hd remaster – Trekking with Dennis

Could AI be the key to a Deep Space Nine and Voyager remaster?

The most popular article I’ve written here on the website is about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, and how neither series has been remastered. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, The Original Series and The Next Generation were given a complete overhaul and rebroadcast, then re-released on Blu-ray (and HD DVD, if anyone remembers that failed format!)

For a number of reasons, though, The Next Generation in particular didn’t see great sales numbers on Blu-ray. Because of the significant cost involved in upscaling and remastering it, and the lack of a significant return on that investment, ViacomCBS hasn’t been willing to spend money on Deep Space Nine or Voyager. As a result, both series remain in “standard definition,” a.k.a. DVD quality. On today’s ever-larger television screens, the difference between a remastered episode of The Next Generation and a non-remastered episode of Deep Space Nine is incredibly noticeable.

Captain Picard in *The Next Generation* remaster (left) and *Deep Space Nine* DVD quality (right). Even allowing for image compression, the difference in quality is easy to spot.

Star Trek has been one of the big franchises that ViacomCBS has used to push its rebranded Paramount+ streaming service. Paramount+ is now the digital home of all things Star Trek – yet two of its flagship series that many folks remember with fondness from the 1990s don’t look great. As I noted last time, that’s a problem. It makes Paramount+ look cheap, as though ViacomCBS simply can’t be bothered to put in the effort.

Netflix runs some shows in DVD quality, but by far the majority of its content is in high definition. As Paramount+ attempts to position itself as a competitor to Netflix, Disney+, and other platforms in a very crowded market, having two big flagship shows in low quality standard definition is not a good look, and it’s something that needs to be addressed.

But last time the company made a significant investment in remastering Star Trek it didn’t pay off, so how should they proceed?

*The Next Generation* did not sell particularly well on Blu-ray.

There are a few factors at play here. The first is that ViacomCBS (and its predecessor, CBS) measured the success of the remastered Star Trek series purely by Blu-ray sales. The problem with this approach is that, even by the early 2010s, optical media in general was in decline. Fewer people had made the switch to Blu-ray than DVD, and with the rise of on-demand streaming platforms it seemed only a matter of time before Star Trek would be available to watch. I owned a number of The Next Generation stories on VHS, I’d also bought the entire series on DVD, and in the early 2010s I just wasn’t prepared to spend that money all over again on the same show – especially when it seemed inevitable that eventually the series would be available online. I was right.

Physical media sales are a poor measure of success in the days of on-demand streaming, and the value in investing in any project – be it a remaster or the commissioning of a new series – is less about pure sales numbers and more about the number of subscribers it will drive to your streaming platform. ViacomCBS has invested in Paramount+, so why not go the extra mile and remaster these classic shows for the service too?

One of the commercials for Paramount+ focused on Star Trek.

That’s the first aspect of this issue – the business side and how to calculate a return on investment. Raw sales numbers are less and less valid as a metric of success in a world that’s moved on to streaming, so making that calculation isn’t easy. But I bet that remastering Deep Space Nine and Voyager would drive new subscribers to Paramount+, as well as convince wavering subscribers that it’s worth sticking around. Both of those things are what any streaming service needs to survive.

The second point to consider is that the cost of remastering any television series is dropping all the time. There is software that uses AI that can produce creditable results from DVD-quality sources, such as the existing versions of Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Consumer-grade versions of this software exist, and can be bought for less than $100. You can even find homemade upscaled clips of Deep Space Nine and Voyager on YouTube and elsewhere online – and they look pretty darn good.

There are many fan-made upscales of clips from *Deep Space Nine* and *Voyager* online.

As software continues to improve and come down in price, the cost of a project like this drops dramatically, and we may only be a few years away from fans being able to fully upscale their DVD collections at home. In some ways, we’re arguably there already. Rather than ViacomCBS having to spend huge sums of money recruiting new artists and animators to recreate whole sequences from scratch, it’s going to be possible to run entire episodes of the show through software and just have a small team of people make tweaks on the resultant upscaled version to knock it into shape. It’s far less of a project than it was ten years ago – so there are fewer and fewer reasons not to do it.

With ViacomCBS having the original tapes of these shows, it should be even easier to get a good result than it is for someone using the DVD version. I’m not saying it can all be done from home for a few dollars – the project will still cost money – but it’s a far less significant expense than it was last time the company chose to send Star Trek to the remastering suite, and waiting even just a couple of years could see those costs fall yet further.

Sisko and O’Brien in *Emissary*, the *Deep Space Nine* premiere.

I really hope that ViacomCBS will consider giving both shows a proper remaster at some point in the future. It’s something that would undoubtedly provide Paramount+ a boost, especially if the service were the only place to access the newly-upgraded shows. And it surely would be, because why bother with a Blu-ray release? Physical media continues its decline, with fewer people than ever upgrading to the latest 4K Blu-ray standard, so there’s almost no point. Remaster the shows, stick them on Paramount+, and enjoy a nice subscriber boost.

I truly believe AI and software offer a path to remastering these shows – and a lot of others, too. There are a few other series from the ’80s and ’90s that are yet to be properly remastered, and the same solution potentially exists for those as well. I’m not a tech expert, but I think the results speak for themselves. When I’ve seen upscaled clips online, created incredibly inexpensively by amateurs using commercially-available software, it really feels like ViacomCBS is missing a trick. Maybe upscaling the series this way wouldn’t be as good as spending huge amounts of money to do it from scratch, but it would be something – and the result would almost certainly be a better-looking show than the currently-available SD version.

Paramount+ would get a boost if both shows were remastered.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the most popular article I’ve written is about Deep Space Nine and Voyager needing a remaster – so there is clearly huge interest there from both Trekkies and casual fans. People who watched the shows years ago may want to rewatch them. New Star Trek fans who’ve joined the fandom since the release of the Kelvin films or Discovery may want to go back and watch older Star Trek shows. And of course us Trekkies would love nothing more than to see the two series get an overhaul. There’s a sizeable audience out here asking for a remaster, an upscaling, or whatever you want to call it. AI could be a good solution – saving money while giving fans what we’ve been asking for for years!

At the very least, I think it’s worth considering. And if ViacomCBS never does it… maybe someone else will. These pieces of software get better and cheaper all the time, and we could be in a position in a very short span of time where fan-made remasters of whole episodes, not just clips, will be widely available.

Deep Space Nine and Voyager were a big part of Star Trek’s most successful era to date, and a lot of casual viewers and Trekkies remember them with fondness. While there’s nothing wrong with the DVD versions, as screen technology improves and televisions get larger, what viewers expect from their programming has changed. For a lot of people in 2021, standard definition isn’t good enough – especially on a streaming service that costs $9.99 per month. If ViacomCBS is serious about continuing to invest in the Star Trek franchise, a portion of that investment needs to be directed backward, to remastering these two shows that have been sidelined. Part of the marketing for Paramount+ highlighted that it was the place to watch every episode of Star Trek – some fans will have been disappointed to learn that over 300 of those episodes don’t look great.

AI and software offer a solution to this problem, one ViacomCBS should take advantage of as soon as possible.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager are available to stream now (in SD quality only) on Paramount+ in the United States, and on Netflix in the UK and other countries and territories. Both series are also available on DVD. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Ten more games I’d remaster (if I could)

Sat 12.09.20Mon 21.11.22Dennis

A little while ago I looked at ten games from years past that I wish would be remastered and brought up-to-date. That list was fun to put together, but I ended up leaving off a number of titles that I had considered including. This new list will make up for that!

The same methodology applies as last time: more recent titles – which I’m defining as anything from this console generation or the one preceding it – are excluded by default. And the rest are games that I’ve personally played… albeit I haven’t touched most of them in years or even decades. Remember that this isn’t me saying that these games will be remastered. I’m just saying that, if I had unlimited resources, I’d like nothing more than to bring them up to date and give a new generation of players a chance to experience them.

Number 1: Super Mario Kart (SNES, 1992) and/or Mario Kart 64 (Nintendo 64, 1997)

I’d love to replay the classic tracks of the first two Mario Kart titles using the more modern engine used for Mario Kart 8. A few of the tracks from these two titles have reappeared in recent Mario Kart titles, but not all of them and the two games have never been remastered in their entirety complete with all of the tracks and the same roster of characters.

