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Don’t look now, but yet another videogame remake/port is coming our way. The difference? This time, it’s a remake of a remake.

Capcom is releasing a Wii port of the GameCube remake of Resident Evil this winter in Japan. Released back in 2002, the game was a true remake of the original PSone game from 1996, greatly improving the graphics and voice acting, changing aspects of the story, as well as adding those god damned super-zombies. This Wii port, however, will likely just tack on waggle and be thrown to the wolves as something new and different. Yay.

I railed on the Wii a few days ago and mentioned the system’s penchant for waggle remakes, but I’d like to go a little further and touch on the ever-expanding market of remaking and re-releasing classic games – and how the Wii has affected that.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen a glut of remakes that has not only appealed to the nostalgia of consumers but also become an integral part of many companies’ business models.

The first time I remember seeing a remake was when Super Mario All-Stars was released for the Super NES in 1993. The game collected Super Mario Bros 1-3 as well as The Lost Levels, the real Mario 2, which was only released in Japan (the US version of Mario 2 was a modified version of a game called DokiDoki Panic, which followed an Arabian family on a quest to save children). This remake introduced three components of the modern gaming remake:

• Making a game that was either rare or never released in the US suddenly available.
• Improving graphics and sound and adding other new features and/or levels.
• Collecting multiple old games on one cartridge/disc and releasing it as a “collection.”

The game was a rousing success, quickly becoming one of the best-selling Super NES titles. Since then, countless remakes and re-releases have followed, reaching critical mass in the past few years. As game development costs have exploded, publishers’ back catalogs have become an absolutely essential part of their business models.

Square Enix, maker of Final Fantasy, is among the leaders in the remake market, seemingly doing its best to remake every last one of its games. In the past 10 years, for instance, the original Final Fantasy has been remade five times for five different platforms. The list of games Square Enix has remade or re-released over the past decade is staggering: Final Fantasy I-VI, Dragon Quest I-IV, Valkyrie Profile, Final Fantasy Tactics and further remakes of Dragon Quest V and VI, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Star Ocean 1&2 and Chrono Trigger on the way…but still no Seiken Densetsu III. Assholes.

And that’s just Square Enix. Capcom has been remaking Resident Evil and Mega Man for years and has recently revamped Bionic Commando. Konami released a revamp, no pun intended, of Dracula X (considered one of the best Castlevania games, and which had never seen a proper US release) for the PSP last year. Rockstar Games has ported its PSP Grand Theft Auto games to the Playstation 2, Nintendo has made a killing off remaking Mario games for its handheld systems, and Sega recently announced a new Sonic the Hedgehog compilation. Additionally, the emergence of download services like Nintendo’s Virtual Console/WiiWare, Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade and Sony’s Playstation Network has given companies an additional outlet to re-release and/or revamp old titles at a low cost (digital distribution eliminates expensive shipping and production costs).

From a financial standpoint, a remake can introduce new customers to an established brand, or it can help to revive one in preparation for a sequel (Capcom did this with Bionic Commando and Square Enix with Valkyrie Profile). More importantly, these remakes often cost very little to produce and are essentially pure profit. With rising game development costs, companies often need this extra capital to pour into developing on more powerful hardware. Square hasn’t released budget figures for Final Fantasy XIII, but with the amount of time it’s been in development, the seemingly little progress made in the past three years, and the recent announcement that it’s going to be simultaneously released for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game ended up costing well over $100 million. The fact that the frequency of Square’s remakes has increased over the past four to five years is no coincidence.

With all that said, the Wii has changed the remake market in a way that strikes me as extraordinarily cynical. Now, companies like Capcom are content to re-release games for the Wii, toss some waggle in, and call it a brand new experience. If you take a look back at the three components of a remake that Nintendo established with Super Mario All-Stars, these Wii-makes don’t follow any of them. These games were readily available in the US, they often have identical graphics and sound with no additional features, and they’re often simply released by themselves outside of a compilation (ironic considering that the Wii is all about compilations). The closest they come is in “putting a new spin” on an old idea…but that new spin is a control scheme that doesn’t end up changing the core gameplay at all.

The most frustrating thing about all of this is that it only further confirms that the Wii is a big, fat gimmick. You don’t need to look any further than the fact that companies are reaching into their recent back catalogs, slapping some waggle on games and releasing them for the Wii. This is different from Square Enix re-releasing a revamped version of Dragon Quest IV with 3D graphics for the DS. Square could have easily released a direct port of DQIV with slightly improved graphics and slapdash touchscreen features, but they didn’t – they went the extra mile to offer something new. The inclusion of waggle in these Wii-makes, on the other hand, is the main selling point – and that’s it. It’s the classic Hollywood adage of “give me the same thing, but different” put into practice in gaming.

The worst part? Nintendo was already encouraging this practice before the Wii even came out.

In the end, I’m not opposed to remakes and re-releases, especially when they give me an opportunity to play something I’ve never played before, or they offer a new twist on something I know. But when I see the Wii section at Gamestop filled with slapdash Wii-makes of stuff I was playing on my PS2 years ago, it makes me wonder whether the Wii’s vaunted “innovation” has been to find new ways to bleed money out of consumers while exerting a minimum of effort.