The new “Spy Hunter” looks great, and it’s supposed to stay true to the original arcade version in the sense that you have to do it all in one game. I gotta pick this up. If you’ve played it already, what did you think?
What about other remakes? They are doing a new “Metroid” for Gamecube, and I hope they do a “Bionic Commando” remake as well. I think they did a “Missile Command”, I know they did an “Asteroids”, and I’m pretty sure they made a new “Frogger” game recently.
Reviews anyone?
Does one need to post spoiler warnings for video games???
I was a huge fan of the original SpyHunter. I played the first level of the new one at the store the other day. I wasn’t impressed. Granted there may have been control features I didn’t know about but I didn’t find the game very fun. YMMV
I’ve played it a bit. It’s rather cool. I’m somewhat dubious about the replayability of the game, though. Even though it was fun as all heck, I doubt it’s something you’ll be playing a year or two after you get it.
The first Frogger remake from Hasbro was horrible – the camera was poorly programmed and too low, and the only way to know where you had to go (and to complete the levels in time) was to explore the area and die repeatedly in the process. The sequel is much better and is recommended.
Bionic Commando was remade for the Gameboy Color a few years back. Not bad, though not quite the same.
The Asteroids remake was pretty good, though IMO it breaks up the rhythm a bit to show an intermission between levels. The PlayStation version is the best one I’ve played, and the Gameboy one should be avoided.
The Atari Jaguar game console also had a number of remakes. Tempest 2000 is an absolute classic; it got ported to the Saturn and PlayStation, but those versions didn’t have the same manic speed and energy of the Jaguar game. And IMO, Missile Command 3D was an inspired upgrade of the original game – I loved moving from base to base and shooting down the incoming missiles in 3D…
The Frogger remakes were pretty good. Missile Command didn’t thrill me, I liked the “Classic” mode of it best, and that’s just a direct copy of the original (albeit with newer graphics)
Battlezone deserves an honorable mention here – while it had practically nothing in common with the original game, that’s a good thing (the original was crap) and while the new BZ wasn’t very good, it wasn’t terrible either.
But in my opinion, the best current remake of an old game is Sinistar: Unleashed. It’s both faithful to the original in basic gameplay, yet new and improved enough to still be interesting and it’s still really damned hard if you crank the difficulty up.
I’m surprised noone’s remade Defender or Joust yet. Joust would be a blast played first-person from the back of the ostrich
Chalk me up as a fan of the old-school Spy Hunter.
The new version…eh… I don’t know. Seems pretty darn nice graphically (I love the “bullet-time” transformation sequence to the jetboat) but I just dunno about the gameplay.
I can’t tell all that much about the sound/music because I’ve only played the demo at Target, and the sound was turned way down in favor of the XBox and Gamecube machines.
I wish someone would redo classics like Berserk or Frenzy. They’d have a field day with Evil Otto.
And I sure wouldn’t kick a remake of the old Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator out of bed, neither.
I’d be in heaven if I could find a working sit-down version of that game!
Defender 2000, for the Atari Jaguar. And I hear Midway is working on a first-person spaceship-shooter Defender remake.
Atari had plans for that as well – “Joust 3D,” with first-person polygonal graphics – but the company crumbled before it was finished. I’m not entirely sure if such a game would’ve worked.
