Are game remakes more than just money-making schemes? The surprising truth revealed!

It’s as if a rift has opened in the space-time continuum, catapulting players into the 2000s or earlier. Dead space‘s eerie space station, the plague-infested villages of Resident Evil 4, Metroid PrimeThe sleek sci-fi interiors of: These are the virtual playgrounds of some of the best-reviewed video games of 2023, and they’re all remakes or remasters. Their paths have already been traveled by many players, but now they shine again and maybe even feel a little different; Sharper, snappier, more responsive: Yesterday’s classics reimagined with today’s technology.

The video game remake is nothing new, but it occupies a recently expanded presence in the release calendar and therefore in the minds of gamers around the world. If you take a look at a critical aggregator like Metacritic to find your next gaming experience, there’s a good chance you’ll end up with a title that was first released 10, 20, or even 30 years ago. Fancy a game of tactics? Then come on Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp one shot. A first-person action movie? The recently released System shock the remake should do the trick.

At times, however, it can feel like time is speeding up, such is the diminishing gap between the initial release and the remake, remaster or re-release. The third highest rated game of the year on Metacritic is the “Complete Edition” of the critically acclaimed RPG The sorcerer 3released just eight years ago for a generation of consoles that many gamers still use today.

The sorcerer 3 shows the semantic slipperiness involved in resurrecting the past. “Complete Edition” mainly refers to the new higher resolution textures and higher frame rate, so it’s not a wholesale remake nor rather a remaster (a term that generally applies to much older titles). It’s best described as an “update,” bringing its presentation in line with what gamers have come to expect from current consoles and PC. Perhaps more than anything, this “Complete Edition” is a clever marketing operation, updating the experience just enough to sell it to players once again, all while maintaining the brand’s continued cultural relevance.

Remakes, however, generally go far beyond updating or remastering original assets (3D models, textures, animations, and the like). Rather, they recreate a game from scratch, sometimes cutting close to their ancestors (as with Resident Evil 4) and, in others, by introducing more fundamental changes to game mechanics, if not to the story (remakes of Resident Evil 2 AND 3 swap fixed camera angles for a more modern third-person “free camera”. The upcoming remake of another survival horror classic, Silent hill 2, it appears that it will opt for the latter approach by introducing, according to producer Motoi Okamoto, a “more immersive” camera and, interestingly, “more fun than before” combat. This detail will irritate some purists (like myself), who consider the original’s punishing combat a vital part of its storytelling.

As video games age (now well over 50), so do their audiences. The medium not only contains a rich history of beloved titles, but also an older demographic that enjoys revisiting them. In short, the current craze for remakes, what cultural critic Simon Reynolds would term “retromania,” is here to stay. Atari CEO and chairman Wade Rosen nearly said the same in a statement announcing the company’s acquisition of Night Dive, maker of the recently released System shock remake. For Rosen, the developer has a “proven track record” in “commercializing retro IP,” attributes much appreciated for a company like Atari looking to capitalize on its large back catalog.

While it’s natural to feel cynical about the relentless rebuilding of the old ground, these makeovers do more than enrich long-standing companies. Video games, like movies and music, are tied to trends. Currently, the most popular games are all-consuming open world behemoths or endless “live service” experiences (both simultaneously in the case of GTA online). What the current roundup of remakes does is allow players to peek beyond those trends to enjoy more focused and arguably tighter experiences. For gamers of a certain age, these remakes can remind them of what first brought them to the medium. For younger gamers, they offer a chance to see how past designers envisioned its possibilities, only now with more pixels and better hardware. It’s not that video games are necessarily devoid of ideas; some, it turns out, are timeless.