Super Mario Kart was one of the first games I bought for myself in the early ’90s; I think I’d played a demo of it in a shop and desperately wanted my own copy! Mario Kart 64 is probably my personal favourite entry in the series; it had such an amazing set of tracks. If you want to see some of the best racetracks from these titles and others that I think would be great for the next Mario Kart title, I have an article all about that. With 2022 being the 30th anniversary of the series – and with Nintendo’s love of anniversaries – they could certainly take that opportunity to bring one or both of these titles fully up-to-date!

Number 2: Space Harrier (Arcade, 1985)

On my first list I didn’t include any pre-1990 titles. Partly that’s because I haven’t played all that many games from that era, but partly because a lot of older games were rather basic. Space Harrier is undeniably in that category; it’s an on-rails shooter without any real story, the only objective is to shoot at aliens and creatures. But there aren’t many games like that in 2020, and perhaps with a major visual overhaul it could offer something different to players. The other option would be to take its main character, settings, and alien races and expand on them – turning Space Harrier from a run-and-gun shooter into something more like a story-driven action/adventure title in a unique sci-fi setting.

I never had the chance to play Space Harrier in a real arcade. The closest I got to that experience was playing it in Shenmue – that’s where I first encountered the title. But nostalgia is a big deal these days, and perhaps some people would be tempted to see a reworked version of this classic.

Number 3: Spirit of Speed 1937 (Dreamcast and PC, 1999)

Racing games are a lot of fun, and some modern titles do make an attempt to include older vehicles – classic cars from the golden age of motor racing. I could be wrong, but I don’t think there’s been another game like Spirit of Speed 1937, though, which was set in that era and exclusively featured pre-war vehicles.

I played the Dreamcast version of this game, and it was a lot of fun. It was also something wholly unique among racing games that were either fun but un-serious kart racers in the vein of the Mario Kart series, or modern-day racers and rally games featuring up-to-date cars. I believe that niche still exists today, and it would be a lot of fun to have a classic racer like this to fill it!

Number 4: Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force

I’ve had an article in the pipeline for a while that I haven’t knocked into shape yet looking at the state of Star Trek video games. To make a long story short, while a number of them have been pretty good, practically none reached out beyond Star Trek’s preexisting fandom. Elite Force was different, and some fans of first-person shooters who didn’t give a hoot about Star Trek played and enjoyed the game when it released in 2000. Its multiplayer mode in particular was something gamers at the time appreciated.

Elite Force had a great single-player campaign too, which included down time in between missions where the player character – Ensign Munro – was able to explore parts of the ship. The story was perfectly Star Trek in its theme, and Voyager would even go on to use a vaguely similar premise for an episode called The Void which aired about six months after the game was released.

Number 5: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Xbox and PC, 2002)

It would have been hard to imagine in the 2000s, but there hasn’t been a game released in the Elder Scrolls series for almost a decade. Though Bethesda have promised us that The Elder Scrolls VI is in development, it seems years away. The company has remastered Skyrim several times and ported it to every platform under the sun, and while we continue to wait for The Elder Scrolls VI, why not bring Morrowind up to date?

Morrowind is undoubtedly my favourite game in the series. It massively expanded on previous entries, with a huge variety of quests and styles of play. It was possible to be a wizard, sneaky assassin, warrior, and all manner of other things. Beginning with its sequel, Oblivion, Bethesda actually began cutting content, and the most recent Elder Scrolls titles have far fewer NPCs, weapon types, factions, and so on. While we can argue about which game is “better” and get nowhere – such things are subjective, after all – for my money Morrowind offers players the biggest choice of things to do. It’s been eighteen years since I first played it, and I still haven’t completed every quest!

Number 6: Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64, 1996)

I kept this title off my first list because there had been rumours floating around of a remaster being worked on. Sadly, as I noted when I looked at Nintendo’s lineup for Mario’s 35th anniversary, Super Mario 64 was only included in its original form as part of a bundle. But replaying this amazing game in the Super Mario Odyssey engine is something I really want to experience, and with the game’s 25th anniversary coming up next year, perhaps Nintendo will finally bring Super Mario 64 up-to-date.

I first played Super Mario 64 when it was released; it was the first Nintendo 64 game that I owned. I’m not sure if it was the first ever true 3D game I played, but it was certainly one of the earliest titles I got to enjoy that wasn’t 2D. It has a special place in my heart as “my” Mario game – I played the SNES versions of classic Mario titles, but even at the time they were “old” games, and Super Mario 64 was the first that I got to play when it was new.

