Topic: Why are some people calling Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door a remaster?

Remake or Remastered or Whatever it called, we got The Best of Both Worlds.

@jedgamesguy Final Fantasy 7 Remake isn't a Remake. It's an entirely different game from the original. A Remake is the original game made from the ground up, with the story and gameplay mostly left in-tact. FF7 Remake is a literal sequel to the original game.

Agree strongly about this, Nintendo has a very unorthodox way of 'remaking' their games, and TTYD is no exception to this style. They've remade M&L: Superstar Saga, Bowser's Inside Story, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask and Link's Awakening to this degree, and those are the tip of the iceberg. They're 1:1 adaptations but have changes across the board, both over and under the hood that tend to confuse people loads.

I don't know why Nintendo's marketing this game as a remake of TTYD, because it's not, at least not in the conventional sense. It's the exact same story underneath, probably word for word. But this game isn't a barebones remaster either, it's obvious the game's gotten a decent facelift and some extra story stuff to boot. It's probably for the best we use the 'remakester' term since it's how we'd describe almost all of Nintendo's 'remake' projects, probably with the exception of Famicom Detective Club lmao.

@jedgamesguy If you are changing the story and gameplay completely that is barely a remake and more of a new game or even a sequel. Square has confused a lot of people on the term of what a remake is, because a remake is literally just a game returning, except built from the ground up. That’s what TTYD is. Majority of companies know what a remake is but Square Enix for some reason seems to have a different internal definition, probably partially to give the game a selling point instead of ‘Final Fantasy 7 2’ or ‘Final Fantasy 7 Retold’.

Also TTYD just in 2 and a half minutes of footage we saw script changes, like Frankly saying a quote Goombella said in the original, Bowser giving a different insult, Goombella being ‘A Junior’ instead of just ‘A student’, and that’s just based off the little we’ve seen. This by all means is a remake and seemingly even more ambitious than majority of other Nintendo remakes.

@VoidofLight Yeah Final Fantasy seems to be confusing some people on what a remake actually is, but I feel like almost any other company would say a remake is the game being rebuilt from the ground up, whether it be very faithful (Super Mario RPG, Link’s Awakening, HG/SS, TTYD) or not very faithful (Like Final Fantasy, I feel like it could be too different to be called a remake though, maybe a retelling/reimagining would be better descriptors than remake)

Things like that sound more like re-localization rather than actually changing the original script. Not saying the game isn't a remake, but those type of minor language/translation issues are things I would also expect in a good remaster.

I feel like Final Fantasy 7 remake is closer to the definition of remake that movies use — e.g. take the approximate same plot, perhaps some of the same dialogue, and otherwise massively change everything.

@FishyS Yeah a lot of localization will be going on with this game, it’ll probably be most similar to the American localization if I had to guess.

Honestly I don’t watch many movies, but I do know about some Live Action Remakes of Disney movies (Lion King, Aladdin) and they stay very faithful to the originals, while looking completely different and some script changes, while keeping the most important stuff and even small details the same. That is similar to what TTYD is doing, except it’s easier to stay true to the original in a video game compared to a movie (especially from 2d animation to live action)

@PikminMarioKirby yeah, the disney live action things are not really remakes, just un-cartoon-ifications. Some movie remakes are barely recognizable. The 1990s Titanic movie compared to the 1950s movie for example — same setting, some same dialogue, basically nothing else the same. Or the 80 remakes of movies like King Kong — pretty much the monster and general concept are the only parts which remain the same. I suppose you could call those 'reboots' rather than remakes but that word isn't used much except for long series.

The main problem with this discussion is that there really are not universally agreed upon definitions of all these terms. Really what we care about is what bits stayed the same and what bits were changed or improved; the word is just a very nonspecific approximation to the info we want.

@FishyS Yeah a lot of people have had different definitions for it. I feel like in gaming it has always just been ‘if it’s just the original with improvements it’s a remaster’ and ‘if it’s built from ground up it’s a remake’, so TTYD falls more under remake than remaster.

@PikminMarioKirby
I think it's better called Remastered PLUS.
Remastered Plus is basically remastered from old game, still look same as old games but added with new features or completely changed from old games and it made both of version are completely different games.
Let's say example of Remastered PLUS such as FF X/X-2, FF XII The Zodiac Age, FF Tactics PSP, Go Vacation Switch version, Miitopia Switch version, Monster Hunter Stories 1, etc.

