Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

Didn't they literally remake the Gameboy Zelda with a high quality toy aesthetic last year?

Haven't they spent much of the last decade giving fairly high quality Zelda remakes?

I mean the 3D All Stars thing and the lack of effort does bug me, but partially because nearly everything else surrounding the 35th anniversary has a lot more effort put towards it (and for that matter, the Pikmin remake coming out soon).

@LzWinky @kkslider5552000 No, I mean that they won't ever rerelease any improved versions of games that come out. With the sole exception of Super Mario All-Stars, Nintendo tends to basically ignore any versions of games released after the original. For example, Super Mario Bros Deluxe, Super Mario 64 DS, the Wii versions of Metroid Prime 1&2, Kirby Super Star Ultra, Pokemon Fire Red / Leaf Green, Star Fox 64 3D etc. My point is that any of the upgraded versions of titles will likely be completely ignored for later releases.

So I don't expect any of the improvements of Wind Waker HD, Twilight Princess HD, Ocarina of Time 3D, or Majora's Mask 3D to make it to Switch. Instead they'll go back to the originals, and make a new set of tweaks.

@link3710 I see your point. World e of Super Mario Bros. 3 is a Wii U exclusive for example, even though the vanilla game has been rereleased many times. But they have on occasion reissued Super Mario All-Stars (on the Wii and Switch) and placed other enhanced games on the Virtual Console (Link's Awakening DX, colour Wario Land 2). The Super Mario Advance subseries builds off of the All-Stars versions, not the originals. And at its core, Ocarina of Time 3D is a more polished version of the Ocarina + Master Quest Gamecube disk. So it's not out of the question that they would bring in the enhanced versions of at least some of those games.

I mean, there's not many cases where they've released a retail game of just ports of their old games anyway, so there's not many places where the remakes would be ignored?

I mean, I think its more that the remakes are usually newer and they've not re-released their newer games outside of Wii U to Switch ports. And maybe to a much lesser extent, some of those remakes are not as beloved or popular, fair or not. Considering it took them 18 years to re-release Super Mario Sunshine, its not surprising that 64 DS only got re-released on Wii U. And the Gameboy Pokemon games took like 5 years to come out on 3DS VC, and there's never been a GBA VC outside of...Wii U.

On the matter of re-releases, remakes, remasters, and so on, I'm worn out on the whole thing. Videogame history should simply be available. I'm also not wild about the idea of full-on remakes.

I think the situation's healthier in the PC world, which doesn't have console cycles, so classics are nestled along the long tail of Steam or GOG digital stores.

This is a bad take from a Metroid fan, because remaking games got us Zero Mission, which is a good game. Despite remaking Metroid 1, which is not.

I mean the only good Metroid games the past decade have been remakes of Metroid 2 for that matter (though granted, Metroid 2 is at least closer to being a good game).

Though I guess it helps that the old Metroid games have been re-released on popular systems (Metroid 1 is one of those games that's been re-released probably a dozen times at this point, I own 3 versions of it despite never paying for Metroid 1 specifically lololol).

I'm not annoyed at re-releases as much as how often re-releases are used as somehow a replacement for a new game for certain series. Like remember when they brought back Onimusha 1, it sold well, and it lead to nothing else from Onimusha? What? Why?

Metroid and Pokemon are pretty much the only series I've seen that really do remakes right (and even then Pokemon peaked with HGSS whereas its more recent remakes have been a bit more lacking, especially LGPE). Those games and SM64DS are the only remakes I've seen that aren't glorified copy/paste jobs with barely noticeable graphical updates that you need a magnifying glass to spot. In general, you can lump remakes in with ports and remasters because they're all just recycling old games and doing next to nothing to legitimately improve the gameplay, design, or content, it's basically the same experience all over again. I want to see what these games would be like if they were designed today, not just play them the same way I did back in the day.

@kkslider5552000

That's not where I'm coming from. It's a complicated issue.

Remakes can be good, in isolation. I'm not denying that. (One of my all-time favorite games is Halo 2, but only the Anniversary edition. The original's rushed, botched art direction is hard to warm up to. Yes, Halo 2 is more of a remaster than a remake, but the re-done graphics are a massive, top-to-bottom overhaul.)

However, from the point of view of videogame preservation and evolution, it's not a scalable prospect. You can't remake every old game out there, at frequent intervals, so they keep up with the times.