Number 7: Medieval: Total War (PC, 2002)

Medieval: Total War is almost certainly my most-played game of the early 2000s. It followed on from the also brilliant Shogun: Total War, but took the setting from feudal Japan to the more-familiar western Europe. It was a game that was very easy to mod – I remember opening up the game’s files in Notepad and editing things like the year the game began, which factions controlled which province, and even the names of provinces! I loved the dual gameplay, which was unique among strategy games at the time – both a grand strategy game that required detailed faction management and real-time battles were present in the same title.

The Total War series is still going strong in 2020, and recent titles like Total War: Warhammer and Total War: Three Kingdoms are carrying the flag for the franchise on a massively improved engine. Medieval II: Total War did bring the series back to this setting in 2006, but even that game is rather outdated compared to the latest entries, and it would be amazing to see a remake of Medieval: Total War using the technology at the franchise’s disposal today.

Number 8: TimeSplitters 2 (GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox, 2002)

Out of all the games I’ve ever played, TimeSplitters 2 may have the best ever multiplayer mode! It was certainly something that was a huge amount of fun to play on the original Xbox, with its goofy time-travel narrative taking players from Prohibition-era Chicago to futuristic Toyko and beyond. The TimeSplitters games were never going to be on par with other first-person shooter titles like Halo or the Call of Duty series, but the series had heart and did what it did incredibly well.

The recent remake of Destroy All Humans shows that there is a market for early/mid 2000s games with a sense of humour to be remastered, and I’d absolutely love to welcome back TimeSplitters 2 after all this time.

Number 9: The Simpsons: Hit and Run (Multiplatform, 2003)

Talk to anyone who was a gamer in the mid-2000s and I bet they’ll remember The Simpons: Hit and Run with a sense of nostalgia! I didn’t actually own this game for myself at the time (being a broke student) but a friend did and we played it regularly when I was at university. The game is basically a Simpsons-themed Grand Theft Auto-clone, playing on the popularity of that sub-genre in the wake of Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City, and while fans of Grand Theft Auto will find the more extreme violence of that series decidedly toned-down and cartoonish, it’s a solid game nevertheless.

Recent games have steered away from tie-ins with films and television shows, and the days of a big-budget game based on a popular series are all but gone. There was a time when many popular titles got video game adaptations, and while as a whole tie-in games picked up a (not undeserved) reputation for being pretty poor, there are some real gems too. The Simpsons: Hit and Run is absolutely one of them!

Number 10: Operation WinBack (Nintendo 64, 1999)

Despite languishing in relative obscurity in 2020, Operation WinBack – known as WinBack: Covert Operations in the United States – is an incredibly influential title. Doom was the father of the first-person shooter, and similarly Operation WinBack is the instigator of the cover-based third-person shooter genre. Titles like Gears of War and Mass Effect would not exist without Operation WinBack, and while its cover system – which was so unique at the time it debuted – is now a standard feature, there are still plenty of reasons to bring back this fun spy adventure.

Operation WinBack had a good story, one that would be at home in films like the Mission: Impossible or James Bond series. 2016’s Doom has proved that there’s an appetite among gamers for going back to the roots of established genres, so it could be time to return to the world of Operation WinBack.

So that’s it. Ten more titles that are – in my opinion – worthy of a remaster in 2020. Will any of them ever get one? Let’s just say if I were a gambler I wouldn’t put any money on it! Well… maybe one or two? Some of the biggest companies in the games industry have recently put lots of money into remakes and remasters, and some games that I’d never have expected – like Destroy All Humans and Command and Conquer – have been brought up-to-date. So there’s a chance. There’s always a chance!

Though several of these games are undoubtedly out of print, each one is worth playing in its original form if you’re able to track down a copy, and even though it’s been years or decades since I got to play some of them, I recommend every title on this list!

All titles listed above are the copyright of their respective developers, studios, and/or publishers. Some screenshots courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Ten games that I’d remaster (if I could)

Wed 26.08.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

A few days ago I looked at the possibility of a remastered Mass Effect trilogy. While unconfirmed, this project has been rumoured to be in development for at least the last six months, and while I could certainly consider the argument that we don’t need a remaster less than a decade after the trilogy wrapped up, it got me thinking about games that I really would like to see given a proper update for 2020.

