Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 178: Remakes, Reboots, and Reinventions

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

Jeremy Parish and Bob Mackey talk to USgamer's Caty McCarthy and Polygon's Matt Leone about modern-day takes on classic series--their history, the best and worst of them, and whether or not they're even necessary.

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I don't know what they, yeah. Anyway, yeah, so this week it's a different cast of characters than usual. Of course, I'm here and across from me, there's. Hey, it's Bob Mackie. Yep. I'm a junior, so I am a remake. And let me tell you, the original sucked. Okay.

And coming back for his first episode, in like four years. Yeah, where's Ray? Ray is now a star of Sonic Mania and does not have time for podcasting. He's making appearances all over the country. He is. It's great. So yes, introduce yourself.

Matt Leone. Yeah, we were talking earlier. I think the last time I was here was when Ray was still here probably about four or five years ago. It's been a while. What was that topic? Do you remember? I think it might have been more than once, actually. Racing. Is it like Ninja Gaiden or something? It's possible. I think it was. Injia guidance, I don't think Matt was here.

Arcades Yeah like Konami Arcade brawlers maybe Yeah something like that All right well what do you do these days Matt I work at Polygon I was at one up with you for about A long time 10 years and then I've been in Polygon for the last six or so

So yeah You're one of the few stable people in the industry I don't think of that much You've had two jobs Yeah I'm kidding And then in the other corner Hi I'm Katie McCarthy I was on the Sonic Adventure episode

Yeah, Slot Adventure. It's like right after GDC, so that's honestly a blur for me. Right, yeah. I'm really excited to record on not a week after running around. I'm very sorry. Yeah. I also made a lot of people angry that episode. Did you?

They were going to be angry anyways. Yeah, I mean, that's one of those topics. It's just someone's going to be angry. Then I brought on a Sonic fan to, and I thought things would be better, but they weren't. No. No. That's one of the, yeah, there's no pleasing some people with some topics. I'm not actually.

that's super serious. It's cool. In this case, I don't think we're going to make people mad with this episode, but you never know. I reserve the possibility. But we are going to talk about, like I said, revivals, remakes, and reboots, and it's a bit semantic, but

I'm kind of looking at these in a different way. So for the sake of conversation, I've broken this down in the notes in terms of Metroid games. A remake is not simply a port of a game or a remaster, a remake involves a significant overhaul of a game's visuals, engine, mechanics, and or content.

So, Metroid Zero Mission for Game Boy Advance is a remake of the original Metroid for NES. Metroid NES classics for Game Boy Advance is not a remake. It's just a port. A reboot is a game that takes the concepts and ideas from previous games in the franchise and departs significantly from what has come before it in terms of mechanics or narrative. So in Metroid terms, that would be Metroid Prime. And a revival is a follow-up to a series that has not seen a new chapter, and for the sake of argument, we'll say seven years. So basically, a game series that skipped a generation, more or less.

It doesn't necessarily reboot the mechanics or narrative. It picks up as if nothing had happened in the intervening years. So in Metroid terms, Metroid Fusion, which came about a decade almost after Metroid 3 and was pretty much just a straight follow-up to Metroid-3, Super Metroid. So hopefully this description, you seem I'm a little confused. I have a different qualification. I enjoy all of these, and I'm just curious what you think about. So the modern marketing of reboots and remakes, they're very much marketed to tell the consumer that, like, it's a fresh start. This is, things are going to be exciting again.

So Tomb Raider is rebooted as Tomb Raider. God of War is rebooted as God of War without any subtitles, without any numbers. And I'm thinking like, Nintendo did this a ton where they were like, let's just do it. do the same game again with better technology, but there's no, we're not selling it to you, like it's a revival. I'm thinking of like Star Fox and Star Fox 64, the arcade punchout and Super Punch Out. There's a few more examples of that where like Castlevania and Castlevania 4, it's just like, let's just do that again, but they don't really tell the audience that if they just do it again.

And I feel like the marketing wasn't as savvy probably. Well, this isn't really about marketing. It's just about the nature of the games. And in any case, it's like I said, it's semantic. And it's just sort of arbitrary distinctions that I've made. And there's a lot of things that'll blur that and that's fine. I mean, not to go on too long, but the marketing is important for me because now that is basically explicitly like, yes, this is what we're doing.

The intentionality is like on display for the audience when before that was not as common. Right. Well, I mean with God of War, which I think is going to loom large over this episode because it was kind of, I think, sort of the inspiration for this episode. That's kind of a reboot and also kind of a revival, how long it's been like six or seven year since God of War III, and God of War, the new one, is a continuation of that series. But at the same time, it's also a reboot because it's just called God of War, and you don't necessarily have to know, oh, yeah, Cretus killed a whole lot of Greek gods to be able to appreciate

this new one. So it kind of works in both respects. And that's fine. Like, this is all, you know, it's like genres. You can create the little boxes, but things are going to spill out across the boxes. And that's fine because it's, you know, like with Metroidvania, does it really matter exactly what it means? No, because we made up these words. They're just imaginary terms that we use to organize things because humans need to put things in boxes.

So we're putting things in boxes and it's okay if you don't agree. Put things in a different box if you want. A question for you, Jeremy, as a big Metroid fan. I'm just thinking as if the marketing of today existed in the 90s, would Super Metroid be like Metroid returns or just Metroid? or... No, because Metroid 2 was Samus Returns. Right, right, right. Right, okay.

Okay, okay. They'd already, she'd already come back. Yeah, but I just feel like if... Never mind, this is all stupid. I was kind of thinking about this. Like, I kind of have a theory, and I'm not 100% sure on this, but I feel like back in, you know, the 80s or 90s, any sequel was almost a remake, especially with arcade games. Like, games that didn't have stories, games that didn't have, like, progression of one thing to the next.

Like, you look like Donkey Kong or Pac-Man or something like that. they're basically just making it better. And if they gave, like, if Miss Pac-Man was called Pac-Man remix or something like that, we would think of it differently. Oh, that's a really good point because actually they did do the modern savvy thing with the Donkey Kong game game. It's just Donkey Kong. And we call it 94 as a distinction, but they were like, no, this is Donkey Kong. I think on the title screen it says Donkey Kong for Game Boy. But yeah, it's like, it's just Donkey Kong.

Well, I mean, Nintendo, I think, always kind of made an effort to distinguish itself from those, like to make it's, sequels different than that. Because if you look at, you know, Space Invaders, like, Taito made a lot of Space Invaders sequels that were just the same game with, like, now it has cellophane color strips. Now it has actual color graphics. You have Zevius and Super Zevius by Damco, which are pretty much the same game. It was actually really common to just have these games that would come out and be pretty much the same as the last game, but treated as a sequel. It's just like, now it's harder. Now there's new enemy patterns or something like that. Whereas Nintendo gave you Donkey Kong, and then you didn't get Donkey Kong 2, which was more of the same.

You got Donkey Kong Jr., which was a game about, like, verticality as opposed to horizontal platforming. You know, you have Zelda 2, which is not a top-down adventure. It's a side-scrolling action game with RPG mechanics. Like, they did a lot of that. And I feel like that was something, I've never actually heard it said explicitly, but I think that was something that was important to them was like, let's not just do the same thing over again. let's really try to do something new and different. And so when they do kind of return exactly to the original mechanics, it means something. So like Donkey Kong 94, that's kind of significant.

Like it's going back to kind of their original hit, and they're trying to do something new and different and exciting with it, which in this case turned out to be a 100-level puzzle platform. So, yeah. Yes. So there is a lot of just kind of like drawing some arbitrary distinctions in this. We need to have like big charts on the wall. which one fits in which category. Pretty much, yeah, like some string and, yeah.

Download the PDF flow chart at our website. So, like the notes for this episode, I put together just huge lists of games that could fall into these different categories. And we're not going to talk about them all. But there's a lot of stuff that is here for us to talk about and to say, like, hey, why is this interesting? Why is this good or bad? So I wanted to be kind of a free-flowing episode. Feel free to just jump in. Oh, you guys don't have notes open.

I have my notes open. does. Everyone else is just flying to fly here. Wow. I do want to talk about the first... Do you have like a nemonic to sing it or something? Wow, that's kind of complicated. But the first one on the list, do you mind if I jump into that one? Yeah, go ahead. So Space Quest I'm just thinking of... I've broken this into

remakes and then reboots and then remaster or sorry, revivals or attempted revivals. So this is under remakes. Yeah, I feel like this is very tied to the context of how these games were released, especially on the PC. So in the early 90s, Sierra basically remade all of the first entries of their quest series for VGA graphics, for computers that have VGA graphics.

But that was very much of the trend where a game would have a VGA version released later. So I think for this case, it's really hard to classify because it was just like the enhanced version. But maybe years later. Yeah. But I mean, I think it still counts because it wasn't the, it wasn't released, you know, six months or eight months later. It was, remember the first base quest? That was fun. here's a prettier version of it.

But it was very much of the trend of, here's the fancy VGA version, or just like how you could buy the CD-ROM version, which was a talkie in some cases. Yeah. In starting to organize this episode, I found that it was really difficult to pin down. What is the first real remake of a video game? Because in the 80s, you know, you were kind of working in this continuum of 8-bit computers and consoles that all had pretty much the same level of power, and games would come out. And then they'd still be coming out in different iterations,

but they were still the same game, just on different platforms for six, seven, eight years. So I kind of feel like SpaceQuest falls into that category. I mean, you look at something like Sokoban or Load Runner or like these early PC games from the, you know, from 1982, 83, and they just keep coming out in new iterations. And it's kind of hard to say, like, is, you know, is Sokobon Boxel for Game Boy a remake of the original Sokoban?

because it has better graphics and the puzzle layouts are different, but it's still just presented as Sokobon, and like the concept is the same, and the mechanics are the same. So is it like it's the same company making it, it's just like them iterating on the same idea and releasing under the same name. So for the sake of argument, I put down three games that we could make an argument, a case for being the first remakes. One of them is SpaceGust Quest 1, which as Bob explained, was a VGA remake. Super Mario All-Stars from 1993 and Super Castlevania 4 from 1991. Have you guys played any of these games? Do you have opinions? Isn't All-Stars just like a greatest hits collection or am I totally misremembering that?

