This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering a subject that some people from older generations might not fully get, but frustrates the hell out of us younger folks. It’s all about Ports vs. Remakes!

What is a Port?: A port is a direct transfer of a game with little to no updates to the game at all, and if any updates occur usually they are only in terms of control or UI updates to better fit the new hardware. A good example of a port would be the various re-releases of games to the Wii U Virtual Console, it’s pretty much the exact same games with only control updates.

What is a Remake?: A remake is a game that’s been completely remade from the ground up to suit the new hardware, from graphics to controls to game engine everything is new and usually improved. An example of a remake is the remake of Final Fantasy III for the Nintendo DS. It had completely new controls, new graphics and mostly new systems. However the story of the games stay the same, except maybe they add a new epilogue or something like that.

Why is this frustrating?: Some people think there is no difference between the two, generally these are people who little to nothing about games, however for gamers we’d rather have the latest and greatest. Most of the time, sometimes you just don’t mess with perfection. A Link to the Past is a great example, it had a GameBoy Advance port, and it was mostly unchanged, with only the addition of a seperate game on the cartridge that had a very small impact on A Link to the Past.

What’s better?: It depends on the game, if someone remade E.T., the game that was famously buried in a landfill because no one wanted it, people might be interested. But if they ported that piece of crap? No one will pay for that.