These days, it seems like a remake is popping up each week. Which game would you like to see get a full remake? (Just to define a remake, Final Fantasy IV DS would be a remake. Persona PSP and Chrono Trigger DS add a few new features, but they’re really ports.)
Jenni: With the recent ports of Star Ocean: First Departure and Star Ocean: Second Evolution, and the forthcoming release of Star Ocean: The Last Hope, I’m truly hoping that Square Enix decides to remake the Game Boy Color Star Ocean game, Star Ocean: Blue Sphere. With the recent attention being paid to the series, I think it is a wonderful time for a DS port of that game.
Of course, remakes of the original Mother or Mother 2/Earthbound for perhaps the DS or Wii would also be a wonderful surprise. Since Nintendo seems to neglect that franchise, I think that’s an impossible dream.
Louise: Before Square joined with Enix, Enix put out an SNES game in 1995 called Hamelin no Violin Tamaki, or The Violinist of Hamelin. It was loosely based off of a manga of the same name. It was one of my favorite side-scrolling platformers on the SNES.
Players control Hamel, who meets up with Flute, an orphaned girl early on his adventure. Hamel can pick up costumes, which Flute can wear, which gives her special abilities. Think of the tanooki suit in Super Mario Bros. 3. The suits weren’t limited to just animals in The Violinist of Hamelin. There was a UFO suit, which lets Flute hover near Hamel, and a hockey puck-type suit that well…makes her act as a hockey puck and slide around. I would love to see this re-made on the Wii with higher-res sprites and a different adventure. Even if they re-made it in 3D, as long as they stayed true to the game and its suits, I would be happy.
Spencer:Square Enix loves ports so I’ll pick a Square game we missed out on. Live A Live was a Super Famicom RPG with what at first seems like unconnected stories and heroes in different time periods that you can play in any order. One world is set up like a kung fu movie, another is like a spaghetti western, and in present day the protagonist enters a fighting tournament to become the strongest fighter in the world. Fighting games were popular when Live A Live came out! Present day is just fights too and Live A Live had a unique fighting system. It took place on a grid and it was turn based. Maybe the best way to describe it would be strategy RPG-lite. Actually, combat could be modified for a touch screen handheld and it is Live A Live’s 15th anniversary this year… Nah, Square Enix won’t dig this out. Will they? It hasn’t made an appearance on the Virtual Console in Japan either.
Ishaan: What I’d really like to see is a remake of Final Fantasy VI. We all know it’s coming, but I’m hoping against hope that Square Enix decides to do it for Wii instead of DS. I say Wii because the PS3 and 360 are getting the Fabula Nova Crystallis games and hey, we all know that FFVII remake is coming to PS3 eventually anyway. It would also be nice to have the game come out two years into development instead of, like, five.
Console preference aside, the reason I’d love to see FFVI on a home system and not a handheld is because Square couldn’t do justice to Yoshitaka Amano’s art years ago on the SNES and they certainly can’t do it on the DS either. Amano’s art doesn’t lend itself to chibi stylization very well, as is apparent from looking at his character concepts and then their chibi ingame sprites. FFVI is also the definitive oldschool Final Fantasy, and I’d like to see the game get a proper home console treatment with all the bells and whistles needed to facilitate its glorious transition to 3D when this inevitable remake happens. It’s also been a good long time since we heard Nobuo Uematsu’s music in a proper home console Final Fantasy and FFVI features some of his best work in my opinion. Make it happen, Square!
