Videogame Demake

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Guess which one came first.

The polar opposite of a Video Game Remake. While a remake strives to offer an updated version of the game, both from a technical and a gameplay standpoint, a demake is purposedly built as an interpretation of how the game may have been, if it was conceived and produced during a previous hardware or software generation. This means simpler graphics and sound, and simplified gameplay although the basics are mostly kept, often translated from 3D to 2D. It is often a Self-Imposed Challenge for their creators, who try to work with as few resources as programmers had back in the old days - some even program the demakes on those hardwares - or to reproduce newer games through a Nostalgia Filter. It's also interesting to try and see if newer mechanics can work in less technically advanced games.

Due to their nature of being based on copyrighted material, demakes are usually fan-made and freeware (which hasn’t saved a few from getting Cease & Desist letters); there are also the Chinese bootleg NES ports, often very bad. The rise of retro gaming, however, has made some official productions appear. Beside real and playable games, there are artists who have fun creating mock-up pictures of demade games, often taking the original resolution and palette limitations of old gaming machines into account.

A subtrope of Retraux.

Examples of Videogame Demake include:

Playable

• In 2008 TIGSource held the Bootleg Demakes Competition. Beside taking both major and indie games into consideration, many of the resulting games' titles are very hilarious. Due to a recent site restructuring, the index page of the compo is unfortunately no more, but the dedicated forum is still up and, beside torrents of the complete archive, it’s worth tracking some games that were eventually updated. There's also a list of the games and their inspirators.
  • Gang Garrison 2, an excellent demake of Team Fortress 2, has gone on to become the most popular of the bunch, also thanks its posting in 4Chan, where some users started modding it without consent. The authors, however, welcomed their contributions and the game has been constantly updated.
  • Rock Boshers is a ZX Spectrum-ified Red Faction (the original FPS, not the more recent episodes), so retro it has a Victorian Steampunk theme.
  • Soundless Mountain II translates Silent Hill 2 superbly. But don't get too attached to it, since, sadly, it covers only the first phases of the story.
  • Super 3D Portals 6: Portal as a genuine Atari2600 ROM! Requires two joysticks to be played but the gameplay is translated superbly.
  • S.T.A.C.K.E.R. takes only the inventory management of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and mixes it...with Tetris.
  • Squish is the PSP puzzler Crush, rendered in 2D and given graphics like a shareware title from the early 1990s.
  • Little Girl in Underland, or what may have happened if Soviets found American McGee's Alice and turned it into a Communist propaganda game.
  • A few more recommendations here.
• Game Jolt's 2010 demake competition was interesting since it was focused solely on indie games – which are often retro-styled already.
  • The winner, Warning Foregone, is a simplified Warning Forever that's still quite fun. The competition version was later updated with more features and can be played on Newgrounds.
  • The runner-up, Sulkeis, deserved its place because it's not just a lower-tech Seiklus: while shorter and less varied, it's got completely new levels and situations that weren't present in the original (like the water streams erupting after one of the treasures is found).
  • Among the other games an honorable mention goes to Plants vs. Zombies Retro, a nice rendition of how the game could have been if it was published in 1986, even if it's a limited Endless Game.
• Eric Ruth's Pixel Force series, famous game franchises as if they were released on the NES in The Eighties. Unfortunately they also share an annoying keyboard control scheme (and it can't be changed). So far he has produced three: Left 4 Dead as an overhead shooter for one or two players, and with the locales of the first game reproduced quite faithfully; the first Halo as a Contra-esque platform/shooter, with a few overhead sections on vehicles and appropriately chip-tuned musical themes; and DJ Hero, complete with hit songs from the era. The latter got pulled because of Universal Music complaining about the chiptune rendition of the Ghostbusters theme.
• Ruth has produced further demakes, although they are not part of the Pixel Force series. One is Team Fortress Arcade: Team Fortress 2 as a side-scrolling, arcade-style Beat'Em Up.
• Ruth's most recent game is Serious Sam: The Greek Encounter, an overhead shooter in the signature 8-bit style. It's part of Croteam and Devolver Digital's initative that has produced several indie games based on the franchise.
• Rockman 7FC and Rockman 8FC, which de-make the only two non-8Bit entries of the classic Mega Man series. Interestingly, 7FC predates Capcom's own Mega Man 9, while 8FC was released between 9 and 10.
• Capcom also produced Dark Void Zero. While not technically the same game but a prequel, it brings the action and flight mechanics in pixelated 2D. Many people found it more interesting than the main game.
• The infamous Final Fantasy VII for the NES. Visually, it doesn't even resemble an 8-bit rendition of the original, but at least it manages to convey the story of the original.
• The Chinese Chrono Trigger NES bootleg, even more infamous because it's an incomplete game (it ends after the fight with Magus).
• ASCIIpOrtal.
• Halo has had a demake as early as 2004: Halo Zero.
• Halo 2600, available both as a rom and in Flash. A few cartridges have also been produced. Ironically, it's made by Ed Fries, a former Microsoft employee who was instrumental in bringing Bungie to Microsoft in the early 2000s.
• Not a full product but a Game Mod: BioShock (series)'s Arcadia map ported to Doom 2.
• Bringing Tomb Raider to Atari2600 or so specifics (it's a bit above that, however) resulted in Retro Raider, basically Pitfall with guns.
• D-Pad Hero, two demakes of the Guitar Hero franchise to play with a NES emulator.
• Another Guitar Hero demake: Shredz64. It needs some specific hardware though, to plug a guitar controller to the Commodore64!
