A good year for remakes and remasters! (Thoughts on Game releases coming up soon!)

     2024 is looking to be a pretty wild year, friends. Even though most of the games that I'm really looking forward to right now are remakes or remasters of older games, that's not anything too bad, considering how much I loved these games! I'm at the beach this week, and so I'm going to take it easy and just talk about a few things that are coming back from when I was much younger. First of all, this may not be the most popular list of things coming out soon, but I just want to take some time this week to talk a bit about these.

2004: A Paper-Thin Adventure

    In the year 2004, I was in 4th grade, and a childhood friend told me about Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. It was a weird looking game for sure, and one with an unmistakeable artstyle that I had only ever seen in screenshots for the original game in the series, Paper Mario. This time around, Mario had a bunch of new companions, a new locale outside of the Mushroom Kingdom, and a new journey that really re-contextualized the concept of "Peach is kidnapped again" in a way that made it a much more interesting plot than many Mario games had come with. This was a good while after Super Mario began doing RPGs, with the first one being back in 1994 with Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars for the Super Nintendo, but it still felt incredibly fresh and interesting. It mainly kept the same combat concepts from the original Paper Mario game, but included the mechanic of having an audience in attendance of the fights, which look like a stage show. These audience members can throw items at you, for better or worse, depending on if they throw something harmful like a can or a rock, or something helpful like an item that you can use in battle. The humor and storyline is also much more interesting than the Original Paper Mario title, by having Bowser not be the main villain, or an ally of ours. Instead, Bowser is just off to the side and causing a ruckus on his own for the most part. It's wild to have Bowser as a B-Plot character in a Mario game, but it works perfectly, especially considering that it gives Grodus and the X-Nauts more room to be mysterious with their scheme without letting on what their ultimate plan is until the very end.

    This game isn't perfect, of course, there are some issues with pacing, and the backtracking can be absurd, especially for one section towards the end of the game... I'm looking at you, General White. This is a part that I really hope is changed with the remake of the game which is coming out next month, unbelievably! I would be fine if General White was taken out of this remake, or if they just made his side quest a standard "go here" instead of having to go to all of the previous areas in the game to look for him, or even if they just added more fast travel, this would be much more enjoyable, and far less tedious than it was in the original game. I do respect the context, and the bit of world building in that portion of the game is nice, but it's also just kind of annoying that it's needless padding for what is a pretty tight and fun adventure. That's easily the biggest improvement that I can think of, but I would also love to see something more about Luigi's search for the Miraculous Compass, which is a side story that Luigi seems to be going on while Mario is in Rogueport looking for the Crystal Shards. No matter what they do with this remake though, I cannot wait. I loved this game as a kid, and I'm so excited to play through it again now as an adult.

2010: A Mouse Goes on an Epic Quest!

    This next one I really never thought we would see again, especially since the original publisher, Junction Point, was shut down by Disney after Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two didn't sell very well, but I'm so incredibly happy that it's back! There were so many games in the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis era starring Mickey, that for a while he was known among the platforming greats with games like Castle of Illusion and others. On the Gamecube and other consoles of that generation though, Mickey's adventuring for the most part came to a pretty abrupt halt. That changed back in 2010 with Epic Mickey. After years and years of not having much to say about Mickey Mouse, there was an attempt made to have Mickey become a hero again, just like he was in the 80's and early 90's, and along with his return to heroism, the reintroduction of a beloved character. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was Walt Disney's original golden child when he was just starting out in his animation career, and he worked with Ub Iwerks at Universal. According to legend, Walt asked his bosses at Universal to give him more money so he could make better cartoons, but Universal was outraged by the request and fired him, taking away the cartoon rabbit from his creator, which then prompted Walt to come up with Mickey Mouse on the train ride home from this failed meeting. The rest is history, and it wouldn't be until 2008 when the Walt Disney Company traded ABC Sports broadcaster Al Michaels's contract to Universal for the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit once again. Epic Mickey was when the rabbit finally made his return to the screen, being introduced to modern audiences for the first time.

    Headed up by video game legend Warren Spector: creator of the Deus Ex franchise, and a huge innovative force for gameplay being involved in the story itself, Junction Point Studios was created by Disney. Mr. Spector was given two guidelines, first to tell the story of Mickey Mouse becoming a hero once again, and to reintroduce Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to the world. The team at Junction Point definitely rose to the occasion, creating a world of forgotten Disney characters that had been rotting away after years of neglect from the people of the world. This "Wasteland," as it's called, was created by Yen Sid, the sorcerer alter ego of Walt Disney, and Mickey is pulled into this world with only a magical paintbrush and his adventurous spirit. Will Mickey restore the Wasteland to the magical land that the sorcerer intended to make? Will things in Wasteland be left in disrepair, actually worse off than when Mickey first arrives? It's up to you to make those choices, and as a Disney fan, I absolutely love what the team did.

    Not much is known about Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, including the release date, but just the fact that it's getting a remake at all makes me really excited. The website for the game also talks about some new controls, such as a dash, ground pound, and sprint, so I'm curious to see just how much is changed when this new version of the classic Wii game comes out. If nothing else, this will be a chance to play this game that I've always loved again on modern consoles. Chances are still pretty slim of us ever getting an Epic Mickey 3, but this is a nice step in the right direction at least!

    On top of these two that I'm incredibly excited about, we had last year's stellar remake of Super Mario RPG, which was another game that people were pretty sure we would never see again, despite the incredible popularity of the original game on the SNES, spawning the ever popular discussions about why Geno should be in the next Super Smash Bros. game. While this game was the beginning of Mario's RPG adventures, it also is responsible for Bowser's comedic attitude, or even just his personality in general. He's a pretty silly guy, and you can trace that back to this classic game which was created in conjunction with Square Soft. Amazingly, Yoko Shimomura, who wrote the original soundtrack for the classic game, even came back to reorchestrate some of her original tracks, giving them a much bigger impact than they had on the basic limited soundchips of the Super Nintendo, and propelling an always incredible soundtrack to even higher heights in the new version. I really can't say enough about how great this game looks and sounds while being incredibly faithful to the source material, and being even much more wacky with Nintendo's most popular character in a way that I didn't know they would ever do again. It's the same Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, in that way. For years, fans have longed for a new Paper Mario game that goes back to the formula from this game, since after this, the series deviated to many different gameplay styles that weren't nearly as popular or well thought out. It's only now, after 4 or 5 games that have been poorly received, have Nintendo finally decided to give what people have been asking for, even if it is a remake of a game that people fondly remember. I only hope that people will be happy with what they've been asking for for so long!

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends. I know I've been a bit rambly today, but I hope something that you've read resonates with you in some bigger way. Are you excited for either of these remakes? Or is there something that you are looking forward to at some time soon? I would love to hear about it from you somewhere online! Thanks again for all of your support, and I hope you'll all have a great week! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Remake Enjoyer, and I'll talk to you again soon!