Hey all, I hope your August is off to a good start! I know mine is! By the time this goes up I’ll actually be visiting home for the first time in a few years (international is just that expensive these days, unfortunately), and so am not actually around to continue the series I kicked-off last week with my look back at Chrono Trigger. Still, since I’ve still got retro on the brain during right now, I’ve decided to bring back a few retro-focused posts while I’m gone. To kick things off, I’ll pose to you this question: how has your attitude towards remasters shifted in the past few years? With that, read on and I’ll see you in the next one!

This post was originally published on May 15, 2016

Hey everyone! Shadow Complex is finally here! …again. That’s right, after months of waiting, we can all finally dive back into ChAIR’s excellent metroidvania-style action adventure! Actually, come to think of it, I could have been playing on my Xbox 360 all this time instead of waiting for the re-release. ….huh. How about that? Why was I all jazzed-up for this re-release again?

(trailer from IGN’s YouTube channel)

Unless a remaster offers either a significant noticeable upgrade over the old experience or a chance to play a game missed when it was originally released, is there really a good reason to get excited about it? I believe the answer should definitely be “no”, but that hasn’t stopped me from buying remasters. In fact, all of the remasters I’ve bought are for games I already own. I bought into the Sly Collection, the Ratchet and Clank Collection, and even DisHonored: Definitive Edition, and was happy to have each of them. What I just can’t seem to fathom is why that would be.

In every case, there’s been no real changes to the games being offered. They’re all the same games that I bought for full price back when they released, and they’re all games that I still have the means to play. There’s absolutely nothing stopping me from plugging in the old systems and enjoying them again without having to buy the remastered versions. In the case of DisHonored, the difference isn’t even very obvious! Yet, here I am glad to have it on my PS4 regardless.

Now it may sounds like I’ve got some buyer’s guilt going on here, but that’s not really it. I’m saying that I’m actually happy to have these new versions even though I know I  probably shouldn’t, and I find that interesting. It might be that the convenience of not having to drag out a new system is rather nice, but I don’t think that’s all that’s going on. In fact, I think this just might be good ol’ nostalgia at work again.

Even though the games being offered in these collections are essentially the same as they’ve always been, something about the simple existence of a the new versions makes them seem more interesting and fresh than they’ve been in years. Perhaps its an excuse to go back to something that I’ve long been done with, or perhaps its that I now have new chances to talk about games I’d otherwise had to leave behind in the ol’ memory.

Perhaps it’s because it’s another chance to help show that many of us are still very interested in these old titles, and that by buying the games and talking about them, we can help encourage the development of a sequel (that’s what I’m hoping will happen with Shadow Complex Remastered anyway). In reality it’s probably all of these things put together and the excitement of the possibilities the release of a remaster represents. I mean if the developers and publishers have enough faith to release a remastered version, who knows what else could be coming down the pipe?

Guess we’ll just have to wait and see, right?

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Do you buy remastered games or game collections? Why do you think these sorts of releases are met with so much excitement?

Image by Flickr user: JBLivin (cc)