Adventure Gamers - Forums

There have been a lot of recent discussions in other threads on this topic, and considering the amount of remade/upgraded games coming out (most recently, Simon the Sorcerer) I think it would be a good idea to have a place to talk about it. I’d like to find out what other people think can be done, if anything, to make old games better. Hi-res graphics? Speech? Is it possible at all? Some think it is, some think it isn’t. Can it ever make things worse?

The type of “upgrades” in previous remakes include:
-Redrawn graphics (Monkey Island SE)
-Hi-Res graphics done using a hardware or software filter (StS 20th Anniversary edition)
-Adding speech
-“Improved” controls like mouse control
-Removing deaths and dead ends (LSL Reloaded)

I think we can all agree increased compatibility is a good thing. On the other upgrades I have my own ideas, but I prefer to listen to what others think first.

One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that, to my knowledge, no text adventures have been remade. There’s probably a simpler reason for this but considering the array of excellent and popular games from Infocom, it’s strange. It would be an interesting experiment converting HHGGtG or A Mind Forever Voyaging to graphical point & click and see how they stack up to the original.

I think sometime the floodgates will open and we’ll see almost every pre-2000 game modernized, sort of like the digitally remastered album trend we went through a while ago. So it’s important to know the best way to go about it.

Anything that is just an addition, without actually changing something that already existed in the original is always welcome, in my opinion.  Adding speech, for example, unless it’s done with really terrible actors, is hard to see as anything but an enhancement.

In any case, the ability to play the game in its unaltered original form should always be an option.

Adding speech is probably the best upgrade I’ve seen in any of these re-releases so far. None of them have provided graphics I’ve liked just yet, but in theory that could be a nice addition as well.

The worst is when there’s forced “upgrades” in the game that you can’t remove, like the ugly avatars in the Broken Sword re-release that you couldn’t avoid (without 3rd party software) if you wanted to play the added content.

It’s depend on the game, the only real necessary for me is addition of a voice acting.

Improved graphics just look wrong to me, the Monkey Island SE graphics, where they simply “dress” a new and shiny graphics on an old game from the 90es’ just looked weird (thought it did improve in the second game). A better option would have to re do the whole graphics from scratch on a new modern engine, thought no doubt it would have piss off many fans.

I really don’t see the point of SE for games like Discworld II or Curse of Monkey Island which to my mind still look great even today and did include voice acting, even pixel art games like StS looks weird to me with different set of graphics.

Lambonius - 27 August 2013 12:18 AM

Anything that is just an addition, without actually changing something that already existed in the original is always welcome, in my opinion.  Adding speech, for example, unless it’s done with really terrible actors, is hard to see as anything but an enhancement.

If you can turn it off, maybe. Would anyone do that though?

Speech itself is not necessarily an improvement. I don’t think Dominic Armato’s voice suits Monkey Island 1 & 2. Guybrush was a different character then and wasn’t written with that voice in mind. Because there was no voice acting at the time he was written to be read and for the player to conjure up a suitable voice. Going back and stamping Guybrush’s Curse personality on the first 2 games isn’t right.

Here’s an upgrade I think would be a great improvement: widescreen support. Most games up until a few years ago were made for 4:3 aspect ratio. If they could get re-released in widescreen that would be great. But only without stretching the graphics. This would take a lot of work, I know.

Speech is a killer in a game that doesn’t let you skip dialogue (or doesn’t let you have subtitles). 

Zifnab - 26 August 2013 10:30 PM

One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that, to my knowledge, no text adventures have been remade.

Softporn Adventure to LSL1?

I can see why it doesn’t happen much though, as it’s such an enormous amount of work.

..aaand just as I make this thread a “reimagining” of Bureaucracy comes up, complete with stress-meter: http://www.adventuregamers.com/news/view/25118

OneFlesh - 27 August 2013 04:55 AM

I can see why it doesn’t happen much though, as it’s such an enormous amount of work.

Yes that’s true. I can also see why it shouldn’t happen. The Lurking Horror for example was one of the most memorable and distinctive horror experiences I’ve had in gaming. Convert it to a graphical adventure and it becomes just another out of dozens and dozens of “explore the spooky environment” adventure games.

I suppose what I want to say is that modernizing involves homogenizing. I don’t want every game of the past 30 years looking like MI:SE, not because it was bad but because it takes all the uniqueness away. If it really is true that young and modern audiences are turned away by old features and graphics, then it’s a huge shame.

diego - 27 August 2013 08:46 AM

Another good example is Prince of Persia remake - Prince of Persia is a great without changing a thing, but make it as much enjoyable even if that means that you’ll be speeding up Prince’s animation a bit. And there was nothing wrong with that intro animation back when the original was released, but it’s a nice little touch to make a completely new cutscene.

I love the original PoP PC graphics. It looks so… yummy
But I’m not against the remake. It’s in the realistic style of the later games so I think they wanted it to fit in with those. I wouldn’t call it an improvement, more like an alternative option for those who wouldn’t play such an old game.

I’d say MI2:SE is pretty much the gold standard for updated editions: nice HD graphics, great voice acting, fantastic live score (lack of iMuse notwithstanding), preserved gameplay with a hint system for those who want it, developer commentary track, tablet support, option to switch to the original… I don’t think it can get much better than this.

At the other end of the scale, I agree with diego that it can’t get much worse than BS1: the additions are at best mediocre (those Nicole chapters that led nowhere) and at worst detract from the experience (ugly portraits, inferior intro). Furthermore, the HD portraits just draw attention to the low-res quality of the rest of the game, just like the new voices in the new scenes make it all the more noticeable that the original audio was very low quality. And don’t get me started on the missing hotspots and “simplified” puzzles…

In any case, while I can sometimes be disappointed that an updated edition is not as good as my “dream version” of the game, I really don’t get upset about it. At the end of the day, people are free to ignore the updated version and just play the original using DOSBox/ScummVM/VirtualBox/what-have-you, and nothing can take that away.

Personally I think everything should be left as it was made but maybe the ‘mechanics/accessibility’ improved?

If MI2:SE is the gold standard, then spare me any more remakes. Yes, I’m glad that MI2 was made available to the masses again, but I feel the artwork of the SE lacked the artistry of the original. Just compare Largo’s spit on the wall! It looks great in the original, but in the remake someone just mindlessly scribbled some green there. Yes, I know it’s weird that I paid so much attention to the spit, but I was surprised how carelessly drawn it looked in the SE compared to the original. Weird!
Also, didn’t like that the MIDI of the Special Edition original version sounds different to how it always sounded in the true original on my PCs and how it still sounds with ScummVM to this day. I think it sounds worse in the SE original.
The voice acting is good, but the dialogue wasn’t orginally written to be spoken, I feel. So, I don’t think it was an improvement either.
The newly recorded music was nice though, but didn’t fit with the SE original version, so… yeah, I think the original original, with the help of ScummVM, is still the best way to experience MI2 to this day.

In the end I think the gold standard for remakes so far is pretty poor.
Problem with remakes is that while they may be able to improve an original on a technical level, by remaking graphics in high definition, offering voice acting for the first time, increasing the fidelity of music and sound,...if you redo a lot of the art and gameplay you may lose the certain something that made the original so special.
I think besides making an old game run on modern systems, increasing the resolution of the graphics, improving the sound quality (in case of badly compressed sound) and the interface, you risk making the end result worse, not better.
Problem is that sadly the source files of most of the old games out there are lost to the ages. Even with Baldur’s Gate 1 this is the case, and that’s a game from the late 90ies and from a company that’s still around! So, yeah, remakes can be great in theory, but in practice they rarely are.