Why Remasters Are Necessary

It was announced recently that the latest Tales of….game to be remastered, begs the question, do games need to be remastered. The problem is that after the XBox 360, Playstation 2, Nintendo 3DS, and other consoles, the ability to play older games on newer consoles died or handhelds well…died. The original Playstation 3 originally allowed for gamers to play PS2 and PS1 games on it, until they decided to do away with it when it came to refurbished models.

For me personally I’m all for remasters whether they have a physical version or not doesn’t really matter to me. The ability to play the game on my Switch or laptop is what matters to me. I at one point once had a PS4 where the power supply stopped working on it and I couldn’t play any of the games that I had. My only hope was the Nintendo Switch which luckily had some games get ported over there and Steam. It made gaming a lot more accessible for everyone that didn’t have a PS4 and didn’t have the means to get one.

When it was announced that they were going to take off Tales of Xillia, Tales of Xillia 2 and Tales of Graces f, I didn’t think “well this is the end of keeping archives”, I thought “they’re probably going to remaster it and with the track record of major game developers probably either don’t have the base code or it got corrupted so Bandai Namco needs those games out so they can remaster them.”

Which is an issue I touched on when covering the “Stop Killing Games” movement. While game companies have embraced making games digital for newer games, when it comes to remastering older games however, it becomes a bit trickier as time goes on. It can be seen as a good thing to remaster these games and have them be ported over to different systems, but also they can retain that code to put on newer systems.

Like I said before when it came to the games that I had on my Switch, a lot of them were games that I had played on my Playstation 4. It made it easier for me to play through them. (I also had Final Fantasy X on my Vita. And on Playstation 3 and 4.) I look at is a good thing because it gives the younger generation the magic and the whimsy of discovering their first Tales of Game and falling in love with it.

For me Tales of Xillia was that game and seeing it come out on the Switch made me happy because I can play that on the Switch. (Since I don’t have my PS4 anymore and my laptop is out of commission currently.) While there are people that want to have a physical copy, for me it really doesn’t matter. If I can play a game and re-live the magic of when I first played whether I was a teenager or in my twenties, the method of playing it doesn’t matter.

I see it as a problem when you have games like Xenosaga, Shadow Hearts, Kouldelka, .hack//IMOQ being lost to obscurity.

Now while Shadow Hearts is getting a spiritual successor in the shape of Pennyblood, however that is hitting a snag as publishers really don’t seem to care for it much. Though I would have preferred to have Kouldelka to be remastered on top of the Shadow Hearts series being remastered, and there being the true sequel of Jinpachiro and Kurando’s dad having a trip across Japan, however, that doesn’t seem to be the case. No matter how much I want to complain to Kikuta-san about it. (He recently followed me on twitter maybe a few months ago.)

But I think it would help archiving certain games the more that they get ported to newer systems. There becomes a newer crowd that loves the games and plays them and keeps the conversations alive. It’s part of the reason why I started to do let’s plays and become a vtuber to focus more on the older games. Though I’m on hiatus from it.

But seeing remasters of games that I love and hold dear will always make me excited. When they announced that Dark Cloud 2 was going to be on the PS4, I was excited. I used to play the game a lot on my PS2 growing up spending hours on collecting outfits for Monica, inventing, upgrading weapons, messing with the Georama system and playing Spheda. It was a fun game.

Yes it sucked that it was solely on the PS4, though I hope that they eventually decide to release it to Steam and the Nintendo Switch or the Nintendo Switch 2. While I do have my own collection of physical games kept in my Sailor Moon Switch case, and a Sailor Moon Switch card box, however, I still don’t mind digital version of the game.

As long as I can play my favorite games, it doesn’t really matter what form they come in.

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