Game remakes you think are inferior to the original versions?

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

I gotta go with Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land being inferior to the original Kirby's Adventure, personally. As weird as it sounds, the biggest problem I've got with Nightmare in Dream Land is that it's too easy compared to the original. I know it seems silly since we're talking about Kirby here, but it genuinely is easier than the original NES game. Think it might be because they had to adjust the level designs a bit to account for the smaller resolution of the GBA vs the NES (256x240 on the NES vs 240x160 on the GBA).

And then I gotta bring up the graphics. Sure, the GBA is objectively more powerful than the NES (obviously, 32-bit system vs 8-bit system) and Nightmare has more detailed graphics than Adventure, but it unfortunately misses some important visual details from the original. Namely, just like in probably every sidescrolling platformer, the game has random platforms strewn throughout the levels, and in the original NES version, they did them like this:

They made it look like they're actually part of the level's 'world' (for lack of a better term) by having them connected to background elements, but the GBA version did them like this:

They removed the background elements that made the platforms feel like they were actually part of the game world and now you just have completely random and pointless platforms. Yeah it's accurate to the level design but you lose the aesthetic part of it.

And finally (and what really got my goat when I played Nightmare for the first time), they changed the effect of Butter Building from the really cool pseudo 3D rotating towers like this:

Into just...fog that fades away. Really showing off the GBA's power there.

 

[MiracleDinner]

I wouldn't say DKCR3D is outright inferior to the Wii version that I grew up on but it certainly has some significant problems that the Wii version didn't (graphics and controls would be my main answer). Going back I'd probably have kept my £15 instead but it's nice to have. Maybe my view would be different if not for the lockdown though cause then being able to take it with me would've been actually useful

I went for the Gamecube version of Luigi's Mansion rather than the 3DS version as that's what I'd been advised to get

 

[Hooded Pitohui]

HeartGold and SoulSilver are fine Johto experiences that hold up well on their own merit. There's plenty to be said for the two of them, with their additions of little things like walking Pokémon, expanded Apricorns, and being able to meet all the gym leaders outside of battles and more of that sort and with larger changes like the restoration of a number of Kanto areas. Yet... they miss the soul of the original games. They stand up well on their own, but, even with all the additions and all the changes, they missed the mark as remakes. It's hard to explicitly tease it out, especially from nostalgia, but some of the changes in music, some of the changes in the environment, it lost a certain charm from the original titles - particularly from Crystal, which really feels like it remains the definitive Johto experience.

Plus the Superstar Saga and BiS remakes were simply inferior to the originals. They lost most of the heart in the designs and sounds of the originals, were clearly marred by lazy asset reuse, and didn't bring enough new to the table to justify their existence.

 

[Superchao]

I fully agree with Pitohui. Unlike FireRed and LeafGreen, for example, which were able to capture and expand the original spirit of Red and Blue, HGSS are... missing something. There's an energy the Gen 2 johto games had that these remakes simply didn't have.

 

[Toka Hebizuka]

Diddy Kong Racing DS

I can't be bothered to explain so here's that post I made about it that one time:

While it's not an option in the poll, and this is about good ports and remakes, I'd like to shine some light on a rarely talked port of highly talked about racing game, Diddy Kong Racing DS.

This game showcases everything wrong with a majority of DS games, forced touch controls for the sake of having them in the game. To get a starting boost you need to use the touch screen, swiping down when in the kart and drawing circles with the plane, however getting the start boost with either of these vehicles can only be done comfortably if you're one of the 10% that are left handed, and the circles must be done clockwise which my playthrough of Bomberman Land Touch has proven I can not do. The hovercraft requires you to blow into the mic, so anyone can do that but it still feels very forced.

The Silver Coins challenge is gone, now replaced with the touch screen based Balloon Touch challenge. Outdated method of moving the screen via touch aside, they're rather easy and they're isn't much to say about them other then Silver Coin's were better.

