I go back and forth about my stance on video game remakes. On the one hand I find them largely to be creative dead ends. The game industry is already obsessed with sequels and franchises, and remakes of beloved classics just bring us one step closer to artistic oblivion. This is not a criticism of the people that roll up their sleeves and put in the work to create the best remake they can, I just wish they could use their talents to create something new, something that adds more cultural value to the world rather than the equivalent of a strong belch that fleetingly reminds you of a delicious meal you once had.
On the other hand, I have to admit that there are some remakes out there that I adore. While many fail to justify their own existence beyond fulfilling the profit motive, remakes like Resident Evil 4 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake are remarkable. They work because they succeed in advancing the goals and ambitions of the original. They are in conversation with the games they’re born from, and they make a concerted effort to evolve beyond the scope, and sometimes the technical limitations of their originals.
Some have made this claim of the Super Mario RPG remake. When it was first revealed during this summer’s Nintendo Direct, fans lauded the new artstyle, believing it to be a big visual upgrade over the original. In the replies and QRTs to this side-by-side comparison, you can see people making the claim that this is a faithful recreation that accurately depicts the intent of the game’s original artist, who were hindered by the limitations of the Super Nintendo’s technology. This, some claim, is what Super Mario RPG was always supposed to look like. Thank goodness we finally have a remake so we can play the game it was always meant to be.
I’ll spare you my condemnation of this take – but you can read my counter-argument here if you want to know why I think the remake’s artstyle is utterly dripless – because despite my past concerns, I’m actually here to make the point that Super Mario RPG is a worthwhile remake. While I still find this type of light-touch remake largely cynical, and I still expect more than a fresh coat of paint on a relatively untouched game, Super Mario RPG Remake does something important that is enough to justify its own existence in my eyes: it got rid of the missable secret frog coin chest in the castle.
Briefly, frog coins are a unique currency in Super Mario RPG you can spend on some pretty important stuff, like the Exp. Booster and See Ya, which lets you escape battles. They’re not as easy to find as regular coins, and in the original, one of them is hidden in an invisible chest above a doorway in Peach’s castle. The first time you visit the castle you will follow a Toad in, and the only way to find the coin is to stand on the Toad’s head and jump onto the door frame just as he walks through the door. If you fail to do this in the five-second window you have the first time you visit the castle, you will never open this chest. In the remake, a new Toad has been added to this hallway, so if you come back later, there will always be a Toad you can jump on. Unlike the original, this chest is not missable in the remake.
Missable content can add replay value in some situations. Choosing whether or not to blow up Megaton in Fallout 3 will alter the path of the story and can lock out certain content. This isn’t the kind of missable content I’m referring to here, though.
Putting aside all of my strong feelings about artistic effort and the creative validity of a remake, I like the Super Mario RPG because it fixed something that annoyed me in the original. This isn’t even a particularly good example of how a remake can solve the problems in a game. Frog coins are infinitely farmable, so there’s no reason you have to open this chest and it doesn’t matter if you miss it. But it’s always pissed me off that this secret chest is so hard to get, so I’m happy that it’s gone. I don’t support the notion that the Mario RPG remake improves on the original’s aesthetic, but I’m all for remakes that remove all the annoying parts from old games. I’ll sign off on that kind of remake any day.
They could remake Kingdom Hearts just to get rid of that Red Trinity symbol in Oogie’s Manor that you can’t unlock after you beat Oogie Boogie. The KOTOR remake (which is probably canceled) could maybe warn you before Taris and Dantooine get destroyed, making all the side quests and items there unobtainable. And don’t even get me started on Castlevania’s Chaos Ring, an item that shows up in several entries in the series that you can very easily lock yourself out of getting if you use a one-of-a-kind boss soul as they’re intended – to upgrade your weapons. Get rid of that junk, and I’d sign up for a hastily-thrown together Dawn of Sorrow remake today.
I’d still much prefer to see new games than the endless parade of remakes we get these days, but as long as they strive to make the annoying parts less annoying, I guess remakes aren’t that bad after all.
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