It is a greatest hits collection of NES games for Super NES. They completely redrew all the graphics to look more like Super Mario World. They also made some changes. to the physics of the games. Like, controls and physics are a little different. The music is different. Like, it's, you know, been reworked for Super NES samples. They added save features.

Super Mario Brothers, two, the loss levels, came to the U.S. for the first time in this collection. And I feel like it had some pretty significant overhauls to make it not completely punishing. So I feel like, like, you can make a case that this is a proper remake of, you know, three, four games. as opposed to just, you know, a compilation. Because Techmo did something similar with the Ninja Guide and NES trilogy on Super NES, but they like tweak the graphics a little bit, and that's really the only change they made

for Ninja Guide in trilogy. So I feel Mario AllStars is a much better case for this. I don't know the dev history of all these, but I kind of feel like there's something with the term remake that implies they weren't planning it originally. So like if you look at SpaceQuest, that feels more like that was something that they kind of knew. Kind of like a NeoGeo pocket color.

It's like they knew it was coming even though They release the other one, like, right away. And so maybe Mario All-Stars is a little more along those lines or Castlevania, just because it's, like, after the fact, like, oh, hey, we could do that again. So the case I would make for Castlevania 4 as the first remake is that in Japan, Castlevania is just called Akumajo Dracula, Evil Castle Dracula. In the U.S., the Super NES game is Super Castlevania 4 and is treated as a sequel, but it's actually the same story as the first game.

you the sort of the same quest, some of the same bosses and encounters, but it's not just the same, like the map redone in new graphics, but in Japan, it's also called Akumajo Dracula. So it is really treated as like, this is that game, but look, now Simon's big and walks weird and can whip in eight directions. Yeah, I like, that kind of reminds me of the Resident Evil to Resident Evil remake thing, where it's like someone is reinterpreting the blueprints instead of just moving the blueprints to a different thing. Bad metaphor, but you know what I mean.

Yeah, and Konami remade the original Castlevania several times. I mean, you could almost say that Haunted Castle for Arcades was a remake, but maybe not. Then you had the X-68,000 version that came out in the U.S. as Castlevania Chronicles. And Castlevania Chronicles was actually a remake of a remake because it had the X-68,000 version, and then it had a PlayStation remake of the X-68,000 version, both of which were remakes of the NES game. that's a lot I feel like there's probably something else that I just like

I ran out of oxygen and now I can't remember because my brain is oxygen starved but anyway So is part of the idea of remake does it have to be made by the same company because if you look back

like you look like Pong there's like hundreds of those right I don't know how you draw these lines exactly yeah see it's it's all it's all fuzzy and I don't know what do you think

do you think it needs to like do you think a Pong remake needs to be sanctioned officially in some capacity? Now that like trademarks are kind of in place, it's a little easier to deal with. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like a remake.

At least it was the way people think about it has to be from the same company or at least somebody who took over the license and has some kind of connection to it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of spiritual successors too which could just send this a whole other direction. Do you think remakes are necessary?

I used to get really excited about them. like 10 years ago, I'd be like, oh, man, that, or not necessarily remake, but reboots too, but I'd be like, that thing I loved is coming back and it's really exciting. And then at a certain point, you just kind of like, uh, there's a lot of the same stuff. And it's not special anymore. Now it's just kind of like, it can be cool in certain cases, but it's not like a, it doesn't stand out the way it used to. Yeah.

I mean, in putting together the notes for this episode, what I found is that looking through like the 90s and maybe up to like 2005, there aren't that many of these. And then after that point, all of a sudden you hit like the HD generation, you know, Xbox 360, PS3, et cetera. And all of a sudden, they're everywhere. It's just like half the games that come out now actually already came out 10 years ago. I think it's just the, yeah, it seems obvious, but maybe it's not that obvious that just the price of development has gone up. It's much easier just to, I mean, it's still a lot of work to port a game, but it's also less work and less money than making a new game. And boy, boy, the early years of the PS4 were just full of PS3 ports.

Yeah, and, you know, I, right now that's kind of what the Switch is. It's like got all these Wii U games and arcade games and so forth. People are complaining about virtual console, but there's no shortage of old video games on Switch. Like there's, you know, at least one a week and now it's like three a week. So we're doing okay for classic gaming on that platform. I guess the case you can make. I guess the case you can make is that a good idea for a video game is

like if it's a good idea once maybe it's going to stay a good idea for a long time there are some concepts that stay valid for a long time and maybe you don't want to go back and play something super ancient like you know the original wizardry or

maybe like I don't know some of some of these early arcade games where you're like this is really unfair like Dragonslayer is that necessarily that great but there are a lot of games from the 80s that are still kind of fundamentally great. Like there's never been a better Gallagher

than the original Gallagher. So I'm okay with those games being remade or rebooted or reissued, collected, compiled. You know, having those available on current platforms, to me, that's great. And I'm okay if, you know, there's an equal mix of like new ideas

and old ideas kind of circulating through the market because eventually, you know, everything becomes an old idea. So why not keep the old ideas that are good kind of floating to the top and make those available for people to enjoy. I know I've talked about this before, but, you know, I play a lot of video games

with my nephews and cousins who are, you know, all elementary age and Minecraft has really made them open and receptive to ape at arcade games and, you know, old NES games because they're like, oh, it's blocky. It's like Minecraft. I get it. And, you know, 10 years ago,

that wouldn't have been the case. They would have been like, what the hell is this? This is stupid and old. Give me some polygons. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know that there's any greater substance to that, but it's interesting. So, okay, so looking over this list, I don't know if you guys have any personal favorite

remakes you would like to talk about. I've played a lot of these. And I have opinions about a lot of them, but I've been talking a lot. So I'm going to stop talking for a little while and let someone else talk. Well, I would say one of the greatest remakes, one of the most ambitious reimbals, remakes is the Resident Evil remake for GameCube, and now it's finally available in HD. It is, it's a, it's like, again, it's, like I said earlier, it's a reinterpretation of a blueprints, but it's also the same people roughly making it.

And they're making it also to screw with you if you played the first game. So there's lots of little traps and secrets that if you go on with a certain notion in your head as to what the game will be like, it will defy that notion. And I feel like it's, it was a really cool idea to do that. that. And frankly, Resident Evil one was only six years old when they remade it, so that's pretty crazy to think about too. But yeah, that's

definitely one of the best one of the best remakes for sure. I think a big part of that is just the resources they must have had. I mean, usually a team make and remake will get like the cheap budget. They'll get the ability to do it quickly and

make some money off of it. And that one felt like it was a new game that just happened to be kind of based on that sort of thing. Yeah, and It's still, I mean, it's a 2002 game, but it still looks so good in the remade. It's a remake of a remake, I guess, or just the port of the remake. What would you call a... A remaster? An HD remaster of a remake.

How far? Where are we going with this? A remakeaster? Sure. But yeah, I mean, I think for me, that's kind of where I get more excited is when... It's kind of like Shadow the Colossus. Like, they didn't really change the game, but they, you know, it had that next kind of step above most other ports of that level. So it was kind of like showing, like, hey, you know, you may get bored of all the standard re-releases, which I don't have any problem with it.

I mean, it's great to have games around, but it kind of surprised me in a different way. And I think that's kind of where you get, or at least where I get excited about remakes these days when it's like something bigger or unexpected in that approach. Yeah, I feel like that Shadow the Clause's remake surprised me in a bad way. I was not into it visually. Like, they kind of just smoothed everything out and made everything clear. I was just messing with the filters to try and make it look like how it used to, and it just never worked out. I do prefer the PS3 HD port or whatever you want to call that of those games. Yeah, the new one, it messes me every time.

Like the first five seconds, I'm always in love with it, and then like it just drops off after the long-outicator's face. And you're like, oh, geez. So actually, Katie, you know, as the obligatory young person in this conversation, I'm actually sort of curious to know how you see. remakes. Because like I said, you know, I'm someone who, a lot of these games, I played, you know, when I see a remake, I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember playing this on NES. Whereas you don't necessarily have those memories. I assume you started playing more with like the PlayStation in 64 generation. I never actually had Nintendo console for a while. So I was a PlayStation kid. PlayStation 2, or like I grew up with a PlayStation 1 and then PlayStation 2 is like my first

console for me, you know? Like that's when I got really into games. And that's for me, it's like I grew up familiar with Atari and Kaliko and then NES, Nintendo NES was my first console. Yeah, so I don't know, like, PS3, there's like a lot of like PS2 ports and then PS4 it seems like, or in Xbox 1, it seems like they're doing a lot of like remakes of like PS2 games and stuff. And it's like this weird thing where I'm kind of like, I've already played this game. Like the shot of the Colossus, I was like, if I wanted to play this, I'd go to the

PS3 port because that made has better frame rate than the PS2 one. but one of like the remakes I found interesting is all the LucasArts games like those point and click adventures because I don't really like the new art they put in those like they kind of make them look like these weird flash games and then I just go luckily those all have the like you can go back

the old graphics and I feel like I prefer that with like the new music or whatever so I found those I found those mostly really interesting from my perspective of someone that didn't grow up playing those games and then playing them as I'm older and appreciating them but I mean like I don't like this new art like I don't know why

they made this look gross, I don't know. But Grim Fandigo looks really good because they, like, fix the lighting and stuff. But all the two, like, Day of the Tenticle and, uh, there's Secret of Monkey Island I think that was a double fine one. And I think that looks like, okay. Yeah, they really, um, they reinterpreted the Monkey Island graphics. Like, their reinterpretation of those graphics were strange. Yeah.

The day of the tentacle one, I really enjoy that remake, but I do play with the enhanced graphics off because they did an extremely good job as, as good as they could have done. But there's still some intentionality lost in smoothing out the really hard edges of those cartoon characters. And I really like seeing the original sprite work. But yeah, I feel like Double Fine did a much better job with what they were doing than whoever. I think Microsoft Game Studios might have done the Monkey Island one and two remakes. Yeah, I think it's interesting because the sprite work is trying to make it look like a cartoon. So I mean, you just make that look like a cartoon.

