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A Look N-Side: Polishing Up History

Disclaimer: The proceeding article is editorial content. The views expressed are those of the author and do not neccessarily reflect the official position of the Advanced Media Network.

Think back to your childhood. Do you remember the first time you played Super Mario Bros.? Remember how amazing it felt, and what a fresh experience it was back in the 80's? Most of us do. It was a landmark moment in the life of any gamer For its time, it featured some groundbreaking visuals and gave birth to one of gaming's greatest genres that still continues to grow and evolve even now. The fact remains that even to this very day, classic gaming culture remains very strong in all parts of the world. For an example, in Japan the original Super Mario Bros. was released in its original unabridged form for the GBA as part of the Famicom Mini series for a second time where it hit the top 20 best selling list and managed to maintain first place for an amazing three weeks stright. First place for an emulation of a twenty year-old game with no enhancements. That alone shows just how important these classic games are in the minds of gamers. They are the fundamentals and foundation of what we play today. They set the standard that successors have had to live up to.

Now, did you own Super Mario All-Stars for the SNES in 1993? It took the entire Super Mario Brothers series and gave them visual overhauls to bring them up to modern standards. Underneath was the exact same engine and physics. Even the double jump power-up bug and infinite 1-Up stair tricks still worked. They were essentially the same game, but with fresh graphics and amazing sound and music quality for the time. Those were the only differences, but boy oh boy, what a difference it made to the experience.

Adding a little spice to the visuals never hurt anything.

That was only the difference between the now miniscule power of an 8-bit and 16-bit machine. It made the game feel like a whole new experience even though you already knew every nook and cranny of the levels. Graphics matter. They have the power to draw us into the experience and make us feel like were a part of the game's world. They dont make a game fun by any means, but they sure do make us feel like a part of it and make it feel more alive. That is their strongest power.

Flash forward to 2005. Nintendo has dropped many clues so far about one of the most unexpected, but highly welcome abilities of their new console, code named Nintendo Revolution. Nintendo not only wants to offer their classic game library for people to purchase online, but they also want to give us the option to reinvent the way we perceive them. Game Boy Advance gave us the ability to take many of them in their original forms and put them in our pocket, but Revolution gives us the ability to see this classic library of games in a whole new light, to put it lightly. Nintendo has given us obvious hints about how they not only want to offer the original games on their service, but also offer brand new remake/enhancement versions of the games; classic games, given the Super Mario All-Stars treatment, but this time with the full power of the Revolution at their disposal.

Imagine downloading a fresh remake/enhancement of a timeless game such as Super Metroid to your Revolution. Imagine playing Super Metroid, but now with hand-drawn animated sprites or new 3D renders, but with the exact same gameplay as before. Imagine possibly finding a new area here and there, or secret rooms you dont remember. New secrets could be added, much in the way GBA ports and upgrades have been handled. With Revolution, Nintendo could go over the top thanks to the hardwares capabilities. Imagine hearing the haunting sounds of Brinstar, but with all new audio effects and sample filters splitting the song into Dolby 7.1 Surround letting you hear every single water drop, every resonance on every drum beat, and every echo of the endless caves deep below the surface of Planet Zebes.

How about we look at Super Mario Bros. 3 as an example. Can you imagine walking around Water World, with the original level layout you know all too well, but this time the character sprites are hand-drawn, the water youre swimming in is rendered in polygons to let you see the endless ocean floor and coral spanning miles into the distance with schools of fish and patches of seaweed as far as they eye can see? Or maybe we could consider Donkey Kong Country and its gorgeous pre-rendered graphics. Heres a machine that could finally render all of that in real time and bring one of the most atmospheric games of all-time to an all new level of interactivity. Thats the potential that these classic remakes have.

Of course that is all speculation, and there is no way to know just what enhancements Nintendo has in store for us, but it is an example of the potential that the Nintendo Revolution can offer hardcore gamers. A chance to see the games they grew up with be presented in a whole new light. Its a chance for us to revisit our childhoods in a remastered form, and its a chance for people who never got the chance to experience those games to see them for the first time. The only difference is, they would get to see those games with modern visuals and modern sound, but with the exact same classic game play we experienced. There would be no judging it based on its graphics, because those visuals would have been brought up to par. Uninformed gamers would have no way of saying that the outdated visuals make the game no fun to play. Only after they are done playing might they find out the game they were playing was possibly over fifteen years old, and if they knew before going in, it sure wouldn't look it. This is a chance for Nintendo to broaden the scope of gamers and show them that classic gameplay truly is timeless and independant of technology; rather, technology is the tool used to enhance the experience. This is a chance for Nintendo to be able to show everyone that one machine can not only provide brand new games that expand the way we perceive interactivity, but can also provide 25 years of classics that look like they were just born yesterday. Even something as simple as Dr. Mario could look brand new with a fresh coat of paint. Make a 3D jar, and some new character models for the germs, and bingo. Youve got yourself a fresh experience. Its such a simple concept in practice. Nintendo doesnt have to spend a lot of development time on these updates. They simply need to create new visuals, new sprites/3D models and such, then overlay them on the already-existing engines and level designs. They dont even have to rewrite any of the music created past the SNES era. Simply reprocess it to take advantage of the new technology, audio filters, and Dolby Surround Sound options to make it crisper and more lively than every before.

