Good idea, bad idea: Updating old games' textures for great justice?

Here’s an “interesting” debate that’ll help kill the remaining Friday hours. When you take an old game, upgrade its textures, increase its resolution, and, generally speaking, make it look “better,” do you lose something in the process? Is the game that you played, (presumably) that you enjoyed, now worse for wear?

Take Duke Nukem 3D, a game that was popular among my dumb group of friends because of the stripper scene. (We were, and still are, huge dorks.) Then, as you get older, you learn to appreciate the game for all its bumps and bruises, pixelated strippers notwithstanding. But when you apply this mod to the game, the textures are dramatically; the game looks different now, right? It’s not the same.

Conversely, consider this Zelda: Ocarina of Time mod. It, too, adds hi-res textures to the game, and yet I don’t have the same “yeesh, that’s not Zelda” reaction to it. Not that I have the time, nor inclination, to Boot Camp into Windows, configure some N64 emulator to perfection, then fiddle with graphic files, mind you. But if I did!

Or what about this mod, the “Celda” mod? It makes Ocarina of Time look like that other one, what’s its name, the one that nobody played—oh, right, Wind Waker. This is just criminal.

Q.E.D.

via Rock, Paper, Shotgun (but only in an abstract sense)