What Does "Remake" Mean In 2026?

Welcome back to Remastered. This week, I’m chiming in on the discourse surrounding The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s Nintendo Switch 2 remake. You can also expect a roundup of the retro gaming news I missed, including recaps of relevant announcements from the latest State of Play and Nintendo Directs.

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There's No Right Way To Make A Remake

We finally got an extended look at The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s remake during a dedicated Nintendo Direct for the franchise earlier this week, and opinions are split. The remake introduces a radically different, textured art style for the Nintendo 64 classic and tweaks the gameplay in a few ways to make the experience feel more modern (IGN identified a whopping 40 of them). 

As Series producer Eiji Aonuma aptly put it in the Direct, Nintendo was “focused on detail with this remake.” Yet there’s division of opinion on what Nintendo decided to pour detail into. Seeing this discourse has made me reflect on the wildly different expectations that different players have for remakes. There’s no one “correct” way to handle a remake, because each remake exists somewhere different on a spectrum with a slightly different interpretation of what being a remake means.

My expectations were low heading into Ocarina of Time’s gameplay reveal, considering Nintendo’s recent track record with remakes. While the Nintendo Switch remakes of Super Mario RPG and Star Fox aren’t bad by any means, they’ve played things quite safe from a content perspective. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to see not just the complete visual overhaul of this remake, but that Nintendo was willing to change the game in small yet important ways, like by adding a jump button.

That's also why I was a bit confused to see how divisive the reveal was. Online, I tend to see people getting very tired of remakes that teeter on the edge of simply being remasters. Yet, the bold swings of the Ocarina of Time remake made aren’t jibing with all fans. That leads me to believe that a lot of the smokeshow around video game remake discussions obfuscates the reality that there are so many different ways to bring a classic back.

The simplest route is the basic visual overhaul meant to make a game look more impressive on newer hardware. Think Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for Nintendo Switch, Until Dawn for PS5, or Epic Mickey: Rebrushed. Personally, these remakes are the least interesting, but they can serve the critical purpose of reintroducing developers and players to a classic franchise they might have forgotten. 

Jason Schreier has an excellent video discussing why developers create remakes. The existence of these more basic, seemingly unnecessary remakes becomes more understandable after watching it.

On the other end of the spectrum are remakes that completely transform the classics they are based on. The Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy is the most obvious example of this. Those games aren’t really remakes, but reinterpretations of the Final Fantasy VII universe and its themes through a modern AAA lens. I’d also include remakes that substantially change the gameplay perspective or narrative in this group. 

Capcom also helped set the standard for this with its Resident Evil remakes, which other studios learned from while developing remakes for series like Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark, and Dead Space. Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis also looks and plays more like a modern AAA action-adventure game than the original Tomb Raider. Whereas that first category of remakes can appear like just elevated remasters, these remakes are full-on reimaginings.

Ocarina of Time’s remake finds itself somewhere in the middle alongside the likes of Rayman Legends Retold, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, and Halo: Campaign Evolved. Aesthetically, all of these remakes are quite different from their predecessors, and some even add new content or gameplay tweaks that weren’t in the original. When the dust settles, though, they still resemble the originals they are based on. 

I enjoy remakes most when they are in that middle area of the spectrum. If I’m revisiting a game I love, I can recognize what I’m playing and become invested in all the smaller ways the developers changed or improved upon the original. If it’s for something I never played, I can still feel like I’m experiencing a classic rather than a reimagining of what was offered.

I played Ocarina of Time on Wii as a kid but never beat it. When I play Ocarina of Time, I think I’ll find novelty in revisiting it more than I would have with a remake that simply gave Hyrule a visual upgrade or one that entirely reimagined the game. I look forward to finding all the more textured environments in this world, exploring corners of Castle Town I couldn’t get to before, discovering where sprinting and jumping can now get me, and maybe even humming a bit into my Switch to start playing an ocarina melody. 

Yet, it looks like I will still be able to feel as if I’m playing the original, just now with the skill and wherewithal to actually roll credits on it for the first time. I’m not telling you to anticipate this new version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as much as me, but I hope that more people can keep an open mind about the spectrum of remakes.

Not every remake is going to be for you as a player, but it is going to be for someone. What matters most to me is that the developers have a clear vision of their wants for a remake, and execute upon that. I might not agree with every choice they make, but the game industry is better off when developers are bold enough to execute a remake exactly how they see fit. Unless the game is made with generative AI, I now cannot really believe that there is a wrong way to remake a game. 

When I look at The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo Switch 2, I see a clear vision for how Nintendo wanted to recreate a classic in an unexpected yet familiar way. More than anything else, that vision is what makes me excited to check out this remake, rather than the game perfectly fitting my personal definition of what “remake” should mean. Like the term “retro game,” it does not have a simple definition in 2026.

