Final Fantasy I was released in 1987. It was one of the first larger-scale role-playing video games and ended up spawning a franchise that has since inspired over 200 million people.
The original game was for the NES, the Nintendo Entertainment System. The device is now on the rarer side, and so is the cartridge to play the game. The game itself has no autosave function. If you don’t save manually, your progress will be lost. It also requires a lot of “grinding,” aka entering and repeating battles over and over again to make your characters strong enough to move on in the game.
All in all, it’s a bit of a hassle to play the original game today. If you’re a hardcore gamer, that won’t stop you, of course. But if you’re a casual player, you might just as well pick up one of the five (!) remakes the game has received in the nearly 40 years since its release. There was a version for PlayStation, one for the Game Boy Advance, one for PC, and so on.
As a long-time fan of the series who only joined around Final Fantasy VII, I picked up the Pixel Remaster version for Nintendo Switch. The graphics had been updated, and so was the music. Instead of 80s synth sounds, you could now also enjoy an orchestra in the background. The developers had also added options for faster walking speed, a mechanism to turn random battle encounters on and off, and made the experience system easier for faster leveling up. You could even let battles play out automatically on 2x speed, presumably to address the grinding issues.
At first, I was a bit shocked at these changes. “Wow, that makes the game so much easier!” With the exception of the final boss, getting through the story was a walk in the park. It was much less of a challenge than I had expected, but in hindsight, I have to admit: That’s exactly what I wanted. I wanted to see the characters, explore the world, and immerse myself in the story. I’m no longer nine years old. I don’t have dozens of hours to sink into collecting virtual experience points. So, for a busy creative like me, the updates were just what I needed. Otherwise, I might have given up on the game altogether.
There’s no shame in updating a 38-year-old game. After all, your original audience has also aged that much, and, chances are, new people will also appreciate modern mechanisms. Some art should remain unchanged to forever preserve its spirit. But some will need the occasional coat of fresh paint to stay accessible. As long as the original stays around, an upgrade only creates more versions of the same masterpiece different people can fall in love with.
Update your art. Keep it accessible. And don’t feel bad for enjoying a modern take on a timeless classic.