• VVVVVV has a list of demakes in its own forum; given its already got simple graphics, two of them had to resort to ASCII graphics. The other, VVVV, is a 4-kilobyte Java rendition by Notch.
• Fallout: New Vegas as a JRPG. Made by Bethsoft themselves to introduce the Japanese public to the game.
• Minecraft users couldn't resist the temptation to remake maps from other games in cubed glory. Here's an example with a multiplayer map of the first Halo.
• Modern Warfare 2D.
• Portal in 2D and Flash, a bit more technically advanced than the previously listed two.
• Final Fantasy X, the NES bootleg.
• Resident Evil, the NES bootleg with a combat system based on Resident Evil Gaiden.
• My-N-Craft, a Minecraft demake made with... Microsoft Powerpoint?!
• Among the countless hacks of the original Super Mario Bros., Minimal Mario makes the graphics as really minimalistic.
• MooD, an arena shooter. The game it refers to is quite obvious.
• Left 4K Dead, another mini-demake by Notch.
• Thieving Racoon: Sly Cooper as a Game and Watch.
• Another Game and Watch demake: Greek and Wicked.
• Donkey Kong Country, the NES bootleg. The graphics are actually ported well.
• Counter-Strike 2D.
• Mega Man 2600, made in 2007 to run on an authentic machine, although it's only a short demo.
• Wolfenstein 3D 1-D. Wait, what?
• Codename Gordon, a Flash platformer made to resemble the first phases of Half Life 2, back when the latter was still in production — in fact, some of those sections were removed in the final product. It's also a humorous take on the game — faithful to his Silent Protagonist role, Gordon Freeman has only emoticons to use in dialogues, and characters tell him the world has lost a dimension. Originally a fangame, it impressed Valve so much they used it as an official promotional product. The official site is defunct but the game is still among Steam's free games.
  • There's also Half-Life 2D, but it's quite a lousy game.
• ZPortal, the gameplay of Portal brought in the Doom engine through the GZDoom source port. See a trailer. Interestingly, the project started before the actual release of the original Portal and was based on how the game appeared in the first videos released by Valve. The authors are the same as Mega Man 8-bit Deathmatch.
• Pebble of Time, a demake of Rock of Ages made by Zeno Clash developers Ace Team as an April Fools' Day joke. It was released with a fake press release from an angry indie developer claiming Ace Team stole their idea.
• Doom Parody, a Flash Choose Your Own Adventure-esque take on Doom with static images and limited animation.
• King's Quest V - The Text Adventure. Which is...well...a Text Adventure version of King's Quest V.
• There are at least a couple of Doom reinterpretations as a 2D platformer: the Russian-made Doom 2D (now remade) and Doom 2D - Knee deep in the dead.
• Wolfendoom. Instead of being just Doom backported into its predecessor for better or worse, it has an original and long storyline narrated in the internal "Read This!", putting B.J. Blazkowicz's Identical Grandson as a military consultant for UAC.
• Pac-Txt.
• An official 8-bit game for Tom Clancy's HAWX 2. It even allows you to unlock some exclusive content in the main game.
• Champion of Guitars, an hilarious Text Adventure take on Guitar Hero.
• G-Force is an overhead 2D rendition of Tempest, the most recent versions exactly, given the Amazing Technicolor Battlefield. Interestingly, it is also based on a little-known home computer game with the same name, dating back to circa 1983, which already tried to translate the gameplay with one less dimension. No more official page but can be found here.
• Edmund McMillen, creator of Super Meat Boy, asked some fellow indie developers to draw title screens for warp zones, with the basic idea "if Super Meat Boy was your game". Among them Terry Cavanagh, who had so much fun he decided to throw in a little game out of it, looking a lot like his own VVVVVV. You can try it here.
• Sewer Shark is an infamous FMV game. The demake by Park Productions turns it into a vertical scrolling shooter, nothing exceptional but certainly more playable than the original. In a nice touch, you can choose to have it look like it's a Commodore 64, Spectrum, or Amstrad CPC game.
• Super Smash Land, Super Smash Bros. as it would've been on the Game Boy.
• Luminesweeper, a GBA demake of Lumines made as a protest against the high price of the PlayStation Portable at launch.
• C64nabalt is an unofficial port of Canabalt on the Commodore64. It lacks sound effects, as well as some fine graphical details (but that would have been asking too much), but the rest is intact from the scrolling speed to the music, excellently ported to the SID chip.
• Even if not a straight demake but a spin-off of the main game, Steins;Gate: Henikuukan no Octet aka Steins;Gate 8 Bit is more than worth a mention. An extension of the True End of Steins;Gate, it is made to emulate the style of the Japanese adventure games of the 1980s on PC-88 computers. So, commands entered with a text parser (and like in the old games, they have to be written in English while the rest of the text is in Japanese), FM synth music, simple line art, few and somewhat gaudy colors, even scanlines. Look at a clip to get a better idea.
• Runman GB is a simplistic one-button game based on Run Man Race Around the World. However, beside the lack of color the graphics are oddly better than the original in some ways.
• Microsomnium is Psychosomnium, a small game by Cactus (of Mondo Games and Clean Asia fame), as a Game and Watch handheld.
• Super Mario World may be the most well-known among Chinese NES bootlegs, due to its replicating many elements of the original. Interestingly, the bootleg has a prototype which saw mass release and a finished version only found on one cart.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2D, a 2D version of |Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. Currently, only Sonic's story is playable.
• Bit of War. Originally this God of War demake was an ugly Flash game but it has been since redone completely, going for a Super-Deformed style and graphics close to NES specs. It is both playable online and downloadable.
• Glest, a freeware game engine for Real Time Strategy games, remade in 2D.