All of the balloons in the hub are now locked behind unresponsive touch based challenges, or Taj's intrusive and annoying challenges. The original tutorials return alongside two new challenges, one based around blowing torches using the microphone, which is unresponsive, and another that sends you on a wild goose chase across the island to pick up ten randomly appearing tokens before Taj does, which is tedious. The token challenge is also annoying because the game attempts to direct you with an arrow, but the arrow doesn't help as it's on the bottom screen meaning it doesn't show height, and the minimap isn't big enough to show whether or not the token is near the wall or behind it until it's too late.

Wish Track's are a cool idea, but are terrible in execution. You create four of them in adventure, with the last one being the one where you can draw whatever you want, and there isn't much potential for creating good tracks. You draw a rather bland minimap of a track, specify how much you want the track to go up and down, specify a starting point, and just hope for the best. All of the tracks feel the same with no walls or offroad, just the line that you drew. There's not much room in terms of what you can draw with that line either, the track can't go over another part of the track, the road can't go anyway near a previous piece of road, and the amount of ink is rather limited. Again, a cool idea, just horribly executed. I'll stick with TrackMania for track creation.

The wishes menu is actually kind of cool. You can change the colour of your kart, but this only changes the amount of red green and blue in the original palette, so there's not much room for customisation beyond making the car entirely red, blue or green. The kart customisation goes one step further and actually allows you to customise the look and stats of the vehicle, it's poorly designed with the upgrade that is required to use the other upgrades being better then half of the upgrades, and the cosmetic changes and stat differences can't be seen before being bought, but at least there's the option for customisation. Player icons and track side advertisements can be drawn by the player, I have no artistic talent but it's a nice addition for anyone who does. Finally there's the option to record sound effects, it's fun because I get to hear a bit crunched Jack Black say "Octago-" whenever I use an item. The problem is that the game is stingier then CTR:NF with how it hands out coins. The coins come at the cost of the bananas from the original, now adding to a total across all modes rather then just one race, however the amount of coins on a track are rather still rather low, meaning you have to grind a lot just to get them. The kart customisation and player icons don't have have to be brought, but everything else still does. The wish menu also has new tracks and gameplay modes to be bought. The silver coin challenges can be played this way, and the player can create and save their own wish track with this. All of these options still suffer from the problem of being too expensive.

Overall the remake adds features that while cool on paper, are poorly executed, and changes a lot things that didn't need to be changed.

great thing about writing posts like this is that I can just quote them whenever I bring up the topic, instead of actually writing a post.

 

[LeftyGreenMario]

Maybe I didn't grow up on the original GS games my brother did, but I didn't feel like something was "left out" in the remakes. I thought the remakes were a fine addition and they did improve on the original where I don't feel like I should be playing the original over them.

I don't agree either with Superstar Saga being an all-around inferior remake to the original. I don't like a lot of the changes they tried to do (the one where they replaced Mecha-Chomp with a freaking Mecha-Koopa WHAT; they still kept a lot of the other enemies! also it feels like the expressions are really toned back in parts such as the Toads in the beginning of the game) but the visuals (the battle backgrounds especially; Stardust Fields in Superstar Saga look particularly pretty) are such a lush upgrade from the original it's hard for me to fault the remake's design choices. It makes Superstar Saga look so cheap by comparison. The battles there might be also easier, but let's be honest, the Bros. Moves in the original were a mess and Superstar Saga wasn't exactly a hard game to begin with.

Comparison between Stardust fields is night and day, almost literally, for instance. I just don't see how people think the original looks better than the remake.

Diddy Kong Racing DS

Yeah, that's one remake I think all of use can agree is so vastly inferior to the original. I don't know how they managed it, but the voice acting is horrid, the music is worse, the cutscenes were worse (opening cinematic is a good comparison), the boss battles are piss easy, the music changes suck (wtf Pirate Lagoon is gone completely). I see a point about the color slider, though I don't think you're using the rbg sliders correctly. Sure, it didn't have to be set up that way, but yeah.

 

[Glowsquid]

Mega Man X on iPhone is a low-hanging fruit, but I mean just look at it

Or last year's XIII remake. What do you do when you remake a FPS mostly notable for its cellshaded graphics? Well, remove the cellshading, fuck up the cutscene cinematrography, stuff it with bugs, make it so even a RTX card won't run at a stable framerate, lobotomize the enemies, remove online matchmaking (yeah the 2004 game has online but its 2020 remake doesn't) and cut the map count from 13 down to 3. Who cares about all that stuff, you can now ADS!

