Last night I was playing Tomb Raider Anniversary, the remake of one of my favorite PS1 games. So far I've been digging it; its different enough to feel fresh, but I'm constantly finding areas familiar enough from the original game to think "oh yeah... I remember this," which is pretty cool. The original game was simpler--Lara had far less abilities back then, but I think there's a place for both takes on the game. Like Virtua Fighter 1 and 5--the series has come a long way, but the original had a nice simplicity that still holds up.

Because I love the original TR, while playing Anniversary I had to ask myself why the original wasn't included. The pole-swinging, grapple-throwing new gameplay is cool, but what if you want to kick it old school? I have the original game, so I can go back and play it, but how much easier would it have been to just pick it out of the menu on TRA? What about the Wii and 360 versions... what will people who don't neccesarily have the hardware to play a PS1 game do? When honoring a game like this, it just seems logical to me to include the original as a baseline... after all, that's what people loved enough to have a remake of it done.

This same thought occurred to me while trying the trial of Pac-Man: CE. It seemed like a good remix of the Pac-Man formula--something that's not easy to do. However, for $10, I'd really expect to get the original arcade Pac-Man in the bargain. I'd actually say Ms. Pac-Man should be there, too, with Jr, Super, and Baby Pac-Man optional. If I'd gotten the original and Ms. with CE, I'd have bought it. As it is, it feels like a rip-off.

Look at the Dracula X Chronicles coming for PSP, for instance. It's a 2.5D remake, but you can unlock the original 2D sprite mode. And you get SotN, which is just gravy. You see, Konami got it for this game. They saw that they should honor the original by including it with the update, let everyone experience the original as well as the update.

It just makes sense to me.