The Renaissance of Video Games and Their Remakes (Part 3)

Continued from last time...

The NES was the first widespread, home console that contained worlds that could stand on their own visually. As time went by, the worlds got bigger and the visuals grander. Even now, what has been elusive in video games has been achieved, even in a small way. Using current generation technology (Playstation 3 to be exact) emotion has been portrayed digitally in a surprisingly accurate way. Just check out this video titled "Kara"

If you haven't figured it out, I love video games and I have a nostalgic love of the ones I grew up playing.  Even today, I love playing Mega Man 3, Mega Man X, Super Mario Brothers 2, Castlevania, Battletoads, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Donkey Kong Country, Final Fantasy IV, my list could go on for pages. Every one of these games is a classic with great (timely) graphics and game mechanics. As downloadable content becomes more and more popular, games from yesteryear have been re-released. In general, I love that these games having a resurgence so those of us without the foresight to keep our old systems and games can enjoy them again. However, I do have an issue when instead of just putting out a straight port of the game the developers feel a need to update the game, specifically the graphics. I'm not sure what the mindset is, maybe it's that despite it's popularity when they originally came out, graphics have come a long way (which is true) and people wouldn't be as receptive to the original visuals.

One of my favorite games of all time is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. It was originally an arcade game that was ported to the Super NES. I played both, but enjoyed the Super NES version more for several reasons. It had more levels and since it was on a system I owned, I could play it whenever I wanted. I used to play it in college regularly with my room mate while we played 12" LPs we recently purchased. Of course, knowing what to do and having played it so much already, the game's story would only last ~30 minutes but I could play that game over and over, even right now. A few years ago, they re-released Turtles in Time as a downloadable game adding the suffix "Reshelled". It's a remake of the arcade version so there are fewer levels but they updated the graphics as can be seen in the screenshots below.

Almost finished with this topic so hold on until next time...