More obscure and worthy of elaboration is the GBA remake of Darius, Darius R. The original Darius was quite the unique specimen, using a combination of mirrors and three 4:3 screens to present a wide playfield with minimal bezels. You may ask "So Glowsquid, how do you adapt a game with a 12:9 aspect ratio to an handheld with a mere 240x160 screen?"

Well I'm glad you asked

Because the developers of Darius R didn't know either

There were competent ports of the arcade game to the PC Engine, so they already a blueprint to adapt Darius and completely disregarded it. That's pretty bad! But then you get to the music, which entirely consists of teeny, out-of-tune, discordant (gcmatome's page on the game has a section appropriately titled Worst BGM In History) arrangements chosen at seemingly random (the first stage uses the "Chaos" theme from the original game, a fine track but one about as far removed from the "1st level theme" aesthetic as possible, while the peepy original theme is used for one of the final boss). The Darius series has one of the most idiosyncratic and memorable soundtrack in video game history, so that they so thorougly fucked everything up is unforgivable. Oh and they plagiarized one of the boss tracks from Fantasy Zone so this version can't be legally rereleased.

It's all the more puzzling because some of the developers were involved in Gradius Galaxies, which is a perfectly good and competent sequel.

 

[Doomhiker]

It's not as if Darius wasn't competently ported to 16-bit (I know that the GBA is 32) consoles, either, as the Genesis version (officially released on the mini) is perfectly competent and playable, as far as I can tell.

 

[JC.]

I wouldn't say DKCR3D is outright inferior to the Wii version that I grew up on but it certainly has some significant problems that the Wii version didn't (graphics and controls would be my main answer).

That's surprising because for I think a majority of people, the motion controls were the one single flaw of the Wii version (having just played it after already playing the 3DS version, I'd have to agree). For that reason, I'd prefer DKCR3D just for having actual button controls to roll (I say "just" but it makes gameplay so much better), even though it didn't have the smooth frame rate, though the 3D was cool.

---

(surprise, another Crash mention) The N. Sane Trilogy version of Crash 2. Having grown up with the original and gotten used to its precise physics for so long, the Trilogy's recreation of them just felt off for me. I didn't mind Crash 1 since I never finished the original (and it was already drastically improved upon in other aspects), and Crash 3 wasn't as noticeable since it was an easier game.

 

[Cocoa]

Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey always seemed odd to me.

I mean, the original isn't a rare game by any means and can even be played on the 3DS, so why they chose it over Partners in Time is beyond me.

Also, the more modern art style doesn't sit well with this game, but maybe that's just my nostalgia speaking.

 

[fantanoice]

Pokemon ORAS for missing features in Emerald (Battle Frontier, both legendaries in 1 game, both evil teams, etc).

Shocked at people saying HGSS. It's honestly one of my favourites. You got the Pokemon following you, they added the new evolutions (eg: Mamoswine), they kept the features of Crystal, it looked / sounded great, etc.

 

[Chair]

3d all stars is missing the blj

 

[Teedgee]

Ive never played mario 64 ds, but just looking at the game I can see that the game lost a lot of its charm, like, maybe I just like the mario 64 models, but I kinda prefer the original even in terms of visuals as crazy as that sounds. Might make another mario 64 ds post here if I ever play it

 

[Waluigi Time]

3d all stars is missing the blj

You can still do it, it's just useless now

 

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

Ive never played mario 64 ds, but just looking at the game I can see that the game lost a lot of its charm, like, maybe I just like the mario 64 models, but I kinda prefer the original even in terms of visuals as crazy as that sounds. Might make another mario 64 ds post here if I ever play it

Oh that's a good one actually since Mario 64 DS actually loses a lot due to the lack of proper analog controls. I know you could use the touch screen, but come on.

Altho I'd personally debate putting it in the 'inferior' category, to me at least, because yeah it was worse controls than the original game and (depending on your view) the graphics lose their charm, but I feel the better camera helps a lot compared to the originally.

