During its quarterly investor Q&A, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa weighed in on why Nintendo doesn’t just leverage its entire library of potently nostalgic properties into a swarm of remakes, noting that even remakes of classic titles should bring something new and fresh to the table.
It’s an unofficial policy that has been reflected in several of Nintendo’s remake-esque releases, with Switch games like The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and the Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee offering plenty of new twists alongside familiar elements of the classics they were based on.
“Nostalgia can be very appealing, but it’s more important to be able to create new game experiences and fun, etc., even within remakes of classic titles,” explains Furukawa. “And I think that the most important factor is whether the developers are passionate about wanting to remake the game.”
He cites The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening as an example of this focus, and notes that players “all over the world responded positively to both its nostalgic elements and new features.”
Despite these musings and the success of those reimagined remakes, Furukawa notes that Nintendo doesn’t have any sort of set-in-stone policy dictating how or when it will release more remakes in the future though Nintendo recognizes that its robust library “have been played by and fondly remembered by many people, and these are an important asset to Nintendo as well.”