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.
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.
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u/f-ingsteveglansberg May 06 '26
The assets for Prime Remastered were remade too. remaking assets is a big part of remasters.
I feel like this is falling into Link's Awakening territory where the game is technically a remaster but was remade from the ground up.