Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto has defended the company’s current focus on remakes of its older games when speaking to Japanese outlet Famitsu. Via Nintendo Everything, the latest edition of the weekly magazine features an interview with Mario’s dad, in which he claims that the company’s endless remakes of its older properties in fact leads to those series’ longevity and more entries being made.
It’s clearly nothing new for Nintendo to remake its older games for its newer consoles. Classic titles have been reappearing on newer devices since the Game Boy Advance, and heck, the original Switch’s early line-up was primarily ports of Wii U games no one had played. But during the Switch 2’s first year, despite brand new titles like Donkey Kong:Bananza, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave and Pokémon Pokopia (among many more), the recent heavy focus has been on Star Fox, and will now shift to Zelda: Ocarina of Time, leaning in to the notion of Nintendo being something of a remake factory.
Generational wealth
Miyamoto addressed the topic when speaking to Famitsu, making the argument that there’s only a short window in which to capture many people’s gaming attentions, and by regularly spritzing up older games, you’re capturing new audiences for the franchises. As translated by Nintendo Everything, he said, “Some people might say there are a lot of remakes, but after five years, a lot of people have outgrown games and stop playing them. Young people today don’t have the opportunity to play games from 10 years ago, so remaking them to be more playable and releasing them again is a good way to meet the demand.”
I do feel somewhat compelled to step in here and point out that yes, there is a massive problem for young people having access to games from just 10 years ago, but I’m not convinced the answer is always multi-million-dollar remakes. Perhaps better support for older hardware and permanent support for purchased games would better address this issue, or at the very least not suing everyone who tries to preserve games for them.
Miyamoto continues, “Letting people know the original games also leads to future developments, so we’ve been actively pursuing that recently.”
If true, it could be promising. People have been crying out for more original Star Fox for a decade, and for more good original Star Fox for closer to 20 years. And it’s perhaps getting a little awkward that there’s been no word of a new mainline Zelda since 2023’s Tears of the Kingdom, nor any indication of a Super Mario Odyssey follow-up nine years after that game’s release.