When it came to choosing titles, I excluded anything from the last couple of console generations, as those are new enough – in my opinion – to hold up reasonably well in 2020. I excluded titles that have been remastered already, as well as one title (Super Mario 64) that has been the subject of intense speculation regarding a potential upcoming remaster. I considered a number of titles from the 1980s and early ’90s, but despite some good contenders, the titles I ultimately chose are all from the mid ’90s through to the mid 2000s. Remember that these are just my opinions; the list is subjective.

This list is just a fantasy. Some of the games below may one day be remastered, but others are so obscure that I may be one of only a handful of people who knew they existed even when they were new! So don’t get excited at the prospect of an impending remaster; if you must play a title on this list… I dunno. Try eBay?

Number 1: Star Trek: Generations (PC, 1997)

When it comes to naming my “all-time favourite” game, I struggle. There are so many good video games that I’ve played over the years, and what I enjoy playing changes with my mood. That said, the PC game Star Trek: Generations has to be a contender. Part Doom-clone, part puzzle game, part tactical ship-to-ship combat game, featuring fully-voiced characters and some great sequences set in stellar cartography that I don’t even know how to categorise, Generations was a fantastic and incredibly well-rounded experience. It’s such a shame that it released way too late – several years after the film – and was overlooked by even the hardest of hardcore Trekkies.

The main part of the game is a series of Doom-inspired first-person missions to various planets. Generations took a randomised approach – there are a number of planets that the villainous Dr Soran can visit, and which ones he travels to differs with each playthrough. All of the main characters from The Next Generation have their own missions, and the final act of the game lets players take on the role of Kirk. The story sticks to the film in the beginning and near the end, but diverges greatly in the middle during some of the away missions. It’s a fantastic title, and a few years ago I was able to track down a copy on eBay. I’ve been intending to replay it but haven’t got around to doing so yet.

Number 2: Jet Force Gemini (Nintendo 64, 1999)

Jet Force Gemini was a Nintendo 64 exclusive just before the turn of the millennium, and it was a fun sci-fi adventure in an original setting. The game gave players three characters to control: twins Juno and Vela, and their dog Lupus. An action/adventure title with some basic 3D platforming sections, the game had a slightly over-the-top story that involved saving teddy bear-like creatures and defeating a nefarious villain. Considering how many sequels and franchises exist right now in all forms of entertainment, Jet Force Gemini could offer something different – or at least something most players in 2020 haven’t experienced before!

Developed by Rare, the game had weapons that could be upgraded as well as an open level design that was comparable to other Nintendo 64 titles at the time. Though it was included in the Rare Replay compilation a few years ago, no remaster – or even a sequel – has been attempted, which is a shame. If a title like Jet Force Gemini were to launch today it would undoubtedly spawn a whole franchise!

Number 3: Knights of the Old Republic I & II (PC & Xbox, 2003-04)

I talked about Knights of the Old Republic a few times during my playthrough of Jedi: Fallen Order, because some aspects of the two titles are comparable. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I didn’t enjoy the Star Wars prequels, and the first two films were especially bad. But in the aftermath of Attack of the Clones I got to have two of my favourite ever Star Wars experiences – these two games.

With all the discussion around a Mass Effect remaster, Bioware’s Star Wars game hasn’t been mentioned. But it should be – both Knights of the Old Republic and its Obsidian-developed sequel are phenomenal. The Star Wars franchise has struggled to break away from its original trilogy and characters for a long time, but Knights of the Old Republic took a genuinely original and interesting setting and told a story that took place millennia before the films. These games did wonders for the Star Wars brand at a time when two crap films had tarnished it, and playing them again but with the enhanced graphics of a title like Jedi: Fallen Order would be amazing.

(A KOTOR remake was subsequently announced in 2021!)

Number 4: Blue Stinger (Dreamcast, 1999)

Protagonist Eliot explores Dinosaur Island.

