Why updating videogames can be a good thing

Hollywood has established a grand tradition of remaking films that have no need to be remade. There was no earthly reason why Hitchcock’s Psycho should have been updated, but Gus Van Sant went and made one anyway, casting Vince Vaughn in the role of Norman Bates.

Since Van Sant’s carbon copy remake appeared in 1998, we’ve seen dozens of classic films hauled out of the archive and warmed over for modern audiences. Most of the time, the remakes entirely missed the point of the original film. Jean-Francois Richet’s remake of John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13 captured none of the original’s rising sense of claustrophobia. George Sluizer’s unforgettably horrible 1988 thriller, The Vanishing, was subjected to a redundant Hollywood treatment five years later, which tacked on a gratuitous happy ending.

Videogames, meanwhile, are a rather different proposition. They’re bound to the limitations of technology more than any other entertainment medium, and while there are some videogames that are perfect in their retro simplicity - I defy anyone to improve on the pared-back perfection of the Galaga arcade machine, or Chaos on the ZX Spectrum, or Super Mario on the NES - there are others whose mechanical perfection could, perhaps, benefit from a bit of high-definition polish.

Take The Legend Of Zelda: The Ocarina Of Time, for example. I still have my original N64 copy from 1998, carefully stored away in its minimal black box. It’s years since I’ve played it, but there are entire sections that still linger in my mind.

I’ll never forget the first time I caught sight of the sun rising over Hyrule Field, and fully comprehended the size of the world Shigeru Miyamoto and his team had created. It was a world of genuine wonder, that changed with the rise and fall of the sun. Few games before or since have managed to create such a sense of discovery and delight.

Looking back, it’s hard to believe that Ocarina Of Time represented Link’s first foray into 3D gaming. Miyamoto rightly took his time over the game’s production, and it’s remarkable to note just how much he got right - so right, in fact, that the 2006 Zelda title, Twilight Princess, followed almost the same template as Ocarina, with remarkably similar controls and graphics.

Despite Ocarina Of Time’s assured place in the history of truly great videogames, I fear that some of those cherished memories I hold of Hyrule and its inhabitants would vanish if I were to return to the game for another play through. Time can do much to erode the magic of videogames. Just as that other N64 classic, GoldenEye, no longer feels quite so violent and exhilarating as it did back in the 90s, it worries me that, if I fired up the Ocarina cartridge in 2011, my recollection of Hyrule as a rich, detailed, magical world would be blown away like cobwebs on the breeze.

I’ve never returned to Fumito Ueda’s PS2 classic Ico, for the same reason. Ten years ago, that game’s sprawling, mysterious castle was a place of wonder and continuous astonishment. Vast spires towered up into eerie mist, and crumbling stone walls provided a backdrop for a remarkably heartfelt story of friendship and loss.

If I were to play Ico again, would it be possible to relive those same moments, and feel those same emotions I did all those years ago? Time and technology has moved on. We have HD televisions now. Faster computers and consoles. Bigger games. More detailed characters. The games have changed, and so have I.

Nobody recognises the potential of these classic games more than their respective publishers, Nintendo and Sony. Nintendo, in particular, is no stranger to rooting out classic games from its back catalogue and re-releasing them - whether they’re old 8-bit titles for sale on the Wii’s Virtual Console, or the expensively repackaged Super Mario All-Stars, which appeared on the Wii last year.

In the case of Ocarina Of Time, Nintendo is giving the game an updated re-release for the forthcoming 3DS. Not only will it take advantage of the handheld’s 3D capability, but it will also feature higher-resolution textures and more detailed characters.

Similarly, Sony is re-releasing a high-definition version of Ico for the PS3, along with its spiritual sequel, Shadow Of The Colossus. From what I’ve seen so far, they look beautiful.

So while I’ve been consciously avoiding both Ico and Ocarina Of Time for many, many years, perhaps these new, updated versions will allay my anxieties. With a little HD enhancement, maybe the magic I experienced when I first played them will be retained.

While updating a movie can frequently wreck what was wonderful about it in the first place - and let’s face it, an unsympathetic update of a videogame can be just as damaging - what Nintendo and Sony have undertaken with Ocarina and Ico could, if done well, introduce these remarkable games to a new generation of gamers who never got to try them a decade or so ago.

And for those of us who already have already explored Ocarina’s Hyrule or Ico’s monumental citadel, these updates could bring those cherished memories bubbling joyously back to the surface.

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