3/14/2009 - GoldenEye: Source

Capcom is really hitting the nail on the head with their remakes of classic games, like Street Fighter and Bionic Commando. In one case, they've completely hand redrawn sprites frame by frame to bump them up to HD quality. And in the other, 3-D models were used to replace the 8-bit sprites. In both cases, however, the classic gameplay was intact, and that's all that really matters to retro gamers like myself. But Capcom also added an extra element that transcended the original gaming platform: online play. And of course, that's so essential now that any game without it is dismissed as being incomplete.

When you think about it, though, there are so many games out there that could benefit from the same kind of upgrades Capcom instilled in their classic franchises. There is one remake that nearly every gamer would love to see, though: GoldenEye of the Nintendo 64. If Nintendo had any sense, they would just plow through all the legal red tape that is preventing the remake, because that would undoubtedly be the game that would have disaffected gamers turning on their Wiis again.

Of course, this has not been lost on the many homebrew game developers and modders out there. The potential threat of lawsuits by Nintendo and Rare are no deterrent to these folks, and that alone should tell you how great an online high-resolution remake of GoldenEye would be. They've presented a trailer of their ongoing work, and it almost brought a tear to this retro gamer's eye: