With Switch now into its eighth year and Nintendo’s head chefs deep into software prep for the next console, remakes and remasters are the order of the day, with a platter of old favourites being served up in this twilight period for the current system.
We got the excellent late last year and the remake in February, which was preceded by the Nintendo-published . In May GameCube classic is incoming, with arriving the following month. And that’s only first-party stuff.
And it’s fine. We understand the business realities behind brand-new ideas versus safe, established IP, and we understand that the truly new and exciting Nintendo projects are being worked on behind closed doors. We’re happy for the chance to revisit classics with a fresh lick of paint too, or, in some cases, catch up on games we missed the first time around. Everyone’s a winner.
Still, with so many reworked versions of old games releasing, is there not more developers and publishers could be doing with remakes and remasters if they’re going to raid and raid again their back catalogues?
Look, for example, at the brilliant, important work Digital Eclipse is doing with its Gold Master Series. Presenting a timeline narrative that gives modern players the contextual framework to really appreciate older games in their natural habitat, and the recent demonstrate what’s possible when it comes to showcasing archival documents, work-in-progress builds, artwork, anecdotes from the developers, and so much more all in a dynamic, interactive wrapper.
All of those elements aren’t easy to wrangle and present, of course, and you could argue that only the larger publishers have the resources (and the archival material) to make something like that possible. But imagine for a moment how much more engaging and attractive Mario vs. Donkey Kong would have been had it included some more behind-the-scenes elements.
We would have loved to hear more from the developers old and new about the evolution of the game from , to see the art and interviews, and to hear commentary discussing decision-making with the remake. Imagine the option to switch between the new visuals and the original, to explore the audio in different ways, delving into the composition. Similarly, having all the mainline series conveniently accessible on Switch is great, but there was an opportunity for so much more than the basic ports Nintendo turned in.
Digital Eclipse’s timeline approach, which debuted in , isn’t necessarily appropriate for every project. The ability to flip instantly between the old game and the new is far easier said than done, too, and depends on how the new version has been built. We’re not suggesting that every remake/remaster also needs a comprehensive Gold Master-style documentary overlaid on the new version, with a dozen playable prototypes from throughout development and hours of archival recordings and dev interviews. We’d love that, but let’s be practical.
What we are saying, though, is that companies like Nintendo — video game giants with an incredibly rich history — could be offering more when it spruces up old software for a new generation. There are so many possibilities to delve into the history of these games and the people who made them.
And these people won’t be around forever. It would be great to have huge, commemorative, Gold Master-style releases for every Nintendo game — The Making of Super Mario Bros., The Making of The Legend of Zelda, etc. — but let’s face it, time is running out if they were to include interviews with all the people involved. Why not start peppering in this good stuff with games releasing right now, especially remakes and remasters where it’s entirely natural to look back on the original game?
Mario Maker offered a glimpse into Nintendo’s archives — we’d love to see more of this sort of material in the games themselves
But the costs involved on top of regular development make it unfeasible! says a boring chap at the back. Make it DLC, if you must. Bin all the stickers and phone stands and rubbish in the $100 Special Gold Master Edition and make it exclusive, if there’s really no other way.
Perhaps Nintendo has a great archive of recordings from all its employees and we’re going to see an impressive unveiling of material at the , which is scheduled to open within mere weeks at the time of writing. A physical museum in Japan isn’t ideal for the hundreds of millions of Nintendo fans who don’t live in the company’s homeland, but the site has great potential to really dig into the archives and highlight the heritage and minds behind its games.
It just feels like the clock is ticking. Takashi Tezuka celebrates the 40th anniversary of his Nintendo employment next month. He’s still there, making games, with stories and knowledge we would love to hear. Let’s not miss a chance to get him and others on the record. Nintendo’s does a fair job of channelling the much-missed spirit (we’re still waiting for our coffee table book, Nintendo) into new game topics. But why not integrate all that good stuff into the software rather than hiding it away on a website? What better way to present that material than through the medium Nintendo itself helped revolutionise?
Remakes and remasters present the perfect opportunity to sideload that gold into the games themselves and offer more than a facelift and slapping an ‘HD’ or ‘Deluxe’ on the box.