It kind of loses that charmed in a way. It just looks like not as great, I guess, in my opinion. So my question to you, I guess, really is, like, does the idea of a remake even seem that unique to you? Or is it just something that you take for granted because they happen all the time? I mean, they happen all the time now. It's just, like, so often. And it's kind of, like, I'm really excited for that Resident 2, Resident Evil 2 remake that's coming up, because it seems like they're taking, like, notes from Resident Evil 7 and 4, but making it into 2.

It just, like, looks really cool, and that's my favorite Resident Evil game, so I'm just naturally excited for it. But it's like the only remake I think ever that's made me like, oh, I'm excited for that. Like the Shadow of the Clossus one, I've ever seen the trailer and be like, I'll play it. And then I play it. I was like, I just put the old one. Yeah, the Shadow of the Colossus remake reminds me a lot of the, I find kind of inexplicable, the Ratchet and Clank remake for PS4. I think that was like a reboot. Yeah.

But it's weird. It's sort of a remake of the first game, but not really. But I feel like it is polished to the state of like, it just is so unremarkable to me now. It's not as quirky as I once found those games. I think the Ratchet case, that might have to do with there's been like 20 Ratchet games. Yeah, there's so many Ratchet games. It's hard to kind of delineate between them all. I did stop playing them in the PS3 era.

But I saw another one on here that I really wanted to call attention to because it is, I don't know if we mentioned this before, but I like when a remake makes the game better or it rethinks ideas for a better experience. And I really think Tactics Oger for the PSP, I play that game for 100 hours. I'll tell you folks, it's better than Final Fantasy Tactics. I went there. It is a better game. We already had this conversation on Acts of the Blood God. Oh, I didn't hear this.

Wait, how did you come down on it? I feel like I have more fondness for Final Fantasy Tactics. But as a game, oh, my God, the Tactics Soger remake is untouched. I played about over 100 hours of it. I got the worst ending, but I still had fun. The thing about this game is, what I love about it is in Tactics Zogar 1, it was a very primitive strategy RPG when they were still figuring them out. So a lot of the struggle of that game was if you had one character, like one level

too high, all the enemies would match them and just decimate your entire party. So it was all just like, oh, like so much of the game, the meta game was like, okay, I need to keep everyone at the same level and it was so tedious. It just got in the way of the experience. Yeah, I mean, there's the training mode and half the game was just spent in training mode throwing rocks to people, yeah. But in Tactics Ogre, what I love about Tactics Ogre, let us cling together is that you don't level up characters, you level up classes.

So if your character is a soldier or whatever, and they level up, all the soldiers level up. It's sort of like Valkyria Chronicles. And that was such a very, very smart idea. And also, every strategy RPG should do this. They have the save scumming built into the game where you can go back up to 10 turns. That should be at every Fire Emblem game. That should be in every XCOM game because people are going to do it anyways, just make it part of the game. And that is, I think the remake is like 10 times better than the original.

And the original is so, so, like, smart. There are some major design flaws that keep it from being as good as what would eventually make being remade like 15 years later. Yeah, so, you know, I've kind of thought about this as I was putting in the other notes for this episode. And to me, remakes do still feel kind of like, oh, that's important. And I think a lot of that gets back to kind of the state of gaming in the 90s, where things were changing so quickly. And there was so much technical and design evolution happening, you know, from like 1990. or so to 1999.

Like, you look at games made in those years and it seems like a whole lot more than just seven or eight years went by because you go from, you know, like Genesis and Super NES games and like some really primitive polygons to, hey, there's the Dreamcast. Wow, soul caliber. Wow.

That's a big jump. And, you know, as much as I was excited about that evolution and, you know, the changes that the PlayStation brought and the N64 brought, It also felt like the entire industry and, you know, everything surrounding the industry, magazines and fan conversations, everyone just was like, let's just cut off everything that happened before Polygons came along. Like, forget all that crap. It's no good anymore.

And I didn't feel that way. Like, at first I thought, oh, yeah, we should move beyond. But then I went back and played some NES games. And it was like, actually, this is still good. And they're still selling Super NES games, brand new Super NES games through 1998. maybe there is some merit to this older style of gameplay. So when remakes happened, it was like a sign to me that there is still validity and, you know, these older concepts, these older ideas, they still have value and they still are worth bringing back and keeping in circulation. And it was much harder to play older games at that point unless you like held on to an old console.

And even then, like getting your hands on older games could be difficult because, you know, there wasn't as much. trading online, you couldn't go onto eBay and be guaranteed, like, oh, I'm going to find this one thing that I want. So anytime a remake came along, I felt like, you know, this is a vital service. And that's not really the case anymore. Like, if you want to play an old

NES or Super NES game or Genesis game, you just buy an Everdrive and stick ROMs on it, you can play it on the original hardware. Or you can play, you know, like a compilation that has 50 of these games, you know, for 20 bucks. And if you have Steam or whatever or go on good old games, it's like,

like, oh, here's 25 or 30 years worth of games and they're all playable. Or on the Internet Archive, you can go to the DOS Archive and play like every DOS game, no one will bother you for stealing. So, yeah, it's just everything is so accessible. Right, yeah. I mean, and I think that's great, and I want it to be that way. But I realize it does mean that remakes no longer have the significance that they did. But I guess it's not a bad thing because it means, you know, they're not a rarity anymore.

Like, people see value in older games and older concepts and mechanics and so. forth. And just because you can do something the contemporary way, the modern way, doesn't mean you have to. And you can still go back to those old designs and say, there's still something good here that we should, you know, we should keep enshrined and capture. I kind of feel like one of the reasons people care about remakes is because there used to be fewer games than there are now. And so like any game from back then had a bigger slice of the pie as far as like people thinking of it in their memory. Like no one would care about Booger Man if they released it now. But back then it was like a thing. And it was like, okay.

Okay, I'm not going to play it, but like... How many flick adventures are there on modern consoles? But you pay attention to it because, like, it was possible to kind of be aware of almost everything released back then, which isn't really the case today for 99% of people. So I think having kind of that in people's memories sticks out more now just because, oh, it used to feel important because it used to be, you know, 10% of the games that came out that month or something like that. Well, Matt, they tried to reboot Booker Man. Yeah, that's what I was saying. And it didn't work, so you're right. I thought I dreamed that or something.

So any other remakes worth talking about? Any upcoming remakes that you guys are excited about? Let's see. I tried to organize this chronologically. So there's still Luigi's Mansion. White Day, a labyrinth named School. Res Infinite. Shadow of the Colossus.

I guess that's already out. Tempice 2000, Virtual Fighter Remix. Tampus just came out, huh? It did. Yes, actually, that was this week. Yeah. Well, it's coming any day now, but the Final Fantasy 7 remake is... It's all in the way.

Yeah, I mean, there's not even a mock-up screenshot available, but I'm sure it'll be early 2019. There's some screens. There are actual screens? Well, yeah, they showed footage like two years ago. Yeah, but all that's been thrown out now, right? We don't really know. Probably. I guess we're on the street. It's supposed to be ethosonic, right?

Yeah. Lightning return style, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. when I kicked off Retronauts as a full-time venture a year and a half ago, I met with Square Nix PR. I was like, hey, so I'm leaving U.S. Gamer. Here's what I'm doing. I hope we can work together still.

One thing you might be interested in is that we've started doing these deep dives into Final Fantasy games. It'd be cool if the Final Fantasy episode coincided with the remake. They were just like, just go ahead and do it. It's fine. Don't worry about it. That was a long time ago, so. I mean, they're still hiring for it. Like, I feel like I've always seen, like, weird, like, job postings, like, we're making this.

And, yeah, I don't think that's coming any time soon. People, for some reason, are expecting an E3, and I was like, I don't think it's going to be E3. There's no way. No, I mean, oh, go ahead, Matt. No, I was just going to say, like, I think it's an easy one to jump on just because of the people making it and kind of the reputation behind and everything. But it is, or it does seem to be anyway, one of those cases, kind of like Resident Evil, where they actually are putting resources into it. So, like, I don't know if it'll be good or not, but I'm interested in it just because they seem to be trying a little harder than in some of these other cases. And it seems different, which I think is key.

Like, people are really mad when they reveal it as kind of action-r-r-r-G combat, like, whatever, compared to, like, the term-based stuff. But I feel like if it's just the same game, why would you want to play it again? Right. Like, what's even the point? You can play the same game, the original game, on PlayStation 4 right now or on Steam. Yeah, literally, you can play on PS4 or Steam. Yeah. And I think anyone who has been paying attention to.

you know, what the people in charge of the game have been saying for the past five or six years should have been like, yeah, okay, of course it's an action game. Because like Kitasay, Yoshinori Kitase, the kind of the guy who, I guess, overseas Final Fantasy? I'm assuming he still does.

Is like, do people really want turn-based RPGs in like the modern context? Does that really make sense? I don't think it does. I feel like whenever, like with WizQuare annex, whenever they release an RPG with traditional turn-based combat, it's marketed as, wow, what a throwback.

Remember this when, I mean, Atlas still makes games with turn-based combat? A lot of people still make them, but they have to market it as like, oh, remember these games? But, I mean, it works, and Octopath is fun. Yep. But, yeah, I think Octopath would be weird if they use the Unreal 4 engine to make, like, super realistic graphics as opposed to giving you, like, crazy light effects and, you know, blue effects on. Every Photoshop culture turned on at once. Yeah.

And, you know, like, if they just did one or two, fill, it would be kind of gross, but if they do all the filters, somehow it kind of works. It's a really weird game. Like, I feel like I should hate Octopath Travelers' appearance, but I like it. I feel like it gets in the way of the arcs. I feel like the sprite design is like really good and like boss design is like really clever. And it just has this really amazing art. And then there's like these bloom filters over everything.

And I feel like it really distracts from it. I like the tilt shift effect. Like to me that's really nice because it does make everything feel like you're looking into like a tiny little diorama of a video. game. I will say this is going on a bit about Octopath, but where it doesn't get in the way, I feel like, are the enemy sprites and the battles. Like, those are very fun to look at.

Those are straight saga. Yeah, yeah. The gigantic, you're fighting a person, like, just like a butler or something, and he's like 10 times your character size. That is so cool. But he's so detailed. Such great sprite work. I love it.

