Blog Post

~ Estimated Reading Time: 6 min ~

Today is the shadow of tomorrow
Today is the present future of yesterday
Yesterday is the shadow of today
The darkness of the past is yesterday
And the light of the past is yesterday

If there's one thing time has proven, it's that perfectly copying by eye is impossible. You can try to get close with study alone, but you can't know what the artist was thinking. So, you get these misreads that ripple out. How sensitive one is to misinterpretation will vary from person to person, but it scales by familiarity. Those passionate are the least rewarded by replica; that's probably why everyone's mad about remakes all the time. Today though, a more apt comparison feels more relevant: botched console ports!
Tengo Project are the most living fossils I've ever seen - a team of damn coelacanths. And that's for more reasons than their thirty-plus year pedigrees. They're making remakes like the old days - constantly in a tango with technological micro-specifics. This time, it's Resolution.

It's interesting - using Ninja Warriors Once Again as compare and contrast - because it arguably got it wrong. The SNES OG was tight; you had a Fighting Game-style block that only covered your front. But in its cubic battlefield, enemies surround you on both sides so quick, that you're forced to use offense as defense. In many situations, it's better to just run up to whoever's in front of you, and toss them into the dudes behind - keeping them grouped on one side. But in its Remake, its rectangular fields make it hard for the crowds from both sides to catch up with you. Composite TVs complimented compact design.

Ninja Warriors Again, 0:13 Ninja Warriors Once Again

But, Wild Guns Reloaded had a lot going in its favour. Its genre produces inversed results; you're the one impeded. The original's controls were so simple, you aimed and moved with the same inputs. But my reticle was taking longer to reach across the wider field, so I found myself walking around as a side-effect. And that wandering had me walking into danger by accident! Which in turn, taught me a new playstyle: shooting at nothing! When you shoot, you stand still; I traded one arbitrary action for another. And with that, just one incidental change pointed me towards a new way of playing.

Interestingly, Once Again was the team's next project as Tengo. It'd be so easy to assume Reloaded was a lesson learned from failure, but the actual release order makes it obvious how incidental this 'making good video games' stuff is.

If bad remakes make you miss things from the original, it must be a good remake's jobs to let you know that you missed things about the original. Because, in all my replays of SNES Wild Guns, I never learned you were supposed to shoot at nothing. It's the crux of both version's high-scoring: if you never let go of the trigger, each kill in a row will provide more score than the last. The trade-off being that you're throwing away a swiss-army knife's worth of defensive tools in order to prevent interruptions. And, you get a smothering of 1-Ups from points alone. So, it adds up to a texture where you're suppressing your immediate survival instincts, in hopes of elongating success in the long-term.

Both the money-bags that you juggle, and the L-Gun (which stands for "luigi" according to faea) are small, but wonderful additions to Reloaded!,

The one remaining way to protect yourself is your biggest gamble: in ridiculous, video game-y fashion, shooting bullets kills other bullets. Despite that absurdity, dynamics flip three-hundred-and-sixty degrees with elegance. Some bandits threw dynamite onto the stage - but you could pick those up, and throw them back into a big crowd. But since they can't be shot out of the air, and tossing them back counts as interrupting your fire; if you don't want your combo to end, this borderline teammate is suddenly your Top-1 target. It cements your play as more aggressive - more about preventing outcomes, than working with what's handed to you. None of this is untrue of the SNES classic, but this new take affixed my eyes on what made it so special. And isn't that what a wealth of new materials should make you feel? Allow you to find new love for its roots?

If Reloaded's sole goal was in adjusting focus, it'd still be the classiest remix around. But that cherry on top nudges it over the edge:
Doris!
Doris!! Doris!!!
DORRRISSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WOW WOW WOW WOW.

thank u tengo for the goated fat woman rep. i feel seen

It's fitting for a remake... That, rather than putting too much emphasis on new locales, more effort is put into giving you a weirdo that uniquely interfaces with older obstacle courses.
What I had described earlier of the high scoring of the OG is still perfectly in-tact in Reloaded's...returning characters. But Doris is different.

so is the dog

but we don't have. time to talk about the dog

Instead of holding down "shoot" to perpetually fire, you'll charge up a bag of grenades, and lob them when you release the button. Instead of combos, your multiplier increases with each extra bomb, plateaus, and resets to 0 after tossed. This changes things drastically:

Since most grunts eventually leave on their own, missed kills are missed opportunities. But since Doris has to spend time powering-up, you're forced you to do math in your head. "Is letting this dude walk away worth it, if I can get a big bonus off the crowd that's about to spawn?"
Interruptions don't matter to Doris. She can naturally slot picking up stray dynamite into the breaks in her busy schedule of charge-and-releases.
And even with that advantage, she does have one extra out. While the OGs would break their combo if they rolled, but Doris actually remembers how many bombs she's holding afterwards. Unlike the pair, however, her dodges have absolutely no invulnerability; if you let too many enemies get onto screen while charging bombs, she'll get overwhelmed.

So, she's already a bit of a solitary spectacle. They managed to invent a Tank-role from first principles, just from filling in the holes in the other moveset. No referencing common tropes like big shields, or longer health bars necessary.

But the greatest thing about the new and the old is that they don't exist in a vacuum

I've had SO much fun playing with the Doris and Annie tag-team. Wild Guns' core appeal has always hinged on its co-op, but few arcade duos feel this cooperative. Doris may have clunky routing, but your teammates can play clean-up on the outlaws that don't naturally cluster up. And that provides Doris new opportunities to apply that her multipliers go up higher than the rest of the cast's - something she can't really afford the time to max-out alone. And once you've thrown those powerful hands, she gets to play savior.

Clips like these may not have the flash of hitting a clip in Dig Dug, but it MEANT SOMETHING TO ME!!!

I've had a life-long enemy. If you've ever played these games, you probably do too; I hate the dudes that spawn in the same lane as us. I've died so many times from just not paying attention to my side of the screen! They can't be shot at, only melee'd; Annie could have the craziest kill-streak, and their presence alone would be a combo-breaker. But Doris can naturally free up her hand, run up to 'em, and knock 'em out before they could touch her teammate... It feels sooooo good.
I just can't think of another game where the traditions and the new ideas get to hold hands about it.

I can still honor the past, and be present
Just imagine if my peace of mind was measured by the second
Lookin' backwards doesn't mean I'm not movin' forward
I was captured just to know divine order