Theres even more they could offer with the download service. Imagine if Nintendo were to offer new level sets of challenges for their games. Remember the E-Cards that were offered for Super Mario Bros. 3 on Game Boy Advance in 2004? The E-Reader was an unmitigated bomb, but the level cards were an ingenious attempt to bring new life to a classic game. They sold new Nintendo-designed levels and powerups for the game in collectable E-Card packs at stores. You bought the cards, scanned in what you wanted, then used them in the game. You could even use powerups from other games such as Super Mario Worlds feather, and P-Switch. There was even the ability to throw vegetables from Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA version). The only problem is that they were offering the optional new levels and powerups on an archaic medium- paper. Now, imagine if these types of add-ons were possible on a modern download service such as Revolutions? The expansion possibilities here are endless: new levels, new characters, new items, and new racetrack expansions, new everything. While Nintendo is offering new forms of gameplay to push people to new gameplay frontiers with the advanced capabilities of this machine, they can also be offering new content for their classic games to make them feel brand new again. If sold for cheap (like the E-Cards were), this would have the potential to be massive for fans, and for Nintendos pocketbook.

Now, we covered the NES and SNES generations and how Nintendo could utilize them to their full advantage, but what about Nintendo 64? Let's look at the DS to answer that one. When DS launch last year, Nintendo launched it with a re-built Super Mario 64 to show off the graphical potential of the hardware. This wasn't the Mario 64 we knew- rather, a rebuild. The music was brought over intact (unlike many GBA ports), the controls were preserved as closely as possible with the materials at hand, but the visuals were fully overhauled. The DS is obviously more powerful then the N64 by a long shot, so for the frist time, Mario 64 ran at a steady 45 frames per second. They also managed to remove the blurriness from the textures and swapped all the "built from scratch" character models from the original for the now standard and accurate character model set used in all modern games. As a result, the game looked teriffic. Now, what if Revolution could kick that up a notch? Imagine playing Super Mario 64 or Mario Kart 64 with visuals beyond that of the Gamecube. At the very least imagine playing them at a full 60 FPS. What if Nintendo went and added free online play for many of the classic multiplayer titles such as F-Zero X, Goldeneye, and Mario Party to go along with those revamped visuals? The possibilities here are staggering. While they're at it, why not recreate some of the classic Virtual Boy games such as Wario Land and Mario Clash in true polygonal 3D? The games were teriffic in their own right, but no one got to enjoy them for fear of making their eyes bleed.

Nintendo should also keep in mind the mistakes that Microsoft made with their first iteration of the Xbox Live Arcade, the only other service in existence similar to this. When people first boot up their Xbox 360, they are in for a rude awakening. Only some of the content they bought for the original Xbox will function on the 360 at all, with many games not likely to ever see compatibility on the new console. How do you optimize Pac-Man and Gauntlet for High Definition? Nintendo has to make absolutely sure that their service uses a simple and universal format they will continue to support in future consoles or handhelds so that once you buy this online copy of a game, it is yours to keep and use on their next machine. No gamer can afford to restock his Nintendo library every generation and still be moving forward with all the new titles available. Microsoft made people do that very thing, but fortunately for them, the first iteration of Live Arcade was more of a test rather than a full fledged system selling feature, which is exactly what Nintendos service has the potential to be. They are allowing players the option of saving their purchased games to industry standard removable SD cards and encrypting them for piracy protection so we can even back up our purchased software on our computers via CDs and such. They need to also make sure we can transfer out libraries to the Revolutions successor as well.

Nintendos online service is free, but their download service is not. These immortal classics will require a small fee to cover the work that will go into revamping them, and to cover the costs of their Wi-Fi gaming service that they are providing us free of charge. Now, any mature gamer past the age of 16 is likely to have a Pay Pal account at their disposal to take care of the small fees these games will require, and really, anyone should be able to afford them, but that doesnt mean they will actually be able to buy them. There is one way Nintendo could expand their user base even farther. Create a system where players who are younger or players who dont have the ability to handle online transactions can be able to purchase software without a bank account number. Nintendo could offer pre-paid cards with a set about of spendable cash pre-written on them that people could buy at stores. It could function much in the same way that people sign up for their Xbox Live accounts. Just buy a card with a prepaid amount (say, $25, $50, or more) and then type a code on the back of the card into the activation box online and spend, spend, spend. This way, there would be options available for kids who cant handle online transactions, or who have parents that dont want to bother with the trouble of buying games online as well as the people who just dont shop online either for paranoid reasons, or because they just dont know how. It would also work great for gifts. Just get someone a card and let them purchase the games they want online.

We know so little about this machine, yet its already capable of so many different and highly varied opportunities. It can bring in new gamers via simple to use but highly intuitive experiences. It can invigorate the hardcore gamer who wants something new that changes gaming entirely. It can give the classic/retro gamer something to make them feel young again and see their childhoods in a whole new light, and it can give gamers who retired before the dawn of 3D something to re-ignite their passion for gaming. The Nintendo Revolution holds more potential than probably any other video game console in history. Now we just sit back and wait to see if Nintendo uses that sexy little iPod-white box to its full potential.

Lucas DeWoody is an editorial columnist for AMN, as well as one of the most in-depth industry historians in online journalism. His articles focus on a different franchise or facet of the industry every month.