Okay, so we'll wrap up the remake section. Does anyone have a favorite remake besides, like you mentioned, tactics over Grabob, but like just pick one off the list and talk about why you love it. For me, it's Mega Man powered up, which I am sad they never did a follow-up to that one because

that game took an NES classic that had some rough edges and it sanded off all the rough edges then it added in content and then it added in more content. It included the original game, but then it included like a remix of the original game redone in polygons

with new bosses and new stages. And then it gave you a level editor so you could make your own stuff. And then it gave you these online features where you could download other people's levels and you could download new character models and skins for like a year. It was just like such a labor of love and it really took

this early kind of groundbreaking NES game that had not aged that well and said but look, 20 years later now you can have it again and it can feel fresh and it was really great. It's my maybe my favorite Mega Man game. I'm going to cheat.

I'm going to say Res Infinite because the part that was a remake is the part that I didn't really care about. Like the new levels in VR is like, okay, the new level that was actually like a new game, that was like the best thing ever. So, yeah, it's kind of got an asterisk on that one. I feel like it's super amazing in VR and that's kind of what makes it stand out to me. Because it's like that, I don't know, for some reason in my head, I'm like, why hasn't Miziguchi been making games in VR? It's like kind of like seems like a perfect concept for design ethos. So, like, Res Infinite, like, playing that in VR was, like, it felt like playing it for the first time again. And it's, like, Area X is, like, amazing and made me really want, like, a Res Tube.

I don't think a Res 2 is happening. He's wanted to do VR for decades. Like, he tried to make some sort of, like, VR system for game gear, of all things. Like, when you told me another, I was like, I was actually making that. But, yeah, he was showing that. He was, he was involved with us in some capacity. Yeah. Where would you classify Final Fantasy 3 and 4 DS as remakes?

Oh, yeah. Those are definitely remakes. Those would be runners up for me. I think they are inferior to the original versions, at least four is. But I liked a new interpretation of something I experienced over and over again. I mean, I loved playing those games with crude 3D graphics and voice acting and just seeing just a new perspective on the – they're just adapting the blueprints, but they're also playing with it a bit. And I was always sad that five and six never got that. It's just like after that they're like, oh, let's just make these with bad mobile graphics.

Well, Ford does a lot of what you were talking about with Resident Evil remake, where it's like, oh, you've played this game so many times. You think you know how you're going to beat this boss. But no, actually, if you do that, this boss will destroy you. So don't do that. Yeah, actually, I never finished. It really subvert you. I never finished 4DS because the moon in that game is miserable. It's really hard.

Yeah. In fact, when I was blogging for a blog at the time, blogging for a blog, if you can believe it, I wrote a blog post called Fuck the Moon. And it was all about how hard the moon part. was in Final Fantasy 4, and how mean it was. Yeah. So the reason we never got similar games remakes in that vein for Final Fantasy 5 and 6 is because the guy in charge of the remakes, Takashi Tokita, did not work on 5 and 6. So he was like, I asked him about that.

And he was like, well, I didn't work on these games. And I don't feel like it's my business to go in and remake them. I think a first year full sale class worked on those games based on how they look. What, the mobile parts? Five and six, yeah. I mean, I forget what the, you can find this online if you Google, but I think maybe for, maybe for Polygon Matt, somebody wrote like this really long feature about here is why these mobile games look bad from an artistic and technical standpoint. I think it was Gama Sutra. Maybe Gama Sutra.

It was just like it looked at how everything is in a different resolution and how the tiles don't match up and things like that. Just very, very sloppy. So, yeah, it makes you so sad that I can't play six in a neat reinterpretation. Yeah, three and four for DS were very much labors of love by one of the ones. the original designers of the game and he put you know a lot of care into recreating them and then five and six were just like okay here yeah you you guys just do whatever we don't care it's on our game very sad All right, so now let's talk about reboots, and what was my definition for reboot?

It was, oh, right, a game that follows on from an older series or like older entries in the series and doesn't carry forward all the mechanics necessarily. It basically is a fresh start for the series that says, here's the new ground rules. And like I said, God of War is a good example of that because it does introduce a lot of new mechanics. It starts kind of a new storyline. And even though it does work as a sequel, it's really like it's called just God of War. So the idea is this is a starting point. Yeah, I feel like with this definition of reboot, it's kind of like people wanted to make a

different game, but they either couldn't get the money for it or they didn't have the ability to do that. So they're like, okay, we'll try to kind of make a different game, but slap on some history there just to kind of either make it sell better or, you know, get people to sign off or wherever else. That's probably a more cynical view in some cases, but I'm sure that's the case in some of these cases. Yeah, for God of War, I mean, obviously, I feel like I can't say anything about it that hasn't been said because so many people have been talking about it. Well, it hasn't been said on retronauts. So go for it. I mean, you were a really big fan of the original games. Yeah, so I was actually sitting next to you when the very first

God War came out, and there was like... You were, like, that in Resident Evil 4 and Riddick were, like, your games. A little bit less on Resident Evil, but yeah, definitely. Gotta War, the first one, I was crazy for, yeah, I think part of that was just the time, but part of it was just, like, the attention to detail and kind of the animation and

all the little stuff that you didn't typically get in games like that. And then, yeah, so, like, now I feel like... Well, definitely there was the time, like, the first, what, five, depending how you define them, different God of War games. They were basically all the same game done in slightly different ways.

And it got very tiresome to me. By the end, I was just like, I'll still play them because I feel like I have to because it used to be so important to me. But like I kind of lost interest. Like by God War III was still good, but by the time Ascension came around, it was kind of like, why are they still doing this? Like they should have rebooted this already. And then they did eventually.

I mean, they basically had to. They either had to like make something new or just completely redo that because they couldn't just make another one. People would have been too tired of it. And yeah, I think obviously that's a case where they did a really good job of, you know, kind of throwing out a lot of the old stuff but still taking the time and putting the resources and making it good. So you just said something really interesting. You said by the time they got to Ascension, you were thinking they already should have rebooted that. Oh, yeah. So do you think rebooting is like an essential part of the like.

cycle of a game concept? If you have a studio that's built around making money off this one franchise, then you either have to do something new or start it over. I remember talking to people on the God War team around the time ago or three, and they're like, yeah, we really need to start over. And some of those people did try to start a new thing, but it didn't end up working. So then, yeah, eventually they came back around and they made the new one. Yeah, I don't think it has to, but I think when you have a team of, I don't know, 100 plus

people that are making something. I think from a financial perspective, it's a big risk if you keep kind of beating the horse to the same kind of way you were doing it. I think if they had made like Ascension 2, that would have been really dangerous because it probably wouldn't have sold that well, but I mean, who knows, depending on how well they did it and everything. But it just like, it doesn't have that impact or freshness that you want from a And I think you don't necessarily need to reboot things, but at a certain point, something runs its course, and then you either need to start over or move on to something else.

Do you think, you know, to take the God of War example, do you think if they had called this like God of War Ascension 2, but it had been like the same game, yeah, that it is now? I think that would have been really bad marketing. It would have been bad marketing. But, yeah, I probably would have gotten a little bit less attention. I think part of this whole conversation is titles. And I think that is probably – I don't know what percentage. I'm thinking 50-50 in my head, but it probably would have played a pretty big role in how people think of it. Yeah, I think the marketing is very important in showing the intent to the audience of what they're trying to do.

Even like if God of Work came out as Ascension 2, I don't think anyone – I mean, I think the – it wouldn't have – it would have that built-in hype behind it that would get more people interested in it. Keep in mind, this New God Award didn't have that much hype. Like, until it was, like, right before it was coming out, people really weren't that sure what to think of it. And then it kind of exploded because everyone liked it a lot. But it was definitely, there was a lot of hesitation at first, like, oh, you guys are still doing this. We're not really sure about that yet. And they didn't show a lot of it until late on in the marketing campaign, too.

Like, it feels so weird to say that in retrospect, because now it's, like, the game everybody talks about. I think part of that is earned just by, like, the game. It's not necessarily the run-up to the campaign and all that. As a big fan of the older God of War games, do you think the new one is a good successor to it? Or do you think it just should be its own thing? Was it a mistake to make it about Cretos? It's kind of weird for me personally just because, like,

as I've gotten older, I'm less interested in games like that in general, just like the extreme violence and everything. I can still appreciate it on a certain level, but it's not really what I get excited about in games anymore. So I wasn't really as excited for it because of that. I think, yeah, I mean, they did a great job, but I don't know if I'm necessarily the target demographic for that that I used to be. But, yeah, I mean, I think as far as kind of balancing, bringing it up to date

and still kind of keeping the stuff that that series is known for, I think, yeah, it did a great job. So I have a curveball for you, Jeremy. I'm just wondering. Talk about remakes. What do you call a remake that's made by? by a different company entirely. I'm thinking of Stardue Valley, which is they are basically following the blueprint of Harvest Moon Friends of Mineral Town and saying, let us do it.

And they did it with a modern sensibility when Natsume – I mean, we did a Harvest Moon episode four or five years ago, but Natsume – Harvest Moon is very complicated because now there are two different kinds of harvest moons. Right. There's story of seasons, which is created by the guy who created it. Yeah. Which is known as Farm Story in Japan, which is Harvest Moon. And then Natsime makes their own proprietary Harvest Moon, which they release as Harvest Moon.

The problem is with both of those series, I feel like they start from scratch every time and they don't like, they don't follow like a natural evolution when the old game sort of did. And Starry Valley was like, let's take what we consider the peak of this series and then just draw, like, expand from there. It make everything as, you know, all the ease of use features you'd ever want for Parvest Moon, but also even more complex with even more options and features and stuff like that. But it is, it could have been released as Harvest Moon. Just like they could have rebooted the series without just calling it Harvest Moon. And I mean, is there like, is that kind of a remake, unofficial or spiritual successor? It's a tribute game. It's like a fan tribute that ascended.

It's ascended fan. I feel like the only reason we're even having this conversation is because that game was good. Oh, that game is amazing. If it wasn't, it would be called like a clone. That's true. That's true. Yeah. I mean, it's the best Harvest Moon game in probably well over a decade.