The only Dreamcast exclusive on this list was a bargain-bin find even at the time it was released! But that’s such a shame, because if you can look past the hammy dialogue and silly premise there’s a fun game hiding just beneath the surface. Blue Stinger didn’t pretend to take itself too seriously. Its dinosaurs-from-space apocalypse setting precluded that! But not every game – or every film – has to be dark and gritty; there’s plenty of room in the gaming realm for titles like this.

What I liked most about Blue Stinger was the fact that the game offered a lot of customisation. Different outfits and different weapons for the multiple playable characters all contributed to making my playthrough feel unique, that I was having an adventure all my own. Few games at the time offered that kind of experience, and I appreciated it.

Number 5: Arx Fatalis (PC & Xbox, 2002)

After playing and loving The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on the original Xbox, I was looking for another fantasy-inspired roleplaying game to play. There were a few such titles around, but after finding Arx Fatalis and seeing little more than the box art I was convinced it was going to be the next big thing. The PC version of the game – which I didn’t play – is generally considered to be better, as its spellcasting system involves using the mouse to draw symbols in the air. That extra sense of immersion must have felt great!

Arx Fatalis’ underground setting was amazing, with towns and settlements built into caverns, and I had a great time exploring the dungeons and caves of this unique world. There was a decent amount of choice, both in what quests I could take on and how to go about completing them. While Arx Fatalis arguably offered less than Morrowind, it was a solid and decent title nevertheless. Sadly it didn’t sell very well, partly due to being overshadowed by Morrowind, and remains in relative obscurity.

Number 6: Star Trek: The Next Generation – Future’s Past (SNES & Sega Mega Drive, 1994)

Riker, Worf, and Picard on the bridge of the Enterprise-D.

You knew that there was going to be at least one more Star Trek title on the list, right? Future’s Past (or Echoes from the Past if you got the Sega Mega Drive version) plays out like an extended episode of The Next Generation in a lot of ways, and there are things to do on the bridge of the Enterprise-D as well as on away missions. A team of up to four crew members – including both redshirts and major characters – can be assembled for away missions, and different combinations of characters can yield different results.

The away missions take a top-down view, making the game a kind of real-time tactics game as well as being a fun Star Trek adventure. Some of the game’s systems are quite in-depth for a mid ’90s title, and performing tasks like navigating the ship from one star system to another actually made it feel like you were a crewman on the Enterprise-D!

Number 7: FIFA 97 (Multiplatform, 1996)

Though the FIFA series had been running for three years by the time FIFA 97 arrived on the scene, it was the first iteration that I owned. FIFA 95 had introduced club teams after the first entry only featured national sides, but it was only available on the Sega Mega Drive. FIFA 96 was the first truly multiplatform release, and after the excitement of the 1996 European championships in England I was craving a football game to play!

*FIFA 97* had a choice of indoor or outdoor stadia to play in!

Nostalgia is big in entertainment at the moment, as people look back fondly on the past. What could be absolutely fascinating to see, as a football fan, is a recreation of the various leagues and divisions as they were in the 1996-97 season, but with the graphics of modern FIFA titles. I think such a game would play on the nostalgia that football fans have for the players, stadia, and kits of their younger days, and if it were successful, there could even be a whole range of legacy FIFA titles going all the way back to the inception of competitive football leagues! Can you imagine a FIFA game set in the 1890s featuring clubs like Northwich Victoria, Glossop North End, and Small Heath? Maybe it’s just because I’m a history buff but I’d love something like that!

Number 8: Pirates of the Caribbean (PC & Xbox, 2003)

Ship combat in *Pirates of the Caribbean* was great.

Despite the name, 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean has very little connection to the film series – the first iteration of which was released the same year. Though the Black Pearl makes an appearance, the story is really that of Captain Nathaniel Hawk, an original character. Hawk must put together a crew and then can sail across several islands in a shrunk-down map based on the Caribbean. There’s a main quest involving a war between England and France, and a number of smaller side-quests too.

The player character – Captain Nathaniel Hawk.

The popularity of titles like Sea of Thieves and Assassin’s Creed IV shows that gamers love a good pirate-themed title, and I think the under-appreciated Pirates of the Caribbean could work brilliantly in 2020. It had a fun and engaging story, and was a title that allowed a decent amount of player choice.

