Top 10 Classic Games That Should Be Remade With New Graphics

It’s easy to wax nostalgic about our favorite games from ages gone, but it can be awfully hard – or even impossible – to play them on modern consoles and computers. The thing is, when you can, sometimes you wish you had left the memory alone: often times, the games that we love the best from the past look… well, awful.

Graphics aren’t the most important element of a game, and they’re certainly not why classic games are called classics. But they do add a certain sense of awe to particular titles, and now that we’re spoiled on 1080p and SSAO, it sure would be nice to be able to see some historic games reimagined in modern engines.

Here are our picks for the Top 10 Classic Games That Should Be Remade with New Graphics. We’d love to take another spin through any of these titles anyway, but we think these games in particular would benefit a lot from a ground-up rebuild. The latest console generation seems to be relying heavily on HD “remasters,” so we figured we’d make a few suggestions.

As always, let us know which games you think could do with modern graphical overhauls and why in the comments below.

#10 Final Fantasy VI

Technically speaking, this one did get an overhaul already – sort of. An iOS version of Final Fantasy VI came out in 2014, but it was really a kind of weird, up-res version of the original game, even aping the SNES’ Mode 7 travel sequences. It’s the established Final Fantasy formula, with a story about magical powers and multiple characters, but it’s one of the best narratives in the franchise.

And it would be great to see it reimagined for today’s hardware – without changing the mechanics or story, we could see the game’s world beautifully rendered in 3D, with monsters that showed more character through full animation.

Even a little voice acting wouldn’t go amiss.

#9 The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask

There’s no getting around the fact that this game also has had a graphics overhaul done – this time going from the N64 to the 3DS. And the changes aren’t insignificant: the colors on the 3DS version are far more lush and brilliant than the N64’s muddy palette, and the draw distance is vastly improved. Effects like better shading and glows have been added, and overall, the game is far sharper.

Buuuut… it’s still very clearly an old-gen game. Environments and characters use very low-polygon models that are more on par with a late-‘90s Tomb Raider title than something we’d expect to see today.

Imagine how great Majora’s Mask would be on the Wii U, making full use of the proprietary gamepad and touchscreen and the console’s more powerful hardware. While a Zelda game might not strictly-speaking need a graphics overhaul, Majora’s Mask could really look stunning on modern hardware.

#8 Ultima VII

We included this on our list of the Top RPGs Of All Time, and when it came out for MS/DOS in 1992, it looked incredible. The murder scene you encounter in the game’s opening moments was shockingly graphic at the time. But looking at it 23 years later, it looks like a jumbled mess of pixels.

Look, there’s no need to go pining for The Black Gate rerendered in an engine like The Witcher 3’s. But, being that it was originally a top-down, party-based, real-time RPG, what about bringing it on par with something like Diablo III or Path of Exile? Both of those games owe a lot to Ultima VII, and seeing this classic RPG remade in such a style would truly be a thing to behold, and to play.

Having it available on the Vita would be a nice touch, too.

#7 Battlefield 1942

How the Battlefield series has lost its way. The newest entry, Hardline, has not been well loved at all, and most agree that the series has been on a downward trajectory since Bad Company 2. One thing it has improved, though, are its looks. Battlefield 4 is a bit heavy on the post-processing effects (okay, I don’t need vignetting, motion blur, lens flare, blood on my visor, and rain obscuring my vision guys), but all in all, the Frostbite engine can handle some seriously complex scenes and gorgeous effects. Dragon Age: Inquisition used it, and whatever else you might say about that game, it’s pretty.

So why not bring the fan favorite, Battlefield 1942 into the current gen? It’s certainly nothing DICE’s Frostbite engine can’t handle, and let’s be honest, 1942 looks positively quaint at this point. Skip the silly added stuff from the modern Battlefield titles and let’s have new models, new animations, and modernized maps. EA would have fans lining up to send them thank-you notes for this.

#6 Deus Ex

The original and best, but it looks godawful to modern eyes. Someone had to say it. In fact, after talking this game up to a friend who only recently got into video games, when she was finally able to get it running, she was immediately disappointed by how ugly it is.