I would say for sure, even though it's not a harvest moon game. If you're excited for Halloween, you're going to love all the thrilling shows Podcast One has to offer. Get ready for chills with some of the best crime and mystery shows around like Beyond the Darkness, serial killer podcast, cold case files, murder made me famous, the first degree, and so much more. Check out all these thrilling shows today on Podcast One or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. If you're a DC fan, you'll definitely want to check out the latest live action series, Titans, available now on DC Universe. This series premiered on October 12th, and new episodes are available to stream every Friday. Titans is the first original series to launch on DC Universe, and it follows a group of young, soon-to-be superheroes.

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really find any reboots, like something that I would qualify as a reboot of a series until sort of the late 90s because up until that point, like there was no real need for it. Like, you know, games were all kind of following this path of evolution. And then the, you know, you get 3D graphics and all of a sudden there is this need for people to say, like, how do we deal with this change? Do we keep making games just in sprites, or do we make games that play like the old sprite games but with polygons or do we try to bring the game

into the third dimension? And there's no one right answer for that and there are lots of wrong answers, as we saw, like if you lived through the PlayStation in N64 era, boy howdy, did they just screw the pooch over and over again? There was a lot of series that didn't weather the transition.

Except Mega Man. Well, Mega Man is an interesting case because it's kind of like Mario. Actually, no, it's different than Mario. Mario, like, they've started making 2D Mario games again, but I kind of feel like with Mario 64, they were like, yeah, he's 3D now. But Mega Man, they were like, well, there's going to be the 3D Legends games, and they're still going to be 2D Mega Man. And there's still going to be 2D Mega Man X. But I feel like the mistake a lot of those 3D games made where it's like, oh, let's just do the same thing. But in 3D, when the 3D wasn't there to back it up.

And Legends was smart because they're like, no, this is a Zelda game. now. Like, Mega Man's now a Zelda game. Go in Dungeons and have fun. Yeah. To me, Legends didn't feel like a reboot. It felt like a side series. Like, it was something different. Well, it was meant to be like a 3D interpretation of Mega Man. And it was one of the few cases I can think of where a developer was like, let's have our cake and eat it too. Let's give fans, you know, the old games that they like, but also let's move forward into the future. And you didn't really see a lot of that happening. I mean, Konami kind of did that with Castlevania. But, you know, once,

Castlevania 64 came out, they really wanted that to be the next game and Symphony of the Night was supposed to be the side story. It's just that Symphony of the Night turned out to be much better and much more beloved than the 3D games. So they ended up going back more toward the 2D style, you know, on handheld systems.

And then, yeah, I guess once the Game Boy Advance came along, it kind of created this all, like this dual path for people where they could make the 3D console game and the 2D sprite-based portable game. and that became sort of a pathway but yeah I don't know like the whole idea of reboots is a little a little fuzzy

because I noticed some people added to the notes I don't know who that was but they put Yoshi's Island Metal Gear Solid Mario 64 Sonic 3D Blast like those are all interesting suggestions and I'm not sure where I would

place those on the spectrum I will use the Resident Evil analogy again I think like Metal Gear Solid is basically the Resident Evil remake to Metal Gear 2. It's Metal Gear 2, but with a different story. Here are all the ideas in most of the same locations, but in 3D.

And I think that's totally cool. But no one here played Metal Gear 2, so no one really knew that. Right. Well, and also it's treated as a sequel. It's not really a reboot. It's like it builds directly on the story of the previous games. But at the same time, you don't really need to have played them. And even one of the big plot twists, you know, that Big Boss is Solid Snake's Clone Father,

or whatever. That wasn't even in the games. They were like, oh, yeah, he told me this thing, and it was weird. But if you've actually played the game, he didn't actually say that. They kind of wrote that in. So, yeah, it's an interesting case. There were also a lot of, I found inexplicably popular Atari 2,600 or Atari era remakes on the PlayStation 1, like Asteroids and Pong.

But I remember Frogger, that remake was huge. It's a reboot. It's a reboot of Frogger. But I remember that, and I think there were a few sequels, but that was like just a huge, huge release. It sold so much. It sold so well. Yeah, that wasn't really inexplicable. It was a case of Hasbro Interactive bought the rights to Atari's catalog.

And we're like, let's just hit this as hard as we can and aim it exactly toward the kids you grew up with Atari 2,600. Kind of at the tail end of the PlayStation's life when everyone had a PlayStation. So it was like, you know, dad bought a PlayStation for his kids and, hey, there's pawn. I remember that game. I'm going to play Pong in the next level. Yeah, so. Yeah, I mean, it gave Frogger a new life to the point where there were like platform, like 3D platformers

for like the PlayStation 3. It just, Frogger was, he just had a new lease on life. Like, and the Seinfeld episode probably helped too. That is true. That was a great early video game reference in a broadcast TV show. Katie, you've been kind of quiet about reboots. Do you have opinions?

I was just thinking about that Jack and Daxter is supposed to have a reboot. Like last of us got its start as a Jack and Daxter reboot But I just didn't I had not heard that They talked about it in like some talk or something

And they showed like concept art And it looked disgusting I think they said they were working out I don't know if it's necessarily the same project Yeah it was more like they're I think it was when they're just like trying to say I would do next after But like that didn't come to late

or whatever Ellie is actually Dexter But it was making me think Because I feel like Jack 2 is almost a reboot in a way Because it's super different from the first Jack and Dexter So it's kind of weird in my head I'm like that's kind of like it would have been like a second reboot In a weird twisted way

If you're considering Jack 2 a reboot of Jack and Dexter Yeah Like Grand Theft Auto 3 kind of falls the same way Because it's called Grand Theft Auto 3 It's the third game in the series But it's so different than the ones that came before, and they did throw in the top-down camera view that no one

used because it sucks. But it's there, just as like a little concession and then that went away. So, yeah. I think there are some, and maybe in more recent years, some very evident, like obvious, like this is a reboot. Most of them

weirdly enough come from Square Inix IDOS. You have Tomb Raider, Thief, Hitman. Was there another one? A Deiasex. Oh, Deiosex. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, DeaSX was kind of a reboot, kind of a sequel.

Yeah. Whereas, like, the Tomb Raider is pretty much, like, just starting over. It's kind of a prequel, but, like, it's really hard to reconcile these two Laura Crofts. Tomb Raiders had, like, three reboots at this point. And you have one of them on there. Legend was one. Yeah, Tomb Raider legend. I think even Angel of Darkness, as bad as it was, we're sort of like, let's just, let's do this a new way.

Well, I think Tomb Raider is a good example of what Matt was talking about. Yeah. About how you, you know, you keep going back to the. the well and eventually there's nothing there in the well to draw up and you need to maybe dig a different hole. It's kind of weird to me too because I'm not particularly someone who cares about game stories. I

much prefer mechanics and so to me like a lot of this conversation is it qualifies as a reboot if or a whatever a sequel if the story continues from where the last one let off whereas me it's much more interesting to see like do the mechanics feel

different? Is it feel like a new experience just to like sit down and play this without listening to the dialogue. Yeah, but at the same time, a lot of work is put into some of these stories. Like Metal Gear, you know, the story is a big deal in Metal Gear. Tomb Raider maybe not so much, but the idea I think of Lara herself is meant to be like there's kind of like character continuity. And so for the first five games, like up through Chronicles, she's really kind of the same

character. And then Angel of Darkness, she's more or less the same character. But then you get to legend and they start throwing in all these new details about her backstory and like about her mom. and stuff. It's like, I don't remember any of this in the previous games. So it really does feel like kind of, you know, drawing a line there and saying, well, this is different. And it plays differently and the character is different.

And then, you know, the Lara in the current Tomb Raider games is, I guess, you know, like here's how she got started. But again, it's really hard to reconcile the characterization of these two people from one to the other and try to, you know, connect those and make them reconcile with one. another. Xcom got two reboots in the same, in the same year. Yeah, right. The shooter. Third-person shooter and the turn-based strategy game. But that's an example of like Tactics Ogre, the strategy game at least, taking an idea

that is sort of is not as playable as it used to be because it used to be so novel and there are a lot of design flaws, but really using it with redoing it with all the hindsight of the past 20 years or whatever. the XCOM and XCOM 2 are just fantastic games. Well, you're a pretty big fan of the Hitman games. How do you feel about the rebooted Hitman? Now there is actually a Hitman 2. So, like, there is no question that there was a Hitman and Hitman 2,

and now there's also a Hitman and Hitman 2. And these aren't the same thing. Well, the Hitman episodic series from 2016 was my game of the year for that year. It's so good. Don't sleep on that. Play it now. It's probably really cheap. But I feel like with Xcom, like with Tactics Ogre,

The original Hitman games were very innovative and very original and had a lot of novelty to them because they were doing something no one had done before. At the same time, they were extremely clumsy and it was hard to do what you wanted your character to do in those games. But I feel like Hitman, the reboot just called Hitman, everything is so refined. If you want to do something, you can do it. You're not fighting the game to do it. And I feel like, again, they went into it with a lot of hindsight and like they were able to examine what the other games did right and wrong. But, yeah, the new Hitman is a great, great example of that. I feel like that's one of those that the title makes a big difference.

Like, if they had just called that Hitman 7 or whatever you would have thought of it, like, okay, it's just an improved sequel. I probably wouldn't have played it. Well, yeah. But, yeah, like, again, there is that intentionality with stripping it bare and having no, like, we used to be in the game industry, like, obsessed with subtitles. Like, it would be called, it would have been called, like, Hitman Origins or Hitman revived or re-killed or whatever. They tried to be a little too cutsy about it. But now I like the clean, fresh start of Tomb Raider, Hitman, X-Com. What was the game that – there must have been one game that was successful at that,

then everybody else copied that, just kind of just repeating the name. Ninja Guiden, maybe. Maybe Ninja Guiden, yeah. Yeah, that was – I was actually going to talk about Ninja Guiden because I feel like if you want to really say, like, what was the first proper franchise reboot? That's – I think that you can make a case for that being it, because that is – you had Ninja Guiden on NES and in the arcade in 1989 or so. And then you had Ninja Guidon in, what was that, 2004, on Xbox.

And it's same character, same franchise name, but nothing else is the same. And I really liked the NES games and was very interested in the Xbox one until I actually looked at it and said, I don't know that this is necessarily for me. They're just, you know. I loved it at the time. But I mean, I think part of that is just the visuals. Like at that moment, it was one of the top five best looking games that were. out there.

