What Makes A Good Remake Or Remaster?

What Makes A Good Remake Or Remaster?

- Kenneth Ang

Ever come across a dusty old game in your collection that you feel like playing again, only to realise It doesn’t inspire the same awe it did when you first brought it home? Maybe it could…if some of the graphics were spruced up for your modern gaming rig. Indeed, with so many remakes and remastered games running amok recently, it’s about time we addressed the elephant in the room: is nostalgia the only thing these “revised” games have going for them?

REMASTERING VERSUS REMAKING A GAME: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

But before all that, what exactly makes a remaster different from a remake?

Well, imagine you’ve got a nice little house by the seaside. One day, you notice that the house is looking a little worse for wear, so you decide to do some spring cleaning and perhaps give the exterior a new coat of paint. Despite the work that’s been done, the house itself hasn’t changed, although it does look a lot better - that’s a remaster.

However, there might also come a time when you just feel like having a change of scenery, so you sell your seaside home and move to a new and perhaps larger house in the forest. Naturally, you’d bring some, if not all of your existing stuff with you to your new home, right? So, in essence, although you’ve changed houses, some of the furniture inside are the same ones as before - that’s a remake.