What's Old Is News

State of Play and Nintendo Direct recaps and more

On September 3, a State of Play showcase was held. These were the highlights from it: 

• Final Fantasy VII Revelation got an extended look, confirming an April 8, 2027 release date. A PlayStation Blog post provides a breakdown of what they showed off in more detail.
• Final Fantasy Resonance received a demo for its first chapter ahead of its October 22 launch. More on that in a bit!
• The original PlayStation is getting a 1,911-piece Lego set on October 1.
• PlayStation Plus Premium’s Classic Catalog will add Mega Man X: Command Mission later this month, while Dino Crisis 2 and the original Ratchet & Clank will arrive before the end of the year. We later learned that Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound and Metro Redux are also coming to the service.

In addition to The Legend of Zelda Direct that most of this newsletter was dedicated to, Nintendo also held a general Nintendo Direct on September 9. These were its most notable retro-related announcements:

• Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion shadow-dropped on Nintendo Switch 2.
• Danganronpa 2x2 confirmed a January 14, 2027 release date
• Ten Super Mario Kart tracks were added to Mario Kart World’s Vs Race mode in a free update. 
• Metal Slug Ultimate Collection, which bundles ten of SNK’s classic Metal Slug games, will launch on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 in 2027.
• Persona 4 Revival will come to Nintendo Switch 2 on May 20, 2027, a few months after it arrives on other platforms.
• The remakes of Resident Evil 2, 3, and 4 will all launch on Nintendo Switch 2 on October 16.
• 3D remake Romancing SaGa 3: Destinies United was announced with a February 16, 2027 release date. 
• Star Fox Adventures came to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pass’s GameCube game catalog.
• The original Mystery Dungeon game was re-released with the title Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon -Classic HD-. Good on you for keeping video game re-release titles weird, Square Enix.
• Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon will return with “Classic Edition” releases on Nintendo Switch 2, sometime in Spring 2027.
• Sonic Pico Park will be released on November 12.

As for other news: 

• Ninja Gaiden 3: The Ancient Ship of Doom, Ikari Warriors, and R.C. Pro-Am 2 all came to Nintendo Switch Online’s NES game lineup.
• BBG Entertainment admitted to Time Extension that it used generative AI for its announcement trailer for a Manic Miner remake.
• Plaion delayed the release of the NEOGEO AES+ to September 16, 2027 due to component shortages, but will make up for it by offering early adopters a “founding support bonus” and bringing more classic games to the platform.
• A Vampire Survivors-like River City Ransom game is launching exclusively for Apple Arcade on October 1.
• PlayStation Studios will no longer publish Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear spiritual successor Physint. Instead, Xbox will publish the game.
• For GameSpot last week, I broke the news that The Witcher Remake’s development has been temporarily paused as Fool’s Theory works on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s Songs of the Past expansion and The Witcher 4.
  • “Fool's Theory team is focused mainly on the development of Witcher 3: Songs of the Past, while a relatively small part of their team is supporting the development of The Witcher 4,” CD Projekt told me. “As we have previously announced, the development on The Witcher Remake has been temporarily integrated with The Witcher 4 due to production process dependencies. As The Witcher Remake will be built on the foundation laid by The Witcher 4, we need to have the necessary assets, tools, and pipelines ready for efficient development."

Since wrapping up Onimusha: Way of the Sword, I have mainly played these three games:

• Valheim: This Norse mythology-themed survival game finally exited early access this week, and I covered it for Polygon. While it does not feel much different from its gamestate in 2021, the amount of content and level of polish do cement Valheim as an all-time great survival video game.
• Star Wars Zero Company: I rolled credits on this one a few days ago. While frequent crashes and technical issues on PS5 were annoying, I still do think this is my favorite game of the year so far. It not only tells a grounded Star Wars story, but expertly emulates everything that worked about XCOM’s gameplay while incorporating elements of games like Baldur’s Gate 3 to make me more concerned about what happens to my motley crew of scoundrels. 
• Final Fantasy Resonance: I played the demo that dropped during the State of Play, and I have absolutely been loving it. It is a classic turn-based Final Fantasy in all the right ways, and so far its story has been engaging in its own right and not just franchise nostalgia-bait. There is always some new skill to level up or new enemies to fight and discover the weaknesses of. That kept the whole demo engaging, and it leaves me excited to see how the rest of the game expands on these ideas. 

That’s all for Remastered this week. It’s back on the weekly schedule now, so expect the next newsletter on September 17. Subscribe for free so you don’t miss that, and consider supporting independent games media by contributing to my Ko-fi.