And I think that kind of really, it's like the typical remake thing. Like anytime it's like super pretty, it feels a lot different. And then yeah, like I think the, it was sloppy in some ways. But I think the combat was also very strong, which, you know, at that time I liked any game like that. Well, that's a weird case because I feel like that is a franchise that got rebooted because of a character inclusion in an unrelated franchise.

I feel like because Ryu Hayibusa showed up in the Dead or Alive games it kind of like made people remember oh yeah, Ninja Guidin, I remember those and so that kind of led to Team Ninja rebooting the series. Reminds me a Strider. After being in Marlars Capcom.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess there was a Strider 2, yeah. That would count under revivals, I suppose. Well, Strider 2 was the PlayStation. But I'm talking about after Marvel's Capcom, Strider came back as, like, the downloadable game. I forget what's, it must have been PS3, 360. Oh, yeah, yeah, the more recent one by, not double helix, the other company.

I feel like I should know. The ones who made Lost Planet, three. Okay, well, anyway, yes. So I think your chronology there is kind of off. Like Marvel versus Capcom 2 and Strider 2 were kind of contemporary. as far as, yeah, like bringing the character back in another game that you wouldn't necessarily think to make a sequel for, but then once people see it, it kind of come around.

Like, oh, maybe another one. Spark Unlimited. Yes, that's it. Just I didn't want to leave, I hate leaving things hanging. Right. Another, a few interesting examples I can think of that I feel are personally interesting are games that are developed and unreleased and then remade on a new generation of hardware.

Oh, yeah? Like what? Star Fox 2, this is not as directed as an example, but the DS game is basically the design doc for Star Fox 2 reinterpreted with some new things, but it's essentially the same game where you're fighting these little mini skirmishes across like a map that you're finding your way through until you get to the end point of the game. One of the major ones I can think of, and one of my favorite games is Mother 3, where they had basically like 80% of the game done, but it was just so killing everybody and it looked bad and it was just a failure.

and then when they eventually remade that version of the game for the GBA, people went back and looked at old N64 screenshots and videos. And they're like, even the dialogue is the same in these scenes. Like even the way the characters are acting is the same. So that's pretty interesting. Where do you place Final Fantasy 15 on that spectrum? 15, boy. I mean, it was originally, what, a PS3 game?

I think it's not as drastic as going from SNES to DS and N60. 4 DD to GBA. So I'm not sure how I would think of that. I'm kind of joking, but I mean, that was supposed to be a different game that pretty much never happened. And then they took all the material for it, rewrote it, reworked it, and released it as a different game. So it's kind of a strange case. There's also cases like SimCity was supposed to be an NES game, but then they were like, no, no, no, no, no, SNES. And then they just remade it internally for the S&EA.

Yes. And as a corollary to that, are there any series you can think of that desperately need a reboot, just stop doing the same thing over and over? I'm going to jump in and say, I think a series that should come back and it's been gone for probably 13 or 14 years is Ape Escape. There I said it. Ape Escape is really good. The sequels are really good. And Sony used to be in love with those characters. Now they don't, like, they have no mascots.

they have no real original characters that are just, like, fun and iconic, like the cool monkeys from that game. So I say, Ape Escape, come back. You don't think the guy from Days Gone is a lovable mascot? One of many, like, stubbly, oh, I hate Sackboy. And Yarnie. Sack Boy and Yarnie can just die. I went there. But, yeah, come on, Ape Escape, guys.

Get on it. Let's see. Do I have a favorite reboot? Golly darn. I think Prince of Persia has to be pretty high on mine. Okay. Just, I mean, just because it felt like a whole different thing. Like, it wasn't, I mean, it was clearly, I guess it's the rare case of a game that it feels like they're making something different, but it also feels like appropriate part of the series.

Like, I don't know. It had a kind of sensibility there that you don't see that often. Any votes on a series that should be rebooted? No. Well, one thing I put on this list, I put it on a Yumaeke Dream Diary, which is like, the original Yuminiki. Yankee is this old freeware game from like early 2000s. And they rebooted it early this year. And I was really excited because the first one, or the original was one of my favorite games.

And it, like, art direction-wise, it's amazing. But then they made it, like, this really boring puzzle platformer. Okay. And it's interesting because it was developed by an international team. Like, I think a lot of the developers were in, like, South America or something. And it was, like, an interesting, like, international collaboration, which I thought was really cool. Because, like, the original game spawned, like, a lot of fans. games and like a big community around it especially because the developer just kind of

disappeared without a trace of people are trying to like keep updating it or make their own interpretations of it and stuff so the new one I was really excited about and like the original creator wasn't or I think they were involved at like an art capacity like they gave like old designs that didn't make into the original game to the new game but it just didn't like play well like it was just kind of like a disappointment on like a gameplay level I guess even I don't know, like, artistically, it was really cool. I don't know what else I was going to say about that. But that was, like, kind of, like, a disappointing reboot that, like, I'm curious to see if, like, more weird, like, cult games from, like, old Internet, like, get rebooted in a way, or if they see that as, like, a warning sign, maybe.

I can't wait until EA picks up the rights to five nights at Freddie. Oh, boy. Gives us the monetized episodic version. I mean, it's getting a movie, so. Chris Columbus movie. Jesus. Well, I said what I wanted to come back, and I mentioned Xcom as one of the really good ones, but I'd say the 2016 Doom is great. And I will say the original Doom is still very playable, still very fun. And they were able to take the aesthetic of Doom and make it into a different experience in terms of play and still make it very fun. Like Doom 2016 plays so much differently than Doom 1993 or 94. And that's not the first time they've tried to do that with Doom, but Doom 3 was, it went the other direction. They were like, what if Doom was slow and agonizing at every step? Too much Carmack, not enough for Mero. That's what I say.

Interesting. So I guess I might have to say my favorite reboot might be Wolfenstein, although I've never played the 2009 Wolfenstein. It led to the New Order, which is so much better than it had any right to be. I haven't had a chance to play Wolfenstein too yet, but I heard good things. I need to just sit down sometime and somehow carve out time in my life to play it. But I really, really liked what they did with the New Order. So, Wolfenstein is a case of a series that's been rebooted like four times. So it was based on an Apple 2 game, Wolfensstein 3D.

And then in 2001, that was Castle Wolfenstein. So then 92, whatever, 93, Wolfensstein 3D. 2001 returned to Castle Wolfenstein. 2009, maybe just Castle Wolfenstein or Wolfenstein? I think it was Castle. Might have just been Wolfenstein. And then 2013, it's the New Order. The New Order.

Yeah. But that's like the one that. that has actual continuity with what came before. Right. That was based on the 2009 version. Okay. But, I mean, would you consider all of those like, okay, guys, now here is Wolfenstein now? Right.

Well, now it seems like they've latched onto something that's good. They figured it out, yeah. And I don't know that they're selling that well for them, but there have been two games and an expansion, and there's an upcoming sequel. So, God bless them. Well, they're the game company that's bold enough to say, we'll let, bold enough to not say, we'll let the players figure out if Nazis are bad. It's the players, it's the players. Stick a knife in their faces.

Exactly. That's what it's meant to do. It's funny that that's considered a bold and provocative statements in a... It's really shocking. Like, people... Yeah, I don't want to understand how it's controversial. I'm kind of like, it's cool that they've just kind of embraced like, yeah, screw it. You're not doing anything else in this game.

It's killing Nazis. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say Nazis are bad. Oh, no, we're losing sponsors. So I'm going to say I do have a pick for a series that I would like to. rebooted, and that's Halo. Because I really like the older Halo games, and I feel like they've kind of, I don't know, like they've, like the newer,

the newer Halo games are good, but I feel like they're sort of trapped in all the lore and cruft that is built up around them and the expectations that they have to play a certain way. And they're just trapped in their own legacy. I feel like there's a lot of good ideas and a lot of good talent at 343 industries that really needs a chance to just,

do their own thing. I mean, maybe make a game that's not Halo, that would be crazy and weird. That would be weird. But, you know, just like reboot the damn series and start over fresh

and don't find, you know, don't let yourself be bound to, you know, the balance of combat and oh, here's blood gulch again, my goodness. No, you're totally right about that. I feel like, oh, sorry, Matt.

No, I'm just, I think it feels like they kind of are, right? Isn't that what Infinite seems to be hinting at? I don't know in one direction, but. They have, that trailer is really like Halo 1, evocative. Like, they're really like,

we're going back. It's still going to be tied to all the lore, most of which exists outside of the games and makes no sense if you haven't read all these graphic novels and books and watch the TV series, et cetera, et cetera. They just need to cut all that free.

Like, the core mechanics of Halo are still really, really good. It is a fun and interesting and well-made shooter, and it's just bogged down by all that legacy. Yeah, I think, I think the answer for me to the question, like, is there anything I want to see rebooted? I would rather just kill all these series.

Like, I think you've got them at their peak. Why do you need to keep them going? Like, why not move into something else? Like, occasionally it can be good. Like, sure, Goddoward was good, but I'd kind of rather have something new and different. Yeah, I feel the same way. I don't really, like, I don't get excited about reboots, really. I mean, in the way, it's kind of like, you could just be doing something different, you know?

And obviously, they wouldn't have the same kind of, like, green light process. and all that's the thing is like I'm kind of trying to be practical within the realities of how the game's industry works now, which is that if it's not going to sell six million copies, don't come into work. Well, Katie said, I agree with her with this,

like you could be doing something else and I really feel that way about the Shadow of the Colossus remake because I feel like so much energy went into remaking that game that could have been spent on making a new game and just spending less energy just porting that game. Well, that is a team that hasn't made its own stuff really. Yeah.

It's blue point. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think in that case, it was very smart financially just because, like, a game got a lot of attention. I'm pretty sure it sold pretty well just because it surprised people. And I think everyone should play that game, too. But, yeah, I do think a lot of this conversation is, like, people are attached to, okay, there's a team of people who have done something good and you want to see them continue to do something good. And then there's also this issue of, like, okay, there's enough money to be made by putting this much budget into something else. And those two aren't always, like, matched up.

