Is it wrong for fans to remake older games?

I thought about this after learning the outcome of the Chrono Resurrection project a few weeks ago. Despite being relatively four years late to that party, I’m admittedly a huge role-playing fan, and I sharpened my teeth on many Square Co. Ltd. classics on both the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II US, Final Fantasy III US, and Chrono Trigger were staples of my early years, so imagine my excitement regarding a re-imagined Chrono Trigger using an updated 3D engine.

That was the essence of the Chrono Trigger Resurrection project. Back in 2004, a talented group of individuals got together and asked “What would Chrono Trigger look like if updated for the modern PC?” With a custom built 3D engine that “…runs on GameCube, Xbox, and PC…,” the Chrono Resurrection group set out to craft one of the finest looking examples of fan remakes ever conceived, taking ten key sequences from Chrono Trigger and updating them for the modern audience.

Chrono Trigger Resurrection was set in a fully 3D world, with lighting, shadows, fantastic camera work, and the same Chrono Trigger charm that fans of the series have come to expect. But with a project this huge, it’s only a matter of time before it began garnering attention from all over the globe. After all, Chrono Trigger was one of the greatest games for Super Nintendo and one of the most cherished RPG experiences the world over. The fact that a “dream team” of developers, artists, and sound composers crafted it is icing on the cake. How could something this massive be kept secret for long?

With that in mind, the Chrono Trigger Ressurection project was fully underway, but little did they know that the dark cloud of Square Enix Co., Ltd was hovering on the horizon. In September 2004, Square Enix Co., Ltd issued a “Cease and Desist” order and the project was shut down soon after. The team scattered to the proverbial winds but not without strewing their work across the ‘net, sharing everything they’d created, aside from playable code. In that way, all of the team’s hard work would live on as one of the greatest achievements in the name of fan remakes.

But was Square Enix Co., Ltd right in asking the team to cease the project? Was the Chrono Trigger Resurrection team wrong for wanting to recreate ten of the most memorable sequences that Chrono Trigger had to offer? Considering it was non-commercial, with only the Gamecube and Xbox ports being internally playable when all was said and done, was it necessary for Square Enix Co., Ltd to step in?

Forgetting the fact that Square Enix Co., Ltd repackages all of its older content and, besides Final Fantasy III and IV for the Nintendo DS, leaves virtually the original experience untouched, what would lead the company to call for the cancellation of Chrono Trigger Resurrection? Would it be that Square Enix Co., Ltd wants to redo Chrono Trigger as a 3D world all their own? That would be nice, but it’s unlikely.

There’s a fair amount of politics surrounding anything Chrono related. The primary developers associated with the project have either left Square Enix Co., Ltd. or work under their own companies in association with Square Enix. You could fill a landfill with the amount of paperwork it would take for a re-imaging to get underway. Even with tidbits dropping once every few years concerning a possible Chrono Trigger sequel (Chrono Cross is widely considered an extension of the universe and not a true sequel to Chrono Trigger), nothing has yet to materialize. The best fans could hope for is an update of the holy grail of all things Chrono.

But it goes beyond Square Enix Co., Ltd. As the industry pushes forward with better technology, it’s becoming more expensive to craft the AAA experiences core gamers require. If a company like Square Enix Co., Ltd wants to re-release a previous franchise, then it’s easier, and less expensive, to re-release it with all previous assets intact than to re-imagine these assets. If Square Enix Co., Ltd. wanted to re-imagine those assets, then they would turn to portable systems. A redone Chrono Trigger, or any other popular franchise that has yet to find life in the latest generation of consoles, would have to be on the PlayStation Portable or Nintendo DS.

That’s assuming that major corporations want to attempt a repackaging. More often than not, companies cancel intellectual properties that don’t succeed. We have only to look at Clover Studios, which was forced to shutdown, and Capcom for an example of that. Though Okami was finally released on the Wii, the idea of a sequel or a higher resolution re-imagining for the PlayStation 3 is virtually out of the question. And what if fans wanted to create a non-commercial remake of it for PC? Capcom would most likely issue a cease and desist order, even though it would be highly unlikely that the release of the non-commercial fan remake would hurt Capcom’s potential sales for a true, developer sponsored canon remake.

Where does that leave us then? It leaves us with IPs that fans create messageboards about, trade valiant tales of victory over, and write fan fiction about that have yet to get either sequels or developer remakes. When fans wish to continue the adventure with characters that they’ve grown to love, where else is there to go?

