One of my first threads I started here (wow 2007) was on
borrowing from the past as a good design concept. Pirates, Wasteland/Fallout, Baldur's Gate, and MM6 all did this in one degree or the other.
Looking at the latest Pirates one thing to note on those old games is most of them were really, really stat heavy. Something almost invisible in most games today. Particularly SSI games (makers of the Gold Box), you can see the influence of tabletop games of the 70's and 80's in their design. So many of their combat simulatiion games involved number crunching before they got the D&D contract,
With the success of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, it got me thinking which games could use a true remake?
Here is my list:
Battles of Destiny -QQP
Wizard's Crown -SSI
Pool of Radiance - SSI
Colonization - Microprose
If these were re-made, and just the graphics and platform updated, I would be very happy. These were games from the past that I believe deserve a remake. I am not talking just a re-do using the Dragons Age or Neverwinter Nights 3 engine. I am talking a rebuilding with corporate backing.
What are your thoughts?
Lue.
Don't forget Pool of Radiance was already remade and it was the bestselling new game for its first two weeks.
Welcome to RPGWatch!
Didn't Colonization get remade a short time ago as a Civ 5 expansion or so?
The problem with the SSI games is probably the necessary license.
It was Civ4 - its a great hack but not much of a game. I first played a version Colonization as an open source project. Many game remakes start out that way.
Best remake so far imo:King's bounty.
Its not really a remake - they just bought the name to stop the lawsuit over HoMM. Still..both versions are two of my favourites - same with the first three HoMMs.
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The first game remakes I can remember were Ultima I and II - so maybe another innovation that the Ultima series came up with. After the success of Ultima III Garriot&Co. reworked the graphics for them before releasing Ultima IV (they were originally written in BASIC - I don't know if they were recompiled into assembler or rewritten).
edit:
here's a fascinating article that answers my questions on finding U1's source code
One of the things about re-releasing reworked games is they don't generally have a great track record for sales. King's Quest for example flopped.
The opposite has been true for porting to different platforms. I think much of Pirates success came from being a console port.
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If there's one game I'd like to see remade - Seven Cities of Gold.
Edit: wow - that old thread is such a good read. And its nice to read old names - I had just realized that Squeek left us.