You know, you don't always see people, you know, get the same opportunities at the same budgets, or you don't always see people get the opportunities, period, to make different stuff. So if God Award didn't happen, that team might have disbanded or something like that. You never know. It wouldn't necessarily have been, like, given free reign to do whatever it wants. And so, like, with Shadow the Colossus, I'm sure Sony had however many millions of dollars earmarked for, okay, we can make money back if we do this. And if they didn't do that project, that doesn't necessarily mean that.

money goes into something else true All right, so for the final segment, let's talk about franchise revivals, which is different than reboots, because it's not about like just totally reinventing things. It's just about saying, oh, yeah, sorry we didn't give you any more games in the series for the past 10 years, but here's the next chapter. Please enjoy. And I feel like this is something that we, again, you know, you didn't see a lot of this happening in the 80s or 90s because it was too soon. But you do see more and more of it happening. And a lot of times it's just like a game comes out and a company does go and do other things. And then after a while it's like, well, this concept is laid fallow for a while.

Let's explore it. Sometimes it's a case of, you know, the rights passing to a different publisher or a different developer who's like, you know, there's some good ideas here. We should explore them. You know, a great case of that, I think, is Fallout 3, which, you know, they struggle to make a proper follow up to Fallout 2 for a long time. and got sacked. And then it passed over to Bethesda. And Bethesda was like, all right, let's turn it into elder scrolls. And people loved it.

And so now we have Fallout 3 and 4 and 76. New Vegas. And New Vegas? Really good. So many fallouts. There's just fallout happening everywhere. So, yeah, I don't know. Like, do you feel like franchise revivals are a good idea?

We were just talking about how, oh, let it die. Do you think there's a point at which, you know, like a concept has lay. fallow for long enough that you're like you know I miss that I'd love to see what they could do with it now this kind of ties in what I was talking before about just I don't get excited about it anymore like I used to get excited when something

old came back and then I think Kickstarter has probably been what killed that just because there was so much of that and a lot of them didn't even come out but I think the idea of this is what we have to get people's attention and maybe it'll get a little bit of attention It is an interesting starting place for some of these,

but I think, yeah, so many of them have just not been good. Like nights on wheat, oh, it's so bad. And it was, like, so painful because that was kind of like the turning point for me. I was like, I really want this game to be good. And it just sucked. And I feel like that – I feel like there's so much time has passed that you rarely get either the same people or the same people with the same technological ability

in the same headspace to kind of. like continue it in a good way. So you, occasionally I think it can work, but I think more often than not, I've been disappointed by most reboot. Can we count revivals as like revivals as somebody trying to revive

not a specific series or game, but a genre? Yeah, by all means. I'm thinking of Thumbullwee Park, which is Ron Gilbert's most recent game. It's really good. Yeah, I mean, in that case, you didn't really have a lot of sequels. Like outside of Monkey Island, They didn't really do a lot of sequels with that style.

It's a great-looking game, and it looks better than he intended for it to look. He wanted it to be like, what if you found a LucasArts game that was never released? And it is a LucasArts game made with a modern sensibility with the quality of life features you would expect. But even when Double Fine makes an adventure game, it looks like a modern game with a modern UI. The Weed Park has, you click on verbs, you click on things on the screen. It is very much a revival of a very specific era's interpretation of an adventure game. Yeah. No, it's interesting because it's like they get that label not because what they did,

but because of the lack of what other people did. So I'm looking at some of the things people added to this list that I put together, and I'm fascinated by Beyond Good and Evil 2 because what is that? It's like a Ponzi scheme now, isn't it? You make art for us, and then we'll give you a... Even beyond that, just like, everything. Everything I've seen about it has been repulsive. It's like, nothing about that game is what I liked about the original.

It's really weird. Yeah, it's going to be like a destiny-like thing, apparently. But, like, then the new trailer, like, showed Jade in it. So it's like, is it a sequel? But they keep saying prequel. I don't know what's going on. Maybe we haven't seen enough to really even know. Yeah.

It seems so early in development, and all their resources are just going into making, like, flashy cinematics for V3. I guess it's good that, you know, the West can do their Final Fantasy 7 remake kind of boondoggle as well. Congratulations us. I can partner in Joe. Good job. Good job.

Yuck. Okay. So this has been kind of a negative segment already. Hey, hey. Well, I can be positive. Yeah. Well, you said something positive. Let's talk about Tony Hawk.

So we talked about like, oh, Tony, no, no, when we're talking about, but we talked about how, like, so Wolfenstein got rebooted a bunch. I feel like seriously I got rebooted a bunch. And most of the reboots are pretty good. except for one of them was Prince of Persia where like there's Karataka

and I think Prince of Persia was sort of like I wouldn't say a remake of Karataka but using the same mechanics in a more ambitious way I wouldn't say the same mechanics even just like the same I guess there's not as much jumping

or platforming I mean Karataka was basically like a guy walking forward and punching Yeah yeah That's really all it was Well let's start with Prince of Persia Like there was a Prince of Persia games are all very popular, tons of ports for like everything.

Prince of Persia 3D was just a bucket of trash. Prince of the Persia's Stance of Time was really, really, really good. The sequels were kind of, you can take them or leave them. Prince of Persia 2008 was also very good. And then the Prince of Persia games that came out around the time of the movie in like 2010 or 2011, those are also very good. Like those are all, I don't think that they're following like a narrative or anything like that. They're just like, here is this thing again. Well, and there's also

There was a remake of Sands of Time, wasn't there? Was there? Wow. I thought there was. Okay. Am I miss, am I, like, hallucinating? Is there a remaster maybe? I don't remember that, yeah, maybe a remaster.

And then, of course, Assassin's Creed is like a reboot of Prince of Persia. It started out as a Prince of Persia series. And you can see, like, especially in the earlier games where there are like puzzle areas where you do a lot of platforming and it's not just kind of run forward while holding X and you'll scramble up the walls. Like, you actually have to think. about what you're doing. Yeah,

Assassin's feels very different now, but when it first came out, it was very much like, oh, okay, this is where you're going from. Especially in two when you go into those tunes. Yes, that's exactly. They're all Prince of Persia levels. And they're great.

Right. So, yeah, that series has seen a lot of rejiggering. But I feel like at this point, they would, you know, it might be due for a revival. I don't know. So, yeah.

Can I talk about Rampage? Oh, yeah. Please do. I went to Daven Busters a few months ago, and they had a new Rampage game that no one is aware of. It's like this really cheap... What's it called? But it's not a redemption game. It's like a wall-sized game, right?

I think it might just be called Rampage. No, no, it's a lot of actual... Yeah, that's the thing. When the movie came out, if you look at the trailers, I don't know if every trailer, but one of the trailers of the movie has this giant, like, Dave & Buster's logo falling off this building. So clearly there is some kind of, like, marketing co-deal behind all this stuff. And, like, if you go to Davis, at least if you did, they had, like, a big, like, thing promoting the movie. like it's all tied in.

I think it's made by like adrenaline amusements or one of these companies that just does fairly low budget arcade games. And it's the exact same thing. Like they didn't, like a lot of times they'll take these and like turn them into redemption games or like make them weird. But no, it's just like you bash buildings,

you grab people and it just feels so out of date now. But I'm just, I'm so happy and confused that they made it. It's very strange. I'm looking at this now, Matt. And apparently they made four new Rampage games. games for the movie. One is the one created that you talk game. It was made, it's a Davein Busters

exclusive made by adrenaline and entertainment. Pretty much any new arcade game is a Dave Buster exclusive. That's true. One is an app an app called Rampage, AR Unleashed. One is a free-to-play browser game, and the fourth is a virtual reality game called Project Rampage. I know what I'm doing tonight. You have so many options.

Rampage options. Yeah. I mean, good on them, I guess, for taking some chances. Like, basically it's like every new type of technology they're going to put it in. The movie's fun. Like, it's not, it's like really stupid, but like in a fun way. Like I saw it because I had movie past, so I see every stupid movie in theaters. That is a movie past movie. Yeah. It was, it was fun. It was like better than I expected it to be. So, you know, it's all you can ask for.

Yeah, so I feel like the idea of reviving a dormant series that people love is fraught with peril, kind of like we've discussed. But how often do these revivals happen where people are like, ah, this is what I wanted? I mean, even something like Fallout 3, which is hugely successful, the people who love the original Fallout and Fallout 2 were like, eh, let's not really fallout. It's stupid now. There was so much rage against Fallout 3. I will say those people have a point in a way. Like, by the time four came out, it was less of a commentary on the things they were presenting and more of like an embracing. Like, isn't this cool?

Like, I remember, like, the official fallout account was, like, wish me a happy independence day with, like, the giant Statue of Liberty robots. Like, you're supposed to be making fun of patriotism, not, like, celebrating it. You're a fallout game. You're a commentary on these things. Patriotism is what led to this state of affairs. Yeah. Yeah, like, even something like Shinemagamei Tensei 4, which I think is an amazing game, like, a lot of old fans of Shinemagamei Tinsu who have played, you know, the super Famicom games and whatever. They think it's garbage.

And I'm at a little bit of a loss, but they are very, very adamant about how bad it is. So, you know, you do have something like Knight's Journey of Dreams where I think everyone agrees this is bad. But, you know, with a well-made revival, it's really hard to appeal to a new audience and an old audience. And I guess there's the question of, like, who's going to like this? I'm curious, really curious about Mega Man 11

because I really like the Mega Man games. and I'm curious if this is actually going to appeal to a new group of people or if it's going to just be for the same people who bought all the other Mega Man games kind of like Mega Man 9 and 10 like is it possible to appeal to both groups or are you just kind of always focusing on that ever-shrinking audience as they dwindle away? Well, the Mega Man for modern players is Mighty Number 9, of course.

Yeah. Speaking of Kickstarter. But there are a lot of games on here that I didn't think about, but they're upcoming. Like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. Katie, you seem to have opinions about that. It's horrible. It's like so bad. Is it out or is it?

Oh, it came out like a while ago. Oh, okay. Wow. I love the Tony Hawk games, especially the Underground games. Like the first one in particular is like one my favorite games. But yeah, they made this big push. Like, we're going to bring back Tony Hawks Pro Skater. And this one must have been like 2013, maybe 2012.

And it's horrible. It's like by the same team that did the HD, or it was like Tony Ox, ProScare, H.G. Which is like the greatest hits of that. And it was, didn't play well. I think it got delisted like last year or something. So you can't even buy it on like digital storefronts anymore. Like that's how you know it's not great.

