Let's Talk Again About (Nintendo's) Remakes.

     It has been said time and time again that Nintendo doesn't work like basically any other company in the gaming landscape. Time and time again, they have shown that they don't really care what any other company in the medium is doing, they'll continue doing the things that work over and over again, focusing on making fun games above emphasizing graphical capabilities, which is why the Switch was never considered a "powerhouse" system, even in the year that it was first released. That has not stood in the way of this little hybrid console, consistently selling better than all competitors, even facing a global shortage of them upon release, then yet another shortage whenever the world was under pandemic. It has been over 7 years since this console came out, and we've received official word from Furukawa, the CEO of Nintendo, that the successor to the Switch will be announced before the next fiscal year, which ends at the end of March. With this portable console's life drawing to a close, we can expect some smaller titles and remasters, though the announcements are still coming strong, if the Nintendo Direct from a few weeks ago is any indication! Today I want to talk a bit about some of the titles that Nintendo is more likely to put out during the end of a console's life, the remakes. This isn't a new trend, at the very least, they came along with the end of the Wii U and 3DS, if not earlier! We're taking a little trip to the recent past, and I hope you'll enjoy reflecting a bit.

Remake Conditions May Vary!

    It would be wrong for me to say that these remakes only happen whenever a console is wrapping up its time, for instance, even on the Switch by itself, the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection came out a few years ago, including remasters of Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy. It's possible that they were just padding what was admittedly a fairly light game release schedule, being 2020 and the world was still coping with working from home, a very different situation from some others on this list. One example that was a very different circumstance came as a pre-order bonus to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, where you would get the original Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: Link's Adventure, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask all on one disc. It was a weird port job, considering it still had the N64 controls on screen at all times for Ocarina and Majora's, but it was appreciated for people of the time, even if it did have lots of reports of the game crashing pretty often. These are not very common anymore, and even at that time, it was very unusual, maybe just offered because of the negative reception to the initial reveal of Wind Waker. When the Wii came out, there were remakes of several Gamecube games in the "New Play Control" label, allowing you to play Mario Power Tennis with the Wii Remote and Nunchuck, or introducing the preferred method of playing Pikmin 1 and 2 with motion controls. The latter mention actually was such a good fit that it continued on with Pikmin 3, and 4 to a lesser extent (since you can't connect a Wii remote to Switch, and Joy Cons aren't as precise). Moving on, Wii U had a bunch of remakes with Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD leading the charge there, though relatively few actual remakes came to it, mainly because it didn't sell as many units. A more common relation with Wii U was remakes of Wii U games coming to other consoles, which I'll get to here in a minute.

    3DS was especially guilty of the "remakes at the end of it's life" trend, receiving a bunch of games after the Switch was already out. Luigi's Mansion, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valintia (a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, the second FE game for NES), Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn (A remake of a Wii game), Metroid: Samus Returns, Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (which was already playable on the console, using the DS card slot), and the list goes on and on. 3DS had a weird trajectory to begin with though, since Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask both got remakes, along with Star Fox 64. It was a big console for remakes for sure! Wii U's remake cycle began even before the Wii U was finished with its life though. Poochy and Yoshi's Wooly World and Super Mario Maker for 3DS were just slightly changed ports of Wii U titles that had only come out a year or two before. The Wii U era was really short, compared to the life cycle of most consoles, but the Switch has taken so many games from that time and made new life for them. 

    Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has been the best selling game for the Switch since the console released back in 2017, and it was a port of a Wii U game which came out back in 2014. Of course, it's exploded to be about twice as much content as was present in the original game now, thanks to the Deluxe Booster Course pack, but it began as a port of that Wii U game. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Super Mario 3D World, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, Bayonetta 2, New Super Mario Bros. U, Pikmin 3, and more have all come to the Switch, and experienced much better success than they did on the previous console, just because the install base for the Switch is massive. Metroid Prime HD came out last year as a shadowdrop after a Nintendo direct, which was wild, and then Pikmin 1 and 2 both were ported a few months later, which both were very weird and unprecedented moves.  While the Switch is coming to the end of it's life, as I said, we're still getting plenty of games, many of them being remakes of beloved old titles, or new titles from long dormant franchises. In just the past year, we've gotten a remake of Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, and we have a new Mario and Luigi game coming out soon, despite the fact that Alphadream, the developer of all previous games in the series, closed its doors back in 2019. Earlier in the life span of the Switch, we got a remake of Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, and now we're getting an entirely new game in the series based on that artstyle, and it's the first one that you get to play as the titular princess herself. Echoes of Wisdom looks like an interesting new take on the series, and I'm excited to see how it plays out. In a nice bit of symmetry, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was one of the first titles on the Switch, and now, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is going to be one of the last Nintendo-developed games, as a remake of a Wii game.

    It's interesting to look at all of these titles and all of the times that Nintendo has remastered and rereleased these titles, since I don't feel like it's a thing that they do that often. I'm clearly mistaken on that front, but I'm definitely much more nostalgic about a lot of these titles than the ones that are being rereleased on some other platforms, so I treat them with more respect maybe? That's not really fair, I know, but I guess that's just how my brain operates. Maybe it's just the fact that a lot of those ports were already playable on the consoles that they're being rereleased on, which just seems like a silly idea. Thank you for all the good times, Switch! We're drawing to the end of the relevance of this console, but there's still a lot coming before the fat lady sings.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! Do you have a game that you're still hoping will be remastered or rereleased? If so, why is it Kid Icarus: Uprising? That would be an amazing remake to get on a normal controller, since it was always a little weird to play on 3DS, essentially using the touch screen as a right stick to control the targeting reticle. sometimes, it was perfect, but other times it could be just a little bit odd. I hope you're all having a good week, and I'll talk to you again soon! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a casual remake enjoyer, and thanks for all the support!