Projects

• Curse of Monkey Island Classic Edition, a project to recreate the third episode of Monkey Island similar to the first two. A small demo is also available. Whether it's a bad timing, due to the recent relaunch of the franchise, only time will tell.
• A group of Japanese fans is working on a Final Fantasy VII NES demake to put the Chinese bootleg to shame. Some footage has circulated and already shows a much better look – the sprites are redrawn or at least well-edited, for a start, and seems to have implemented most of the mechanics, like Materia. Unfortunately, it may never see the light of the day due to Squenix putting an eye on it. Crossing fingers that it manages to reach completion and a translation (hey, someone translated even the Chinese bootleg!).
• Minitroid (scroll down a little), only a tech demo so far.
• Also a project for a Metroid Prime 2D.
• Ocarina of Time for Game Boy Color. Never went beyond the demo.
• Fableous, a Fable demake. May not progress further than the demo.
• Limbit, a programming exercise that won't see any release beside this video.
• Someone is trying to "demake" VVVVVV in Game Maker.
• A project of hacking Pokémon FireRed to create a demake of Black and White.
• Grand Theftendo deserves a special mention. The project started in the early 2000s as a reproduction of a good chunk of Grand Theft Auto III on the NES, and it looked to be really impressive for the system. Then the author decided to expand the project and moved on to Retro City Rampage. However, he showed Grand Theftendo to the public in March 2011.
• From the TIGSource Compo forums, some projects that didn't make the deadline and were abandoned: a NES God of War (here), WolfSD (here), and Rapture (here and here).
  • A couple more: Son of Romeo, a Prince of Persia clone made in Klik & Play, the limited predecessor to Games Factory and Multimedia Fusion; and especially a CGA The Legend of Zelda made with programming tools of the era that never went beyond this video, sadly.
• A VGA demake of King's Quest IX: The Silver Lining. Never got past a demo with audio clips from The Silver Lining itself, and it seems the author never intended it to be more than just a spoof of the criticisms directed at the new unofficial episode. Apparently he's now working on a remake of King's Quest IV.
• Insomnia Dracula, dead project of a Hasslevania demake.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shades of the Nuclear Plant Explosion.
• Sonic 2: The Hybridization Project, a romhack of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that ports the graphics and levels of the Master System version on the Genesis.
• Notch attempted a Java demake of The Lost Vikings, but it didn't go past the early stages.
• Heartlight 64, demake of a DOS Boulder Dash clone from the early 1990s.
• Uncharted Demake, made with the intention of looking like it was released on the Game Boy Color. Some test footage here.
• Resident Evil as a 8 bit RPG (made with RPG Maker), seemingly taking the graphics from the NES bootleg demake.
• Skyrim for TI-84 calculators, although given the limits of the hardware, it hasn't really have much to do with the original.
• Out With A Whimper, yet another Halo with 2D graphics (which look excellent so far).

