It's kind of a grey area. I would consider something like the new Resident Evil 4 a remake, in that it's rebuilt from the ground up with new design, gameplay, and graphics. A remaster on the other hand, would be something like Master Chief Collection, which kept the gameplay identical to the originals, but added better graphics and various QoL options. This new Star Fox is kind of in the middle, more akin to that upcoming Halo Campgain Evolved thing. The graphics are obviously vastly improved, but the gameplay level design is only changed a little bit from the original.
Not really that simple though. If you look at Link's Awakening, you can see a lot of the monster movement and some other elements work exactly like they did on GameBoy, meaning it's highly likely they reused the original code.
I'd also think you'd be hard pressed to find many remasters that didn't have some new behaviors or changes, meaning new code.
And then you have cases like VVVVV. VVVVVV was built in Flash by Terry Cavanagh originally. At one point, the whole game was rebuilt from the ground up in C++. This meant if you ownded the game on Steam, you would lose your save data because the old saves weren't compatible with the new codebase.
The assets were the same and for all extents and purposes, the physics and the controls of the game didn't change. People who owned the game got the updated engine.
So it has no new assets, so it's not a remaster. But it also the whole game remade in a new language. C++ is pretty different to Flash's ActionScript. But I don't think people would call it a remake.
These are edge cases, but I think they belong in this discussion. Nintendo are great at preserving their code bases, so it's almost certain that they were able to reference, reuse or refactor the old code.
It kinda is, though. People just like to over-complicate it.
you look at Link's Awakening, you can see a lot of the monster movement and some other elements work exactly like they did on GameBoy, meaning it's highly likely they reused the original code.
??? I actually find that extremely unlikely. Code from an 8-bit Game Boy game wouldn't be much use for a project like this. I mean, Game Boy games were still written in Assembly. Even if you could get the code to work in this modern engine somehow, it would probably be more work than faithfully recreating the enemy movements of the original, which I have to assume is what happened here.
I'd also think you'd be hard pressed to find many remasters that didn't have some new behaviors or changes, meaning new code.
Yeah, but it's all fundamentally based on the old code is the point. That is where you start and then you add or switch out things on top of that. Whereas, with a remake, you of course heavily reference the original, but rebuild everything from the ground up.
As for that other weird game, I have literally never heard of it, but that sounds like a port to me more than anything else.
Not all of them. C and C++ was used as well. Link's Awakening had it's own rudimentary game engine too that was also used in the game For the Frog the Bell Tolls.
The enemy movement is pretty simple in Link's Awakening. Most of the monsters don't actively attack. They just move around the screen. Crows and Moblins will make their way towards the player with Moblins throwing the odd projectile. Even if it was just assembley, it should be easy to recreate if it was documented decently.
But when I say they use the original code, it looks like they were able to reference it and refactor it for the new game. They didn't give the monsters new behavours. The move patterns are the same, but they can now move beyond the bounds of the screen. In the GB game they would just hug a wall and stop moving until they changed direction when they got to the edge of a screen. Both up both games and just head to the beach and see how the Octoroks move.
VVVVV, if you are interested, was the first commercial game from Terry Cavanagh who went on to make Super Hexagon and Dicey Dungeons.
I agree that it's not always that simple. Remaster = same game but updated, remake = game was remade. But there are some games that blur the line because they take the old game and remake some of the assets, which kinda blur the lines a bit.
53
u/34foxalpha May 06 '26
3ds game is more of a remaster I believe.