900 signatures + a source code lost ? So what, it happened before !

Petition update5 reasons we need a rebooted Open World Action-RPG PANZER DRAGOON game900 signatures + a source code lost ? So what, it happened before !

Panzer Dragoon World パンツァードラグーンワールドNY, Japan

Aug 18, 2018

Hey ladies & gentlemen,

A quick note to update you on the status of the petition. We have just gathered 900 signatures and have never been this close to the 1,000 milestone. We will get there and your continuous support will help us getting there even faster. As always, you can share about this campaign, all links are at the bottom of this email.

There was one subject I constantly debate on Twitter and other media with fans.
Many people use the fact that Panzer Dragoon Saga's source code has been reported as lost, as a definitive reason to give up, to despair and not show SEGA they want the series revived.

Well I have always known other games had been remastered even without the original material to work with. But now I have substance to share. If you are interested, please read this article about the remaster of Crash Bandicoot Nsane Trilogy. Yes, it was mostly remade from scratch.
Is this remake/remaster pointed as a game not being faithful to the original ? I don't think so. Plus it sales massively. Same thing happens with the Spyro Reignited Trilogy...
Please read this article. And also the featured user comment at the bottom of the article:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/a-remaster-with-no-old-code-crash-bandicoot-was-rebuilt-nearly-from-scratch/
" I worked at Insomniac on Spyro while Naughty Dog was working on the Crash series. We had a friendly competition squeezing out the maximum possible performance from the PlayStation, and that turned into an even friendlier coopetition on our respective PS2 engines when we actually started sharing some code. Based on what I saw of both code bases, Naughty Dog did them a huge favor by sharing so little. It would have been more work to rehab than recreate.

The code was not only machine specific, authored in a proprietary LISP-based language, and optimized in MIPS assembler with different endians, but also specific to the worst-case CD-to-memory bandwidth limits and CRT frame redraw blank timing. Music was always streamed or interleaved with game data on disk because we never had spare RAM to cache it in...."

So basically this kind of comment proves what I always thought : an old and dated source code does not necessarily help you. We all know the Sega Saturn was a pain to program for. And some choices were made due to the Saturn constraints. Do we want these constraints to restrict what a remake of Panzer Dragoon Saga could be ? Why : for faithfulness ? I don't buy this.

The original source code would likely do more harm than good in the case of a game that is several generations behind and with the specifics of a game like PDS on the Sega Saturn.

So now, you know what you can answer to a Panzer Dragoon fan saying the source code is lost.
1/ not a problem, remasters/remakes have already been done before without the source code
2/ it can be better to remake it from scratch

Usually the source code is useful when the game is not too old. Take Shadow of The Colossus. It was a quite old game yes, but it has been remastered several time and every time, the work was re-used so they didn't have several generations of consoles/programming between each iteration.

I hope this makes sense, we will get there guys. 1,000 signatures are on the horizon and from there, the sky is the limit.

I am working on a small website for the Panzer Dragoon World community.
I hope this gets you excited.
Let me know your thoughts in comment below or on the Twitter.

Keep sharing about us and take care,

PanzerDragoonWorld

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About our campaign and community:
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