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.

When was the last time you stopped to think about the audio side of video gaming? I don’t mean the Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound, high speed bit rates, frequencies, or codecs, but the way sound is used as both auditory stimulation and gameplay device. Chances are, aside from the obvious rhythm games and a few revolutionary gems like Rez for PlayStation 2, you haven’t seen or played many.

A discussion came up recently about the role of sound in gaming. It’s no secret that the PlayStation 3 allows developers to reach into Hollywood’s bag of tricks. Rob Bridgett, sound designer for Scarface: The World is Yours, discussed this very idea in an article he wrote for Gamasutra entitled “Designing A Next-Gen Game for Sound.” But designing with cinema in mind is as rewarding as it is limited. Though games such as Grand Theft Auto IV will show how powerful current console systems sound capabilities are, there are restrictions; not necessarily in scope or depth but most certainly in the player’s natural ability to fully interact and control those sounds. In these circumstances, sound does not affect the way a game plays, but only how the player enjoys the experience of the game.

We live in a visual society, where higher resolutions and more on screen effects are the norm, and subtle tricks of the trade largely go unnoticed. More often than not, we turn off the audio tracks in our games, either because of the repetitive nature of the sounds presented to us or because we’re marching to the beat of our own drum. Throw on a CD or an MP3 player and away you go. What happens, though, when audio cues not only affect the way you play the game but they’re the only way you can enjoy the game? How immersive will games become then?

Let’s take a trip down memory lane to a time when the Sega Saturn still sat on store shelves; a time when the original PlayStation had not yet decimated all competition as it most surely would years later. In 1997, a little known game named Enemy Zero, which started life on the PS1 but later moved to Saturn, was released. Starring Laura Lewis, of CGI heavy game “D” fame, it took place on the AKI space station after she awoke from a cryogenic sleep. The story borrowed heavily from the Alien series of movies and featured first person corridor sequences and lots of great CGI scenes.

But what set Enemy Zero apart from everything else on the market wasn’t its 3D graphics, which were mediocre at best, or its FMV, which was surprisingly good, but it’s audio. Only by paying attention to mandatory audio cues could the player make his or her way through the game. Like the game’s title suggests, the enemy was invisible but a special device that Laura acquired in the game gave off a high frequency pitch that fluctuated based on the creatures’ proximity and cardinal direction to the player. When the creatures were further away, the device beeped slower but when they were close it became a frantic scramble to figure out exactly how much time you had before they killed you.

Enemy Zero is only one example of audio used in interesting, gameplay oriented ways. Another such title is The City of Metronome by Tarsier Studios AB, which currently as no definitive release date. Pinned as “a unique third person adventure game where sound is your weapon,” Tarsier hopes to distinguish TCoM from other adventure games through the use of audio interaction. By recording sounds, whether natural or simulated, the player, a young train conductor in the city of Metronome, will use the recordings to solve puzzles, fight, and change the mood of the world’s inhabitants. And if the player can’t find a natural sound to use, he can create his own by throwing rocks through windows, shoving bookcases down stairs, among other things, and recording them for future playback.

The push for high quality visual fidelity has driven the audio part of gaming into a limited cinematic space. Not to say that cinematic audio is wrong, but variety truly is the spice of life.

Whatever the case may be, the power of the current machines on the market leave no room for excuses. Audio-based gameplay has advantages in the current climate that it never had before. Maybe with software like the aforementioned The City of Metronome and Rez, which is experiencing a bit of a rebirth on the Xbox 360 thanks to Rez HD, the possibilities of sound oriented gameplay have never been better. Perhaps then gaming will be as interactive as it should’ve been all along, with players using their fingers, eyes, and ears to manipulate and participate in the action.