So are fans at fault for wanting to create remakes of groundbreaking game series? If major corporations won’t do it, and as the physical game machines and physical media of the respective games dwindle in number as time goes by, are we supposed to forget these experiences? Are cease and desist orders really warranted when all fans wish to do is play the games that brought them into the industry to begin with? We’ll never know, honestly, but that still doesn’t stop us from wondering what Crono would look like with a nice splash of normal mapping and the processing power of a quad-core CPU behind him.

Hello fellow Total PlayStation readers and welcome to what I hope is the first of many weekly blogs about all things gaming, Blu-ray, and Sony related!

You may know me as Senior News Editor Warren Stallworth, the same guy who brings you daily updates on all things PlayStation. Well, it’s a little known fact that I’m also something of a Community Manager around these parts and part of that community management is putting a little something on this here blog page every now and again. We’re shooting for weekly updates, Saturdays being the most opportune day of the week to jot down some thoughts. I plan to stick to that schedule and give you guys something to read while you’re busy blasting, racing, or questing with each other on the weekends.

I wanted to open with a little something about myself but I figured that would be boring to read. I’m just like any other gamer out there: started gaming at a young age with my console of choice (Nintendo Entertainment System was my drug back then), toyed a little bit with online gaming before the MMORPG explosion, and fell in love with Sony around the middle of the PlayStation 2 era. I like to write (obviously) and I like gaming, so I figured I’d try combining the two and that led me to TPS.

Now that introductions are out of the way, we can get to the real meat of this entry: the future of console gaming. I’ve recently been having discussions with fellow gamers about how much gaming they get to do in a typical week. My peers are all over the age of twenty-five, so we have families and other obligations, and many times gaming gets pushed into the background. Some of my peers haven’t played their consoles (old gen or new gen) in weeks or even months, while others get an hour or two a day. Since graduating college or high school, none of us have been able to do marathon sessions like the old days.

As for myself, I play games for review. With my busy schedule, I typically play one game a week and unwind with a little World of Warcraft on the weekends. I still don’t put in any marathon sessions and I have a back catalog of games that truly are a closest of shame. I’d rather not think about all of the RPGs I’ve started and never finished.

Allow me to go off on a tangent for a moment; what I have to say is relevant to our discussion, I promise. It’s no secret that Sony won the next generation format war. Blu-ray is king… well, if you don’t count DVD. This works in Sony’s favor, since HD TV adoption rates will pick up sometime after February 2009 and folks will be looking for a fancy HD Disc player to hook up to their new fancy HD TV. Granted, if the PlayStation 3 doesn’t come down in price, that won’t be flying off the shelves the way PS2 did for those folks who wanted a DVD player, but at least Sony will do well for themselves with standard Blu-ray players. But therein lies the problem… if PS3 isn’t the AV equipment of choice for next generation players, will the mass market snatch it up the way hardcore gamers do?

Why is this important? Because, as a mobile society, we’re spending less and less time in front of our TVs and more time on the road with friends, commuting to work, or traveling. We’ve traded in our land lines for cellphones and our desktop computers for iPhones and laptops. Wouldn’t that also mean we’ve traded in our consoles for portable devices? Maybe.

A quick glance at Japanese sales charts quickly reveals the reality of that statement: Nintendo DS has sold more in its short lifetime than PlayStation 2 sold over the course of its seven years. The greatest console system of all-time was beaten out by a portable system that still hasn’t run out of steam. People are getting their gaming fix in smaller, bit sized pieces. Granted, that’s Japan and not the United States or Europe, but when the North American NPD’s reveal that Nintendo DS handily sells upwards of 500k a month during the slow season, something has to be up.

What of the PlayStation Portable? It’s selling. In fact, it’s picked up steam in Japan as the multimedia player of choice. People aren’t spending time in their homes watching media, they’re on the subway or out and about doing it instead, which means they aren’t buying PlayStation 3’s to either watch or play that media.

There are other factors involved and we would be here all day if I listed them. But portable gaming is becoming more important than console gaming. I believe this generation, regardless of how any company wants to paint it, will be far smaller than either of the previous two. To the vast majority, consoles just aren’t that important anymore.

But of course console gaming isn’t dead and that’s not what this is about. Did movie theaters die when home video tapes were introduced? No. But it changed the way Hollywood pushed film. More movies are either going straight to video or spending less time at the box office so the studios can capitalize on DVD sales. It doesn’t marginalize the box office, but it makes it seem a little less important than it was in our grandparents time.

So I pose a question to all of you: how often do you play your console systems and how often do you play your portables? Let us know and have a pleasant weekend!