(Chris Pratt NPC voice) "woo-hoo!"
Most art, especially in games, is representative. The style of the original Super Mario RPG is not an accident or a compromise based on underpowered hardware, it is the result of artists working with intent within the confines of their medium. Simply filling in the gaps with more detail doesn’t serve the artist's intent or preserve the style of the original. You may like the way the new version looks - Nintendo has certainly spent a lot of time and money making this the default Mario style over the years - but it’s not authentic to the original and it doesn’t capture the original’s tone or aesthetic at all. All of the strange and dreamlike qualities that made Super Mario RPG unique have been replaced with the blandest, safest version of Mario. The new Super Mario RPG is utterly dripless, and it’s a shame to see such a one-of-a-kind game succumb to the lowest common denominator.
AI generated Mario in 4k is not what the fans want
First off, unironically using “dripless” to describe it is fucking cringe. Second, the writer is clearly letting their memories cloud their judgement. Yaridovich was always silly-looking, they just remember him as being intimidating because they first played the game when they were 7 when someone making a funny face at them would cause them to pee their pants.
I think it looks good.
I hated the fake 3D stuff on the SNES though. There's definitely a certain charm to how grimy the original SMRPG is, but it still looks like garbage on modern displays.
Gotta apply a dozen filters to the display and take your glasses off to emulate that 8" CRT feel
Digitized sprites were never great, though I think Hylics does it pretty well.
Counterpoint: they didn't update the enemy designs to look like modern Mario. The enemies in the game look just as bizarre as the original smrpg. Imo that's a fair compromise.
I think the "dreamlike qualities" the author is talking about being absent are mainly their own sense of wonder as a child no longer being present. Old SMRPG and the new one are extremely similar, the old one just looks grimier for various reasons. This person is just hostile to having the old thing recontextualized in a way that reduces the impact of their nostalgia.
My thoughts when I heard about the remake were, "Oh, cool!" and then, "Wait, why not just play the old one?" That's kind of the problem with remaking a classic. The new art style probably makes it more approachable to people who haven't played it and it's a good game so I'm glad more people will be exposed to it. If you like the original play the original.
The isometric 3D thing that some games like this had did not age well, but the aesthetic--of just about everything Nintendo was doing at the time--was excellent. The new art style is the same kind of Funko Pop-ification that they did to the Link's Awakening remake.
Nintendo fans aren't particularly difficult to please when it comes to graphics so I don't expect too much controversy here compared to say, the GTA remaster.
The new art style is the same kind of Funko Pop-ification that they did to the Link's Awakening remake.
Link's Awakening had a great artstyle and diorama styles in general are cool
Also there is zero comparison between either of these games and the GTA "remaster" that was literally just increasing the resolution and tweaking the lighting for a game where the character models looked like dogshit.
I would argue that the toy cutesy aesthetic worked for the link's awakening remake. I didn't play that remake until this year but they went far with the animations and there are a lot of different characters in that game that are really expressive. I am kinda skeptical about this kinda style for this game bc I feel like the OG SMRPG had more going on compared to the LA GB game.
Maybe it's all subjective but I tldr I think that the LA remake has a stronger direction than this remake aesthetically but we might not be able to know until we see more
I think over the course of writing this comment and reading this thread that I actually don't mind the new aesthetic for SMRPG that much either I just wasn't super impressive by Bowser and Mario specifically when Is saw the trailer I think there's some grit in the original that I think looks cool
The use of angular lines, long shadows, and extreme contrast evokes German Expressionism
lmao what's this guy smoking. The original objectively looked pretty awful standing next to basically any other Mario game that came out around the same time. The sprites are muddy, the animations are limited, the backgrounds don't match the sprites at all and everyone looks like they're floating around - it's an iconic look now with decades of hindsight, but it definitely didn't set a benchmark worth aspiring towards.
I think all game remakes/remasters are received better than live action remakes of animated film. Like, I can't think of a game that's gotten a worse reception
Square Enix had probably re-released games the most number of times. It's getting a bit wacky, all the different versions of early Final Fantasy games floating out there
Recently Dead Space got the better graphics remake by EA and if was pretty well received
I was pretty pumped to see a remake of a game I really loved as a preteen, but then I saw the price tag, and I just can't believe that they wanna charge that for a graphic conversion of the game.
high sea scallywags keep winning 🏴☠️
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