Number 9: Donkey Kong 64 (Nintendo 64, 1999)

As I mentioned at the beginning, Super Mario 64 has been rumoured to be the target of a remaster. But the Nintendo 64 also saw the first 3D adventures of that other great Nintendo character – Donkey Kong. Where the Donkey Kong Country games on the SNES had introduced Diddy Kong and a couple of others, Donkey Kong 64 kicked things into high gear by having five playable characters.

The game is similar to both the aformentioned Super Mario 64 in terms of its 3D platforming as well as titles like Banjo-Kazooie, which was also developed by Rare. It had a multiplayer mode, well-designed and diverse levels, and while the plot was pretty basic it was a lot of fun. The game was re-released on the Wii U as a download title, but wasn’t remastered.

Number 10: Max Payne (PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2, 2001)

Despite receiving two sequels and a feature film adaptation, no attempt has yet been made to remaster the original Max Payne. I’ve often talked about how Shenmue on the Dreamcast was my first experience with a game that felt genuinely cinematic – well Max Payne was the second such game I played. Gaming before the turn of the millennium was a lot of fun, but as an art form and entertainment medium, it hadn’t fully hit its stride. Many games had stories which were childish, over-the-top, or just silly; Max Payne was a classic detective/noir adventure that would have been just as at home on the big screen.

The story and even 95% of the gameplay would need absolutely no adapting; this is one game that just needs to be updated using today’s better graphics! The story is what makes Max Payne worth playing. Its sequels were fine, but nothing can top the original experience. Though the game’s signature “bullet time” has since been reused in many other titles in the years since its release, the story underneath the gameplay is still one that players today could enjoy.

So that’s it. Ten games that I’d remaster if I could. In the years since I got my first home console in the early 1990s – a SNES – I’ve been lucky to play many different games on a range of platforms. These are just a few that I’d love to remaster – if I had a studio, an unlimited budget, and a willingness to lose money!

This has been a fun topic, and it’s one I may revisit in future. I had at least ten more titles lined up that could have made the list, and with so many great games from the past, there’s no shortage of options! It was great fun to talk about some games of yesteryear that I enjoyed during the 1990s and early 2000s.

It’s time for Deep Space Nine and Voyager to get the HD treatment

Fri 06.03.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

Star Trek is divided right now. No, I don’t mean the divisions in the fanbase – though you can read my thoughts on that by clicking or tapping here – instead I’m referring to the fact that The Original Series, The Next Generation, Enterprise, all of the films, and all of the new series are in HD, while Deep Space Nine and Voyager aren’t.

Streaming has quickly become the biggest thing in home entertainment, replacing our DVD collections. Even ViacomCBS realised this, and set up their own streaming service. It’s thanks to the existence of CBS All Access, and the need to provide that new platform with original content, that Star Trek has been renewed at all. But before Star Trek found a new digital home, The Original Series and The Next Generation were remastered in high definition and got Blu-ray releases. Blu-ray, in case you didn’t know, is the optical disc format which was supposed to replace DVD a few years ago. Blu-ray discs can store much more digital data – 25GB as opposed to a mere 4.7GB for DVDs – meaning that full HD video content was possible.

The opening sequence of *Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.*

The resulting change from DVD-quality video, which had a resolution for digital video of 720×480 pixels, to Blu-ray, which offers a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, meant that older episodes of Star Trek, filmed for television in the 1960s and 1980s-90s, had to be remastered. The remastering process exposed lower-quality special effects, which had to be entirely redone in order to look presentable at the higher resolution offered by Blu-ray. This was especially notable with some of The Next Generation’s early-90s CGI, which had been designed to be broadcast on the smaller screens of that era. Therefore the remastering process was far less straightforward than simply copying all of the broadcast episodes, upscaled, onto Blu-ray discs. Each episode had to be worked on, and new special effects and digital effects created from scratch, adding to the cost of the work.

By the time The Next Generation’s final season released on Blu-ray in 2014, a combination of factors came together to leave sales underwhelming from CBS’ perspective. Firstly there was the move by many consumers to online video streaming. Blu-ray had seemed exciting in the mid-late 2000s when it was new, but as platforms like Netflix gained traction in the 2010s, Blu-ray just never took off in the same way as DVD had a decade prior. Secondly, many people already owned The Next Generation in full either on VHS, DVD, or both. And despite the promise of remastered episodes with all-new digital effects, we were being asked to essentially buy the same product again for a second or third time. This combination of many fans already owning the full series plus Blu-ray and optical media as a whole feeling decidedly “last-gen” in a world of digital streaming meant many folks, myself included, didn’t pick up The Next Generation on Blu-ray.