Mock-ups

• Angry Birds in 1992.
• Atari 2600 covers of "old classics" like Resident Evil 5 and God of War 3.
• Among the best and most popular mock-ups are the works of Swedish artist Junkboy (alias Markus Toivonen, art director at Mojang, also with useful comparisons with the originals. Among them: Brutal Legend running on the SCUMM engine, Bayonetta's arcade shmup, Dead Space on the original Game Boy, and Metal Gear Solid 4 like the series never left the MSX.
  • He later made some more: Vanquish (here), Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Uncharted 3 (here).
  • Latest additions: Halo and Shadows of the Damned.
• In 2007, Pixelation held a competition based on mock-up renditions of known games on the old Game Boy. (You have to click each pic several times to make it big enough). Of note is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as a free-roaming RPG with turn-based battles.
• During the aforementioned TIGSource compo, a few mock-ups were posted. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with the Sierra AGI Engine is the best.
• Mock-up of an 8-bit Half Life.
• This Pixel Joint user made a few characters of World of Warcraft as they'd appear if the game used an engine like Ultima Online.
• Metroid: Other M mock-up.
• Alien Swarm in monochrome.
• Another vision of a NES Silent Hill 2.
• The first Monkey Island on the earliest Nintendo portables: Game Boy (notice the great pun in the title) and Virtual Boy. Also, Curse of Monkey Island on the Game Boy.
• 7th Dragon, GB edition.
• Fake 8-bit demake of Alan Wake. On the game's official forums there was also an April's Fool joke that the video underwent a Defictionalization: there was an actual downloadable file but, soon after the game started, a fake glitch made the player think it crashed the system before mocking him.
• Portal 2 on the NES.
• From a community manager of the Lionhead forums, Fable III in 1985.
• What if StarCraft was made in 1984? (Notice the description.)
• Kingdom Hearts for Game Boy and Kingdom Hearts II for NES.
• A small Game Boy demakes contest at YoYoGames.
• Another Game Boy demakes contest from an Italian forum. Notice there's also Big Rigs Over the Road Racing XD
• Hilarious rendition of how Metal Gear Solid 4 may have been years ago, complete with Engrish.
• Also the first Metal Gear Solid on the MSX.
• From Deviant ART user Badassbill: Children of Mana on the C64, Luigi's Mansion on the GBA and crossed with Symphony of the Night, Ocarina of Time in the style of Minish Cap, and BioShock (series) looking too good for 1986.
• An elaborate April Fool's mock-up of a Game Boy Silent Hill 2, complete with a great 8-bit remix of the tunes.
• The cover for the Game Jolt Indie Demake competition was this rendition of Cave Story with even less pixels.
• Something Awful's Photoshop Phriday presents Retrofitted Gaming Classics.
• The original Warcraft in CGA graphics. Orcs and Humans are distinguished by the two different 4-color palettes used.
• What if Katawa Shoujo was one of the glut of Eroge on the PC 98? Take a look here.
  • A thread from the official forum with some little mock-ups, like an SNES version (something made with RPG Maker 2000).
• Grim Fandango around 1990.
• Pieceoftoast has produced pixelated 2D renditions of some scenes from Half Life 2, BioShock (series), Mass Effect 2, Portal 2 and Deus Ex Human Revolution.
• Game Boy renditions of two indie games: Blocks That Matter and The Binding of Isaac.
• NES cartridge of BioShock (series).
• Pixelized Skyrim.
• What if Skyrim was made in 1991?