Thinking of something and I’m curious what YOU think! If you could remake a retro PC videogame, what would it be and how would you envision the remake?
Honestly I just want to have more stable ports. A lot of the charm is lost with these games slathering them in modern tech.
The sole exception I can think of is Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, partly because the game is blatantly unfinished, and partly because the anime style they wanted to go with wasn’t handled great then. I think all you’d really need to do is flesh out the bare script, keeping the character illustrations and basic beats intact, but filling out details that got lost in the Blood 2 shuffle. Gameplay, just tone down the crit system by making it dependent on specific body parts, maybe have limb dismemberment or damage since this is a mech heavy game, and flesh out the weapons to be more varied and useful. Also enemies do less damage (they just shred you).
Of course, some sort of cel-shading graphical style or the like. The game is begging for it. Heck, with the limited graphics they had at the time, they still made time to make an anime opening.
That is not a joke.
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I wouldn’t mind a hand-drawn remake of this game from 30 years ago:
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Thinking about my last post and since I mentioned Blood 2…you know maybe Blood 2?
Famously unfinished game that had a ton of promise. A remake should decide on the actual tone they want to go for, tone down the more overtly wacky stuff for the dark comedy, flesh out the massively unfinished script, maybe just get rid of that weird detail where one character gets their gender flipped upon being resurrected (it was weird and added nothing), ans create everything as a single campaign where you play as all of the chosen and flesh out their unique abilities and weapons.
As for a major change, a fundamental one, I think it would be let Gideon be the final boss after you take out the horror that was manipulating him. Give him a new form and really flesh out his goals beyond revenge. He’s way too fun a villain from what little we’ve seen to just waste him by turning him into A BIG SCARY SPIDER you shoot dead.
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The problem with this question is the problem I have with remakes of movies: if it was good the first time, it doesn’t need to be remade. But people ONLY want to remake things they are fond of to begin with.
So I need to think of a game that had promise but ultimately (IMO) disappointed me.
So my pick would be Sanitarium (1998).
Now I’m sure this might make fans of that game angry, but I felt the game had a ton of charm and style… in the first half. The longer it goes on, it’s levels get less inspired and downright annoying. I also feel like the ending is telegraphed and doesn’t act as a good “twist”, and it wasn’t until long after I played the game that I (accidentally) discovered that allot of it’s plot is ripped off of the 1990 movie Brain Dead (they even did a odd remake of that movies ending credit song that consisted of samples of lines from the film).
If given the chance, I would keep the isometric style of the original game and it’s graphical style that used sprites made from 3d models (like Donkey Kong Country). Games like Stasis show that this style can work in modern games quite well.
What I would change however would be the structure of the story and levels. For those unfamiliar with the game, you don’t actually spend allot of time in the titular Sanitarium. Instead, you visit different worlds that may or may not be hallucinations of the main character. The actual Sanitarium is relegated to interlude segments between the larger levels. My biggest change would be to make the Sanitarium itself a much more prominent part of the game, because I feel it is a very interesting place that wasn’t utilized to it’s full potential.
I can’t talk more about the story without getting into spoilers, but for those that know, yes, I would cut the penultimate chapter entirely, and I would rewrite the ending. I feel if you are going to telegraph the twist ending as much as they did, then you might as well have that reveal be midway through the game and allow the rest of your story to go off the rails as possible.
I felt the original had amazing style, but faltered in substance, so that’s what I would focus on.
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The Prisoner off the Apple II. Technically it already had a remake/sequel a couple years later, The Prisoner 2, and the one I’d want would be much in that same spirit, a mixture of gameplay segments lifted wholesale from the original game and new ones. But I think this art game from 1980 would still be fresh, incisive, and novel even in today’s landscape and I’d love for a new generation to get an eyeful of it.
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How much would you lift from the TV show or would you focus on it just being it’s own thing?
Focus on it just being its own thing. Ideally you could skirt the issue of licensing the rights to the TV show entirely, which would be much more expensive now than in 1980 and would presumably come hand-in-hand with pencil pushers’ visions of brand integrity.
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I remember enjoying Clive Barker’s Undying and haven’t seen it mentioned much since. From what I remember, it feels like a great candidate for a Nightdive Studios remaster.
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