Finally Seeing Through The Pixels

Last week’s Nintendo Direct knocked my socks off in the moment. It was such a fun watch, and I’m still super excited about so many of the announcements. The rest of 2023 and even the beginning of 2024 is looking absolutely stacked, which is awesome. The thing is, a pretty hefty portion of what I’m excited about is remakes, particularly the ones that are lifting the pixelated 16-bit veil. 

Let’s run the numbers, shall we? Just including the games I’m interested in, the percentage that are old games all gussied up is kinda staggering. So not even including stuff like Resident Evil 4, this year brought me Metroid Prime Remastered, Advance Wars Reboot Camp, Kirby: Return to Dream Land, Sonic Origins Plus, and We Love Katamari. 

For the remainder of this year I am genuinely excited to pick up Baten Kaitos, Metal Gear Solid Collection, and Super Mario RPG. Next year I’ll be playing Another Code Recollection, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Luigi’s Mansion 2, and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. 

Too Many Remakes?

Remakes and remasters are everywhere, and it seems that I can’t stop being excited about them. I love new games too, but there’s something about the comfort of replaying old pixelated games with a fresh coat of paint that I find irresistible, but there’s one flavor in particular that is bringing me joy on a different level. And that’s old games based on CG instead of traditional sprites. 

The first time most of us saw a game that featured the kind of graphics I’m talking about was Donkey Kong Country. I’ll never forget how I felt the first time I watched that VHS tape Nintendo mailed out to people showing off the game. Looking at it on a VCR connected to a CRT TV made the game appear to just be movie-quality CG playable on my Super NES with no idea just how pixelated they were. But the march of time has revealed a much better look at what was really going on. A metric ton of compression.

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Many other games followed suit on a number of platforms, and they looked pretty great at the time. Vector Man on Genesis, Killer Instinct on SNES, Mario Kart: Super Circuit on GBA all used 3D rendered characters as sprites that were then compressed and pixelated down to a level that the platforms they were running on could handle. They even took this process so far as to make games like Conker’s Pocket Tales on the Game Boy Color! 

Computer Generated Goodness

What was so different about these games was that while classics like Mega Man or Castlevania adapted concept art to create the in-game game sprites, these games just used the concept art itself. This puts them in a unique position to be remade, because it finally gives players the opportunity to see what these games were actually supposed to look like in the first place, before they were all pixelated. 

When you look at something like the amazing Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap remake by Lizardcube, it looks spectacular, but it’s not necessarily what the original creators had in mind when they were making the game. Most remakes are reinterpretations by different teams. But with those older super-compressed CG games, we’re being given a chance to just decompress everything and see them for what they always were supposed to be underneath. 

Super Mario RPG is one of the best examples of that in action. The debut trailer showed off this amazing box of toys. In the SNES version it looked like a garbled mess. In the new version you can actually see that there were a bunch of Nintendo game references hiding in plain sight. 

There’s been a Stunt Race FX reference in Mario RPG this whole time???

Seeing and hearing Super Mario RPG like this is an extraordinary experience, and the kind of remake that I would absolutely love to see more of. 

We just learned that Mario vs. Donkey Kong is getting the same treatment. Donkey Kong for Game Boy is one of my all-time favorite games, but its GBA follow up was pretty darn good on its own. But boy was that game ugly. 

This remake is taking a few more liberties, but it’s still apparent that the game is intended to be an actualization of what the original intent was. It’s great in particular to hear the game’s music without the Game Boy Advance’s trademark crunch as well.

Clarity of Sound

Speaking of audio, I want so very badly for the original Donkey Kong Country to get this treatment. I can only imagine how amazing that game would look with the original uncompressed GC on display. But the soundtrack was also compressed to an extreme degree. Fortunately though, we already know what that’s supposed to sound like thanks to the amazing work of Jammin’ Sam Miller. 

This absolute legend went and found all the original sound fonts and recreated the songs based on the game data with uncompressed sounds. The result is jarring sometimes, but it’s incredibly cool to hea just how much different things can sound via compression. 

But can you imagine playing Donkey Kong Country with uncompressed audio and visuals? I can, and I want it more and more every day. 

So what do you think? Yes, there are a lot of remakes out in the world these days, but this kind I think is on a different level. What CG classic games would you like to see remade?