More importantly, remakes tend to make the original games obsolete, in terms of availability and the cultural conversation around them. And this, to me, is problematic, because part of the appeal of old games, what makes them meaningful, is that they do things differently. You have to adjust to them and, in the best of cases, learn from that adjustment and be surprised at ideas and mechanics modern games have left behind, not always for the better. Remakes, from this point of view, are a sort of erasure.

I prefer stuff like Sega Ages titles, which might increase the resolution and add quality-of-life options or new modes, but still basically preserve the original experiences, with their historical and artistic interest more-or-less intact.

I think there’s isn’t too much remasters or releases. There are so many games I and many others got to experience on current gen systems that we would have missed out had they not been re-released or remastered. There are some remakes that in my opinion are inferior to the original such as FF7 and Mario 64 DS. There are many more games that should be re-released that gamers born after the 1990s and 2000s would never have played.

@Don

Oh, I agree: the more re-releases, the merrier. I just prefer the Steam, GOG, or --yes-- Virtual Console model, where old videogames are simply available, ready to pick up on the digital store. We don't have to wait around for them to be re-released, remastered, or what-have-you, every five or so years.

Someone in this thread literally just said the opposite happens lol.

Wow...I never noticed that until now.

That is more of a capcom problem than anything. I still feel like they are still on their “we heart the west” kick so onimusha may just be the one re-release. I would do something extreme for a remake like the resident evil games. It borrowed the old RE engine for crying outloud. I would also like a port of onimusha tactics. actually I have a list of games capcom is sitting on.

I think it is fair that some companies re-release the final version of the original game (for instance there are a few version of OoT including one that ticked off a religious group so that version is never to be ported) as the idea is tugging the strings of the person that played the original. QoL features are for remakes and remasters.

I am more surprised we don’t have many collections from IP holders in general. I mean a lot of those aren't bc on last gen (ps4/xbone) so why not? I do wish that Nintendo wouldn’t wait until anniversaries to make collections though. Like isn’t it time for a pikmin collection? Or a full zelda (perhaps in parts) collection?

At this point I'd rather the Zelda collection not happen at all than be as half-assed as 3D All Stars was. I'm not going to buy it because literally nothing about it really differs from what can be accomplished just by emulating those games instead.

3D All Stars might be like easily one of the biggest cash grabs of this entire year next to the MGS GOG ports

@Slowdive It wouldn't be as big an issue if these were the original experience. It's more that in many ways it feels like these games would play better on original hardware.

But honestly, I don't have any interest in the original version of any of those titles. the 3DS / Wii U versions of those 4 titles are strictly superior in my opinion, one that seems to be generally shared amongst forum-goers at least. I have no interest in going back to the N64 version of Majora's Mask or the GCN version of Wind Waker in particular, with both games having many much needed changes in later versions.

@TheFrenchiestFry Nah, 3D All Stars is nowhere near "biggest cash grab". If you want to see what a cash grab really looks like, see the Nintendo system versions of FIFA games, IGN's review of FIFA 21 Legacy Edition perfectly sums it up.

@Grumblevolcano True true EA is full of it.

@Grumblevolcano Important distinction is that Nintendo made a cash grab and EA made an EA game

Whats the latest in the direct thread? Is it happening?

@ToadBrigade Nope, it would not be easier.

Super Mario All Stars is emulated. This means that you basically program a virtual version of the console, which runs the original code.

Now, this is harder than porting of course. But the nice thing about emulation is once you've written the emulator, it can play every single game on the system without any further coding. And having seen the code for this emulator elsewhere, I know they implemented not only features that are required for Super Mario Sunshine (for instance) in the GCN emulator, but also many other more obscure features such as bounding box (which is only used in like, 4 games).

So now, they can proceed to release basically any N64 or GCN game they want (and some Wii), just by tossing the existing ROM file (the data that was on the disc/cart when it was originally released) into the existing emulator. That's how VC worked in previous generations, since they could do one build and suddenly have basically every game on the system working.

That said... Majora's Mask is notably prone to crashing in basically all of NIntendo's official emulations of it, and Twilight Princess is a game that is very difficult to emulate (The minimap doesn't like emulation and the lighting system breaks if you change the resolution of the game), so if we get emulated versions they'll almost certainly be strictly worse than the originals, never mind the prior remakes.