I certainly felt, in the mid-2010s, that sooner or later Star Trek would join one of these new streaming platforms and that I could simply watch the HD versions at that time. As someone who had been collecting Star Trek on DVD since the early 2000s (when The Original Series came in chunky plastic boxes), I already had the full collection by the time Blu-ray was out – I even had Enterprise, despite that being my least-favourite Star Trek show! The idea of having to re-start my Star Trek collection on a new format just wasn’t something I was keen on, so I waited it out. And, to be fair, the remastered episodes of both The Original Series and The Next Generation are now available for streaming – on CBS All Access in the US, or on Netflix in the rest of the world (though I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon Prime Video snaps up the international rights now that they also have Star Trek: Picard).

*Star Trek: Voyager* ran from 1995 to 2001.

Unfortunately, though, the lack of interest in The Next Generation on Blu-ray has meant that Deep Space Nine and Voyager never made it to the remastering suite. They remain in their original format, in what we’d call “standard definition” or DVD quality. And there’s nothing wrong with that – they are, still, perfectly watchable on DVD or on streaming. But as television screens get larger and better, the difference in quality between a remastered episode of The Next Generation and an episode of Deep Space Nine, unchanged since its early-90s television debut, is incredibly obvious and offputting.

An increasing number of viewers expect HD content nowadays. With some shows – like Netflix’s The Witcher or Amazon Prime Video’s The Grand Tour – being broadcast in 4K resolution, which is one step higher even than Blu-ray, standard/DVD-quality content just doesn’t look good enough for a lot of people, and they don’t enjoy watching it. On a modern 4K television that could easily have a screen size of fifty inches or more, such content looks mediocre at best, and pretty crappy when compared to anything in HD.

ViacomCBS have their own streaming service now – CBS All Access – which is billed as the new home of Star Trek. However, two of those flagship shows, which people remember with fondness from the 1990s, are not up to current standards when it comes to visual quality, and that’s something ViacomCBS should address.

The remastering of Deep Space Nine and Voyager, combined with their permanent home online, would pull in subscribers to CBS All Access. Even fans who haven’t been moved by Discovery or Picard could be convinced to sign up to the platform if it would be the only place to watch their favourite series in HD. And I’m sure many of them would also give Discovery or Picard a try while they were there – it wouldn’t cost anything extra, after all. There would be no need for an expensive Blu-ray release, with the cost of printing thousands of discs and shipping them all over the world no longer necessary. And I’m sure Netflix and/or Amazon Prime would happily snap up the rights to a newly-remastered “classic” of the 1990s. Nostalgia is a big deal in today’s media landscape, after all.

A lot of folks seem to have given up on the idea of ever seeing those series in HD given the move toward online streaming and The Next Generation’s lacklustre performance on Blu-ray, but CBS All Access should be Deep Space Nine and Voyager’s ticket to a full-HD remaster. The Star Trek brand would then be all together, all remastered, all fully in HD ready for new and old fans to join the party. I’m absolutely certain that, in the long run, ViacomCBS would find it worthwhile. What We Left Behind, the recent documentary about Deep Space Nine, included some remastered scenes, and its successful crowdfunding campaign should demonstrate that there is a viable market for such content.

From a branding point of view, it isn’t a great look for CBS All Access to be offering some of its content for its flagship franchise in DVD quality. Netflix doesn’t do that, Amazon Prime Video doesn’t do that, and Disney+ certainly doesn’t do that. CBS All Access is the only paid-for streaming platform in the world right now offering two full seven-season series in low quality, and that’s bad for the brand. It makes it seem like ViacomCBS can’t be bothered to put in the effort; it makes CBS All Access look cheap. And for fans who don’t follow all the ins and outs of Star Trek, it could be an unexpected disappointment: they sign up, log in for the first time, and choose their favourite episode – only to find that it looks poor on their big-screen TV.

So come on ViacomCBS! Remaster Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Bring the final two Star Trek shows into the 2020s and give your own platform a nice little boost in the process.

The Star Trek franchise – including all titles mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.