I am on record on this very site as being very opposed to the trend of constantly remaking movies. While there are outliers, usually remakes miss what makes the original timeless and strip all the brains and soul out of a movie in order to make something forgettable and Current Year that will make a few bucks or worse, be an inferior product which then replaces the original in the memory of people too young to have seen the first.

Keep in mind I once broke up with a dude for saying the Dawn of the Dead remake was better than the original.

But something I have come to notice recently is that this dynamic does NOT hold up in games. Game remakes and remasters can be (usually are?) often very good. Sometimes even great.

To understand the difference in these two mediums and the reason games work and films do not when remade is to realize that interactivity in a product greatly increases the amount of moving parts at play. A certain practical winnowing has occurred in the past 20 years that enables endless playtesting to refine what works for an experience and what does not. This is a level of pragmatism and necessity that is irrelevant for film. Film must first and foremost be a visual and auditory feast for the audience and all other concerns are secondary. Personally, I think the medium peaked (for now anyway) in the 70s and 80s when it comes to proportional quality in aesthetic. Most ‘innovation’ since then has become finding new ways to green screen things and find every more bombastic spectacles that compromise the tried and true veracity of practical effects. There are exceptions, of course, but the overall trend still doesn’t look good and hasn’t since the 2000s.

Games on the other hand are always working to improve user interface (or should be), as well as having to upscale for new hardware. This means often times botched yet innovative experiments cannot be fully realized until later. At the same time, the industry has become lucrative, corrupted by investment over vision, and has lost a lot of what once made it great in its era of peak creative experimentation (the 90s- think about where games were at the start vs the end of that decade and compare it to any other). Additionally, neglected games eventually become unplayable due to technological compatibility issues.

And so we have some remakes and remasters that have brought back some great products that might not have even been made in today’s climate, but with quality of life improvements and graphical upgrades that enable new audiences to find them. Most notable of these to me have been the System Shock remake, the Quake II remaster (its a very real possibility that 1997’s Quake II might be my 2023 game of the year), and above all the gold standard for remakes so far, the Resident Evil 2 remake of 2019.

So, indulge me here while I list some games I would love to see remade or remastered with a brief description of why. Just in case any enterprising developers are using their google-fu to figure what old properties might be worth mining again. Not included on this list is Max Payne, which I just learned is in fact going to get remakes.

Afterlife– Few people have heard of or remember this game, but the 1995 heaven and hell building simulator was my first building game and, thematically and aesthetically, still my favorite. The game has a terrible balancing system and broken, if funny, natural disasters. But its peak quality pixel art and funny humor. I would hope a remake would keep the pixel art aspect.

Unreal (the first one)- The Unreal series went hard for multiplayer and left its original debut with only one terrible sequel to mark its passing. But this game is a masterpiece of atmosphere and unbroken first person exploration and combat on an alien world. It came out around the same time as Half Life and honestly I view it as the far superior shooter of that year.

No One Lives Forever 1 and 2- This series, a kind of 60s/James Bond immersive sim parody, was fantastic spy shooting and sneaking. The first one was funnier but the second one really pulled out the stops with workable stealth, great locations, and even a level in a trailer park being sucked into a tornado. The franchise has lingered in legal limbo for years though, preventing further development.

The Thing- 2002’s Thing game tried to capture the paranoia of the movie with an interesting squad based mechanic of shapeshifter infiltration. The tech just wasn’t there at the time though to pull this off properly, but I think it could be done today. Imagine a Thing themed game in Capcoms RE engine and then having to do the blood test on squad members.

Eternal Darkness- The only console only game that tempted me to break my unsullied record as an exclusive member of the PC Gaming Master Race, the idea of historical time hopping survival horror (but with way better controls) deserves a revival.

Battlezone- Not the very original black and white arcade game, but the 90s franchise of sci fi ground control combat/base building strategy game. Taking the Cold War into the solar system for alternate history sci fi was fantastic, and the game was a blast with many unique vehicle designs.

Heavy Gear 1 and 2- Honestly this franchise just needs a proper sequel. But the second game in particular was probably the best executed mecha combat game of all time but is hard to get working on modern systems. I am, to put it mildly, a huge fan.

Though there is a Daggerfall remaster, modernized controls and UI feel would be extremely welcome in my opinion.

People who will read this and know me well will wonder why my favorite game of all time, Alpha Centauri, is not on this list. The first reason for this is that the GOG version works perfectly fine and the game is so good I don’t think it needs anything else even after 24 years. The second reason is that its my plan to have an entire entry at on this site at some point in the future all about just that one game, so hold on.