That’s not a mark against the game – it’s a product of its time, like the rest of these titles are. But with Mankind Divided on the horizon supporting DirectX 12 out of the box, it really would be fantastic to be able to play the original game (set after the events of the modern-era Deus Ex games) as it might be made today.

#5 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (1 & 2)

Thanks to modders, you can play better-looking (and more content-complete) version of the KOTORs on PC today. But at the end of the day, modders are kind of stuck with the engine the game was made in, and both KOTORs are showing their creaky age.

But let’s face it: both games were some of the best RPGs BioWare ever made, and they’re fantastic entries into the Star Wars universe. Now that Disney owns the rights to pretty much everything Star Wars, and a new movie coming out this December, we’re about to head into a peak Star Wars era. Sadly, though, no new role-playing titles have been announced yet.

So it’s the perfect time to get cracking on rebuilt versions of Knights of the Old Republic. Disney can bring plenty of money to bear on this project, and just imagine the game with modern visuals, high-poly models and environments, with repaced combat and controller support. Hell, package them together, restore the cut content, and charge us $60. We’ll pay it.

And speaking of Star Wars…

#4 X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter

It’s absolutely time for a modern re-release of this fantastic game. Way back when, it gave us the then-huge step forward of 800x600 resolution, and the models even had shading on them!

But man, if you picked this up on GOG when it went on sale for the first time in years, you know how much this just doesn’t hold up to the likes of Elite: Dangerous and (possibly, someday) Star Citizen.

The good news, though, is that with the player base of HOTAS joystick owners being created by those two games, a fully modern re-release of X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter would be perfect right now. While the original game supported eight-player online multiplayer, why not bump that up to a beefy 64 players while we’re at it?

And let’s do a complete overhaul of the in-game menus, too. Uhg.

#3 James Bond 007 – Nightfire

Everyone loves to talk about the “good old days” of Goldeneye, but it was Nightfire that got James Bond onto Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube. It was a terrific, if relatively brief, ode to the Pierce Brosnan-era Bond films, and to ‘90s action movies in general.

But lord, it looks dreadful now. And the PC version of the game was abhorrent.

This one could really do with The Master Chief Collection treatment: New textures, new models, and a few tweaks to incorporate modern shooter mechanics could do wonders for this game, which in an age of really bad movie tie-ins actually managed to have an interesting plot and well-done voice actors (several of whom, aside from Brosnan, reprised their roles from the movies).

#2 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

It’s usually a tossup between Vice City and San Andreas when you ask someone which GTA game is the best in the series. But let’s go with the older-gen version for the purposes of this list, since it could benefit more from a modern makeover.

After first moving into true 3D with Grand Theft Auto 3, the series really started to get a sense of its character and voice in Vice City, which starred former mobster Tommy Vercetti and a motley and colorful supporting cast. In GTA’s reimagining of 1986 Miami, you cruise around in neon-lit city full of jobs, and triggers, to pull. It’s a fantastic game with a fantastic soundtrack that features Megadeth, Talk Talk, Kool & the Gang, and Michael Jackson.

But like the others on this list, it simply doesn’t hold up graphically now that we’ve had Grand Theft Auto V. Instead of going for V’s ultra-realistic look, though, a Vice City remaster now probably should look more along the lines of Saints Row The Third.

#1 The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind

Morrowind is another game that showcases how games that pushed graphical boundaries of its day tend to look a lot the worse for wear once those boundaries get moved along by the inevitable progress of Moore’s Law.

But the game marked The Elder Scrolls’ beginning to solidify the gameplay elements the series has relied heavily on in subsequent titles. Leveling up skills through practice, for instance, and shifting the focus away from the main questline to a more free-form playstyle. There’s a lot to still love about this game, and its weirder, more alien landscapes would look amazing in a modern engine.

Fortunately, a group of modders called TES Renewal Project is working on bringing Morrowind forward, at least a couple steps. Using the Skyrim engine, they’re completely rebuilding Morrowind, using community-created models, maps, items, and scripts. They’ve even reached out to the community to provide brand new voiceovers for characters who had spoken only through text in the original game. There’s no release date set yet, but the results so far are pretty impressive.