Theory

[icycalm]

A tricky subject, which I was forced to face once again today on the occasion of the announcement of the La Mulana port to Wii. Apparently, it will be given a higher-res graphical face lift, but as far as mechanics go it will remain the same (though I wouldn't be surprised if they found some way to tone down the difficulty...)

So what differentiates a remake from a port? Like I said, it's a bit tricky for games. For movies it's simple: there are no ports; every new version of an old film is automatically a remake.

I am really tired right now to think at all, so I am just going to throw this out there for the time being. In any case it's not a difficult issue, nor even an important one. But it's an issue nonetheless.

P.S. A solid example of a remake would have to be MGS: Twin Snakes on the GameCube. This is just an example to get people thinking.

[DeadAurum]

La Mulana's situation simply looks like a graphically-enhanced port. Changes in resolution/textures don't change the fundamental game, of course. If they decide to tweak the difficulty, I think that would be enough to call it a remake.

What about the case of Metroid: Zero Mission? Is it a remake, or an entirely new game? The controls and weapons are radically different. The areas have similar paths to those of Metroid's, but are reshaped enough to be considered entirely different. There is, of course, the added space pirate ship level. So, it feels almost completely new, while only retaining a bare skeleton of the original.

[dA]

The press release (found here) calls it an "all-new remake" (strange choice of words) with a new engine. Since they've starting making it again, there's not much sense in calling it a port.

Of course, it could end up being no different from a graphically-enhanced port (that's what digital is all about). It would still be a remake, but treated as a port.

[icycalm]

Copy-paste the above in the game's thread. This is the theory forum. If you are physically incapable of theorizing do not post here. Do not reply to this message -- I've already deleted half a dozen worthless posts from this thread today -- just wake the fuck up.

[ganheddo]

I think a good port should try to accurately replicate the original videogame on a different platform (only adding some extras at most). In a remake, parts (or the entirety) of the original videogame are remade and altered significantly, often to make use of new hardware for an audiovisual overhaul, to retool the interface, or to tone down difficulty. The point of a remake is to change the original, whereas a port should only introduce alterations due to limitations of the target platform. I also suppose that, different to a port, a remake may appear on the same hardware as the original. (Or should we call this a "major update" instead?)

I'd expect a remake to be a "general overhaul", and a port to be an accurate or only slightly updated rendition. Yet as mentioned here, not all ports are very accurate, and they may even have to deviate quite drastically, especially when the original software had to be rewritten from scratch to accommodate a different system. As said, this is where we could start and consider them to be not mere ports anymore, but different games, and this seems to hold for remakes as well, likewise dependent on how true they stay to their source material.

[CMiller]

A tricky subject, which I was forced to face once again today on the occasion of the announcement of the La Mulana port to Wii. Apparently, it will be given a higher-res graphical face lift, but as far as mechanics go it will remain the same

If, as you say in your Aesthetics & Mechanics thread, mechanics and aesthetics are in fact the same, then how could a graphical facelift not cause the mechanics to change?

[icycalm]

My latest post in that thread sort of explains why:

http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?p=11192#11192

You could easily change all of a game's graphics while leaving its possibility space unchanged, hence also its mechanics -- mechanics understood here in a narrow sense as "the layout of the possibility space".