@Anti-Matter I don't know/haven't played those games, so not sure if it's on the same level as TTYD. I'm not sure about the others you listed but Thousand-Year Door is pretty much remade as a new project from what we know, just a very faithful remake.

@FishyS Honestly I don't really care if it was a remake. They call it one and it looks like one, so I'm gonna assume it is one, but if hypothetically they just ported the game for full price I wouldn't have been mad, the game is so good that even a port would be worth it. Glad to see they're putting a lot of extra effort into bringing it back though!

.... ish, it depends

Sometimes they'll take the original tapes/film and get a higher quality transfer out of it. Sometimes they'll change the EQ or colour grading of it. Sometimes they'll make edits or remix it. Sometimes extend the content by add things that used to not be there. Sometimes they'll outright change things (see Star Wars). There are even times when a release has been entirely remade although, admittedly, that's not very common

There are even cases where the newer versions are made with techniques we more often see in gaming. Think about the 4K versions of old Pixar movies for example, those were mostly just re-rendered at a higher resolution. There are even cases where a 4K release have, controversially, used AI upscaling (I'm looking at you James Cameron)

... but whatever the process is fundamentally the result, whatever the media, is largely the same. You take some content and bring it to new medium so people can appreciate it in a new light. And it doesn't matter what the process is at the end of the day there are only three things that matter:

1. How accessible is the original content without this new release
2. How much does the original content hold up
3. How much does this new version improve the original

In the case of TTYD it's
1. Not very (you need to get a GC/Wii, controller, memory card and a copy of the game or sail the seas)
2. It's Paper Mario, the artstyle is timeless, it holds up very well
3. From what I've seen quite a bit. Wide aspect, clean output, improved lighting, improved cutscenes etc

@skywake Yeah original TTYD holds up insanely well, it’s still impressive today.

New TTYD also looks insanely good, some of the best graphics for Switch. Reflections and lighting were done very well. I can’t say for sure but some of the new cutscenes even look pre-rendered, especially the intro.

This game is super hard to get, and getting a remake that’ll be portable for about or less than half of the price of the original is insane. Glad they’ll make this available for more people to experience this masterpiece, and people like me that will go on this adventure again

I've not played either of those, but I'll just say that it's my view that a commercial product targeting millions will tend to err towards using simple terms in their marketing (which includes a title) over anything that risks bogging people down in technical jargon.

I.e. just because they call it that, doesn't make it so.

I expect both of those examples are actually remakesters rather than remakes, and the use of the original title only supports my view on that.

@gcunit I haven't played them either but from what I know about them they're very much not just remakesters, they essentially took the basic concepts and characters from the originals and made completely new games out of them. Personally I'd say those examples are a special case as most video game remakes don't do that, and a remake can still be a remake even if it's fundamentally the same as the original as long as it's rebuilt from the ground up, which TTYD apparently is. But the main thing this thread has shown is that there's no universally agreed-upon definition for these terms so it doesn't really matter what people call it.

@Dogorilla
In other words, I called it Remastered Plus.
Remastered Plus was like FF XII TZA case which taking the International version from PS2 but added with more new features. And if you compared original FF XII on PS2 with FF XII TZA, both of them are completely different games despite still have same storyline.
Same case as Miitopia on 3DS and Switch.
Switch version not just only prettier, but also have new features that wasn't available on 3DS version, the Horse and makeover.
I will call it Remasteted Plus for any games which got prettier graphics but have different gameplay features.

@Anti-Matter That seems like a reasonable convention. I suppose the more confusing cases are ones like Luigi's Mansion 3DS, which technically is a remake in that the models were fully remade, but it's still very similar to the original game despite having a few new features so some people would probably be inclined to call it a remaster. TTYD might be a similar case to that.

I've made a decision: instead of getting the remake at launch, I'm going to do something similar 20 years ago with the original and wait until my birthday.

@card-crunch78 Cool! Yeah I pre-ordered it on eShop the day it was available on there lol, the most hyped I've ever been for a new video game, even though I played the original (the game is just that good in my opinion)