Thursday, June 17, 2010

News: Nintendo Becomes Remake King

Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals Various

I bet you were hoping for a screenshot from the Goldeneye remake, weren't you? Weren't you?! Well, since that's what everyone's buzzing about and because I'm an ornery old cuss that happens to like the Lufia series better than Goldeneye (that's right!), you get a picture of a whiny elf girl talking in Japanese instead. Or one of them there foreign languages, anyway.

I tend to automatically tune out all the E3 shenanigans that come my way, mostly because it's pretty depressing hearing everyone salivate over all the new, shiny toys that I won't get to play with until several years after they get released. I just can't get excited about stuff that's so far out of my reach that it takes the light emanating from that stuff at least a thousand years to reach my position in the video gaming universe.

But IGN and Nintendo are starting to school me rather harshly that if there was any year an old school gamer like me should be paying attention to that big old expo, it's most definitely this year. The Starfox 64 remake that I talked about yesterday really should have tipped me off on what was happening, but I'm kind of slow on the uptake. Along with developing all new installments in several of their oldest and most vaunted series, Nintendo is also working on a nice little stable of remakes, updates, and ports of old games as well.

Besides the aforementioned Starfox, there's the aforementioned Goldeneye do over for the Wii that's on everyone's minds right now since it sold roughly 10 billion copies and everyone on Earth and every other inhabited planet in the entire universe would gladly bend themselves over and allow the N64 James Bond classic to lavish their orifices with whatever it has that passes for an enormous penis. For those of you who couldn't penetrate that horrifically tortured metaphor, it means that people really really liked the original game and are apparently very excited about its upcoming remake.

And why shouldn't they be? Even though I wasn't as completely wowed by it as everyone else, even I could see that it was a pretty well constructed and definitely fun and entertaining game. Further, they're replacing ol' Pierce Brosnan with newest and coolest Bond actor Daniel Craig, updating all the graphics to insanely gorgeous levels, and adding new gameplay mechanics that will, amongst other things, emphasize stealth even more than the original did. There doesn't seem to be much reason not to be excited. I mean, look at this:

GoldenEye 007 Screenshot

Seriously. That's just pretty. (via IGN)

But now that I've pandered to the masses, I'd like to get all of my fellow old school RPG players to please turn their attention to the front of the class, because Nintendo is working on a remake of Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals to be called Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals and to be released on the DS. Now, there are going to be changes, of course, as there are with virtually every remake ever remade (the battle system, for example, is going to be action RPG rather than turn-based RPG style), but apparently the characters, storyline, and the like are going to be kept intact. Which is cool, because the Lufia series has always run some pretty good storylines with pretty good writing and characterization.

And I gotta say, it sure looks like they aren't going to be skimming on the graphics for this one.

Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals Screenshot

Hopefully this is just the start of a revitalization of the entire series, which I figure is most likely the case since they're starting with the first game chronologically instead of just doing Lufia & the Fortress of Doom right off the bat. While Lufia may not hold quite the same obsessive shrine-like spot in my shriveled black heart that Final Fantasy occupies, I still hold it in very high regard and wouldn't mind seeing more extra pretty versions of it gracing the television and/or DS screens of the world. (via IGN)

Man, I'm starting this whole "hard-hitting old school gaming reporter" bit off right on IGN's teat, aren't I? I might need to think about looking into some other gaming news sites unless I start getting some of those sweet IGN bucks coming my way.

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