But yeah, it was upsetting because it's so bad. It's like, does not play well. It doesn't have like that cool style. I think the soundtrack was even like really disappointing for me. Because I feel like the soundtracks of those games are so memorable, you know? I think that's the one, if I'm not mistaken, that it came out later that there was like a contractual obligation that they could only make a Tony Hawks game up through like the month after that game came out or something like that. So maybe they had to rush it. Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, that was a big disappointment. Yeah, like their big stuff gets so much time and so much attention, but their little stuff gets churned out so quickly. And it's sad because I feel like skateboarding is almost coming back in a way or at least like a lot of my. friends are skateboard now which is weird because like when I was a teen I used to hang out a lot of people have skateboarded and now it's weird to see it like coming back into the mainstream in a way and you see like everyone on the street room like slasher or not uh thrash or like sweatshirts and stuff so it's like weird to see like I feel like now is the time for a skateboarding game to hit again and like people still keep wanting skate for or like whatever else uh but I don't like we have

that weird indie game that's coming out I don't know the name of it uh but Yeah, it's weird to, like, I feel like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 was, like, the chance for skateboarding to get, like, big in games again, and it just kind of fumbled. I mean, it's a little, like, guitar hero and I guess rock band to an extent. Like, those were other, like, big revivals of these genre, or these very niche, or formerly, like, super popular things that did not hit well. And it's kind of sad to see that happen. Where do we stand on Shenmu 3? I stayed very far away from him. Well, I can't wait to play it.

Yeah, but in a good way or a car crash way? No, I really hope so. I really hope so. I would never back it, but I totally want to play it. I don't know. It's ugly in what we've seen, but there's no reason to believe that has to be that way. Maybe I'm just lying to myself. I don't know.

Okay, so, boy, this was a more muted conversation. than I really expected. So I guess we're all old and cynical. Even the other among us. Except Bob, Bob's been the voice of optimism here. That's weird. I don't understand. All we have left are video games.

We need to play them and celebrate them. But yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm kind of torn. I'd rather just have reissues of classic games and not necessarily see people can try to continue them. Like, if we never saw another Metroid game again, I'd be okay with that. and that's maybe my favorite series.

But, like, do they necessarily have the right ideas to continue that and make a worthy follow-up that would be worth waiting all these years for the successor? Like, it's been what? Metroid Fusion was 2002. That is 16 years to wait for a sequel. Maybe there just is no sequel. I'm okay with that. I guess, I don't know, maybe it's kind of like what Matt said.

There's so many games now. I think Matt said that. that, like, maybe Katie said that, I don't know. Someone said that there's a lot of games being released now, and it's kind of hard to be excited about specific things. Like any genre, like Metroid, even. There's, like, 12 other Metroid if you want to go play those. Like, if you really need something like that,

you're not going to have trouble finding it. I think there is something special about having, like, the official name and the official story and something. But, like, there's so much new areas that could be explored. Like, why not do that? Yeah, like, I think I enjoyed Samus Returns, but I think something like Hollow Night is a thousand times better, and I don't even care that it has no Metroid content. It's just like, oh, this is much better. The design is so much better than this other Metroidvania.

That's a quote-unquote official. Yeah. I mean, I'm interested in seeing, like, you know, the people who made these games, like, do they have good ideas still? Maybe they don't. Maybe they don't have any further ideas to continue the series, and maybe that's why they've gone away. I think what's happened before plays a lot into it, too. Like, if there's one game and then they make it again 20 years later, that could be interesting. If there's, like, Ratchet and Clank, if they remake that, it's not going to be that interesting just because there's so many of them.

And for me, I know Metroid means more to other people than those to me, but it falls into that category. There have been so many of them that, like, I don't really need another one. And I think that, like, Sonic is weird, too. It's have so many ups and downs that, like, you almost get, like, caught up in that rather than just, like, whether it's a good game on its own. Yeah, I don't know. Katie, where do you stand in all this? I don't know. Like I feel like revival is like such a weird

because in my head I'm kind of like equating like revival and reboot in a way. Like I don't know. Like Bianca and Evil 2 is kind of both, you know? It's like it's a prequel, but it's also has the two on it. But it's also not like the original at all. So it's like what even is that game? Why does it exist?

Yeah, exactly. Why do they put that name in that? Right. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. Revival's always weird. Like, God of War in a way is a revival, but also a reboot. And that game's fine.

I feel like I was like one of the people that was not, like, super in love with that, like, a lot of the world was. But I don't know how I stand on it. Like, what, like, would Persona 3 count as a revival? Because that totally rebooted, like, what that series is to that point. It's just, I don't know, revivals are weird. I guess I'm kind of, like, on the negative spectrum of it. Yeah, I feel like I have a lot of opinions on it.

in theory, but then it really doesn't matter. Like, it's game-to-game, whether I care about or not. Like, I love fighting X-Layer, and, like, we don't need that. We've had that a few times. But it's just so fun to me to go, like, do this weird stuff and that you don't get to do other fighting games. And, yeah, I don't know. I think you could definitely, like, not get any of these back, and we'd be fine.

But sometimes they stand out just because you can have that attachment to it. So the takeaway from this episode is that nothing matters. Yeah. And who cares about video games? Okay, well, this was not where I expect with a conversation to go, but it's interesting. And I can't say I necessarily disagree. I don't know. I have fondness for old series, and if someone has a good idea for a classic franchise,

I'd be curious to see it. And, you know, if they can build on it in an interesting way, at a fresh way, then I'm open to that. But I'm also open to new games and just, you know, playing old games over and over. again. It's all good. Good stuff is good. Yeah. We've, well, we, we locked it down. Wrap up video games, everyone. They should reboot the time, like the concept of time, so I can have time to play all

of these games and new games. Just like, how about a day has 50 hours now? I do think that plays into it, too, because, like, the backlogs have never been bigger. Yeah. To have, like, something that you've played before, I have less interest in that, just if I have other stuff waiting for me. All right. Well, thank you, Matt. Matt and Katie for coming in to be sunshine on our day. No, your perspectives are interesting and have actually given me a lot to think about.

So I don't know if this was necessarily what our patron, Jeff Flassick, signed up for when he requested this topic, but this is what you got, buddy. I think Jeff agrees with me in that ape escape. There's never been a darker time in our country, an apiscape can bring light into our hearts. That's true. Those beautiful monkeys. So hopefully. I'd be down for a ape escape. I think that is like the one.

That feels like an ARVR thing. You know that if they do it, that's how it's going to be. Oh, that could that, I mean, no, wasn't there a PSVR apescape-ish, like demo-e thingy, I think maybe? There was a PSVR game where you were like, it was a tower defense game and there were monkeys coming at you, but it wasn't apiscape. Okay. You were like throwing bananas at them and stuff. It was strange. Anyway, so thank you, Jeff, for sponsoring this.

episode. Other people, if you are interested in sponsoring an episode and who knows how it'll turn out, you can be a patron for retronauts. We'll also review your episode at the end. I give this one a six out of ten. Let's all try harder. I'm happy with this episode. It was a fun conversation.

I didn't say this. It's not a good episode. Just that it was not like... You had different expectations, right? Yeah, I think maybe I expected this to be like a celebration of the topic. as opposed to a questioning of its merit. But that's okay. That's a valid discussion.

And I think it was an interesting episode. Just I hope our patron is not like, what the hell, dudes? I wanted to hear about how good Mario All-Stars is, not why it's stupid for people to make remake games. But Mario All-Stars is really good. Yeah. It is. I'd love to see a reboot of it.

Anyway, yes. So thanks, Matt, Katie, and Jeff. Why don't we all talk about ourselves now? We'll start with Katie. Katie, where can we find you on the internet? You can find me on usgamer.net. I write for that site. And I also have a podcast called Bad End Podcast.

You can find me on Twitter at Twitter.com slash bad end podcast. And I'm also on Twitter at You May, Katie. It's Y-U-M-E-C-A-T-Y. Matt? Yeah, I write stuff for Polygon every now and then. I am on Twitter, I guess, Latmione. Oh, I got a book coming out in August on Final Fantasy 7. I was going to ask you about that.

That's exciting. You want to talk about that? Yeah, let's do it. Plug the book. Plug the book. Yeah, you don't write a lot for Polygon, but when you do, it's a lot. It's a book. Word counts, you know, they stretch out.

Bob? Where can we find the book, man? Help. Oh. How can I give you money for the book? I know there was a Kickstarter, correct? Yes. It's been a while.

Yeah, it's a read-only memory. Maybe it was a website. You can bite on there. Cool. Please do that. As for me, I'm on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast network is the Talking Simpsons podcast network. You can find Talking Simpsons and what a cartoon there. Those are my two weekly podcasts. Those are available for free. Just look anywhere you find podcasts. You'll find them. If you want to check out our Patreon, it's patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. You can get both of our free podcasts a week ahead of time and with no ads if you sign up at the $5 level. And we also have dozens and dozens of bonus podcasts and exclusive series like Talking Critic and Talking Futurama. We love talking about all cartoons. It's like Retron. but with cartoons and lots of clips and stuff like that. So I think that's a good pitch. Jeremy, our Patreon too?

Double Patrions. Double Patreon. So first myself, I'm Jeremy Parrish, Twitter, GameSpite, et cetera. Retronauts.com is where I write mostly, that in Polygon. And you can find the podcast at Retronauts.com, of course. And you can also find it on iTunes

and the podcast, no one network. And you can do the Patreon thing, kind of like Talking Simpsons. I wonder where they got that. crazy idea. Subscribe to both. It's sort of like a week early, etc. It's a combo meal. Get the Retronauts and Talking Simpsons combo meal. So much of

us in your ears every week. Yeah, except we don't do extra podcasts. We give you podcasts a week early and then because I love print media I write fanzines every few months and T-shirts and I don't write T-shirts but printed and distributed. Anyway, yes, that's Patreon.com slash retronauts.

Hooray. Thanks for listening. We'll be back in a week with another podcast and I know you can't wait. I'm going to be able to be. And now an ad from dad All right, save money on car insurance when you bundle, home, and auto with progressive. Can I take these off? All right.

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