 

[Cocoa]

Oh that's a good one actually since Mario 64 DS actually loses a lot due to the lack of proper analog controls. I know you could use the touch screen, but come on.

Never had that problem since I always play on 3DS (with the circle pad)

 

[MiracleDinner]

I'm hacking my Wii U tomorrow and if I can extract my SM64 copy from my Wii U and then put it on my SD card for my 3DS + install an N64 emulator I may just be able to play the N64 version of SM64 on a 3DS.

Take that Nintendo

 

[Cocoa]

I'm hacking my Wii U tomorrow and if I can extract my SM64 copy from my Wii U and then put it on my SD card for my 3DS + install an N64 emulator I may just be able to play the N64 version of SM64 on a 3DS.

Take that Nintendo

shhh keep your voice down bro they might sue you

 

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

Never had that problem since I always play on 3DS (with the circle pad)

Eh, that does help but even then you're still only getting 8-way directional movement.

Obviously if that's fine with you, then great, but yeah. It's how I preferred to play it before I stuck an emulated version on my N3DS.

 

["Scary" Wolf]

shhh keep your voice down bro they might sue you

The game won't be sold after the 31st of March anyway.

 

[Wackyturtle]

Probably the Final fantasy Vll remake.
I mean seriously, they changed pretty much the entire story and the battle system!
It doesn't really feel like a remake but more like a separate game completely-

I haven't actually played the remake, I've only watched my dad play it and random other clips lol
I haven't finished the original game either:

Spoiler: Where Im at in the game, it's probably a spoiler lol

Im at the part after sephiroth kills the shinra president and cloud has to fight Rufus help he's hard to beat

It wasn't entirely bad though. Its really cool to see midger and the other characters with updated graphics plus there were new features.
Though if anyone wants to play it just get the switch/ps4 port of the original. It's better. Trust me.

 

[SpriteBro]

They removed the background elements that made the platforms feel like they were actually part of the game world and now you just have completely random and pointless platforms. Yeah it's accurate to the level design but you lose the aesthetic part of it.

I think that's really important to the aesthetic appeal, it might sound trivial to some people but it improves the immersiveness and organic feel that are important for platformers in my opinion. Games that go with random floating platforms are necessarily bad, lots of good games use them, but it's best to limit their usage.

Anyway, there's lots of remakes I find inferior, here's a few:

Pokemon Let's Go is an inferior gen 1 experience, it strips the games of their charm and doesn't really add enough content to be a substantial upgrade unlike the gen 3 remakes (I still prefer gen 1 to gen 3's remakes but it's more of a subjective matter there).

Resident Evil 2. I was disappointed they didn't go with the remake style they did for Resident Evil 1, it may as well be a completely new game based on the way it plays and the significant changes.

Super Mario 64 DS. This is just because of the controls, otherwise it's possibly better than the original. The controls are simply too bad to be overlooked, however.

 

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

Would bumping (for lack of a better term considering this thread is still on the first page) this thread to say Grand Theft Auto: The 'Definitive' Edition be too low a hanging fruit?

Cuz I don't even own The Definitive Edition and I'm still crazy disappointed by what they pushed out. I understand that it was likely a rush job considering that they were supposed to (re)rerelease GTA V on PS5 and XSX this year (but that has been delayed to 2022) and they wanted to release something for the 20th anniversary of GTA III's release but not like this, certainly not like this.

Now let me be clear about one thing here: I'm not a framerate snob, far from it; if a game hits at least 30 fps, then I can happily play it without complaint. But the fact that the only way to play these so-called 'definitive' editions at a locked 60 fps is by playing the PS4 Pro version of the game on a PS5 (which means you suffer from lower graphics quality and resolution compared to the native PS5 version of the game) is just unacceptable.

Also, while not strictly talking about the quality of the game, the fact that the PC version of the game still had all the (now removed) music tracks (but just inaccessible, although IIRC didn't some people have glitches where the game would play the unlicensed songs?) is just icing on the cake.

 

[Dell Conagher]

Inb4 someone mentions the Pokémon gen 4 remakes.

 

[Sprig]

inb4 we have an argument over whether they're good or not

haven't played 'em but they look pretty faithful to me