But as to why people make remakes? Money. Very rarely do we see a remake that actually fixes stuff. WWHD, OoT3D and MM3D are the only remakes I can think of that actually improve the original games significantly. I'd even say the GBA FF1-2 remakes were good, especially if you are a kid who sucks at RPGs and never played the originals.
Pokemon?
Sure, many of the 'improvements' are controversial, but they're definitely more than just ports of the games with updated graphics. Not sure all of them fix issues, though.
In any case, I'm not sure I like either way of doing it that much. Making pixel art, but smoothed out starts to lose the charm of pixel art for me. I kind of like the updated sprite-art version of the first one (can't be bothered to type out those names ), and I like the look of FFI and FFII on GBA, but the others on PSP feel like they're in some sort of middle ground which I don't like. Might be something to do with how separate the background and NPCs look. To me, with exception of the big orange cloud guy (I forget its name), the sprites don't seem to fit with the background, like they've been pasted on, in a way that you just kind of accept with low-res graphics.
However, I don't know why, but I don't really like the chibi style either. Probably oversaturation or just plain ol' taste. But they work better with the background (EDIT: standing on water notwithstanding; sure, it's the same in the SNES, but again, low-bit is more forgiving for whatever reason), so I'd put my vote there (if this were a matter of voting ).
Also, Anthus, if you hadn't said that that was a screenshot from the game, I'd have assumed you put the portrait up over the gameplay, or that this was from an ad or something. Although I've seen that text box issue waay too many times. Looks tacky and also just really lazy. If you've made art assets, you might as well make at least a text box to fit with it - even the Pokemon white tubing would probably work. I'm sure there's some freely available low-res typefaces as well, if you can't make your own.
I should point out, all of these techniques can probably work if you use them right. Best idea I can come up with is comedy, though. Monkey Island 3 has a moment of that.
Speaking of Monkey Island, I do really like the first two games' hand drawn graphical remasters. I prefer low-bit sprites, but that's also just taste. The hand-drawn ones work really well for my taste.
Anyway, those are my kind of rambly and uninformed thoughts.
Edited by klop422, 02 September 2018 - 04:43 PM.