sell well are far more likely to get a big budget and a lot of effort put in. Ones that are comparatively niche are probably just going to get the minimum amount of effort.

I have almost no gripes with how Nintendo handled 3D All Stars. I'm glad that they left the games mostly intact and in their original presentations, simply rendered at higher resolutions. I would love for other franchises to receive the same treatment.

My only real criticism was the fact that they didn't port the DS remake of 64 as well, which would have required some reworking in order to remove any reliance upon the second screen, but I don't think it would have been particularly difficult to pull off as it's still essentially a single screen game. They could have maintained the original aspect ratio as well, simply render the game at native 720p/1080p, and call it a day. The graphics still hold up today while N64 games generally haven't aged well at all.

I don't really think there's a cultural difference on how devs or publishers remaster certain games. It's really just a case by case basis

Who the heck is paying $50 a month? I don't pay half of that per year.

@russell-marlow

The developer handling the port usually makes or breaks the quality of the port. Virtuos, based out of Singapore, handled the port for MGS Master Collection. Knowing who was responsible for the port before the bundle launched, I'm not surprised at how poorly it's being received. They've handled many other ports for the Switch, but I think their efforts have been not great for the most part.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuos

To be fair, I think their ports of Starlink, Dying Light, Nier Automata, Dark Souls..are good.

I'd even qualify Dying Light as their best work.

Let’s remember that Skyrim is made by a Western company. It’s a good game, of course, but it has undergone very few changes over the course of its numerous rereleases since 2012. I think the issue is more nuanced than East vs West.

Made a mistake, I meant paying $50 yearly.