Does 'Remastering' irritate you?

[TheCommanders]

Just referring to games, particularly in recent times, remastering, or updating a game from not so long ago, and re-releasing it for full price (or in some cases labeling it as a collectors item and charging more, although that is rare), seems to me like the developers saying: we are completely intellectually bankrupt, please buy this to support our weed habit which we normally use to fuel our IP developers, but have been running low on recently. Just sayin.

 

[MightyRabbit]

It depends on the individual work. For example, I love the Extended LOTR editions, for all the special features and commentaries way more than for the new content in the films themselves, but when they tamper with stuff I really liked I get real fed up. e.g. the remastered Broken Sword I cuts out the ability to interact a lot of background objects for flavour text, and while it's not a huge deal, it means missing out on some of my favourite lines from the game. So I'm ambivalent on them.

 

[RagTagBand]

Remastering is fine for superficial things. Correcting the color balance, adding high quality sound, making stuff HD etc etc thats all fine.

But the moment you start pissing around with the content, A la that terrible change in the lion king as seen in above comments (seriously the original scene is funny, they changed funny for a shit song? really?), you can fuck right off.

Remastering is one thing, Redoing is another.

 

[Smooth Operator]

It's fine if they don't pull anything radical, in some cases minor polish can greatly improve the whole package but it can backfire in much the same way.
I mostly prefer to only read/listen/watch one version, that way the changes won't annoy me.

 

[Queen Michael]

For me it really annoys me when they do it to music,I just bought 'The Beatles 1' and was completly pissed when i noticed all the songs had been altered, not lyrically but they just put they put in effects and echos and stuff like that and i liked the way they sounded before. In movies and games it only annoys me if they alter the plot or dialog, im completly ok with improved special effects and stuff like that.

So you're asking about remastering, but describing something different.

i didn't know they had changed the songs for 1. This is the first I've heard of it, and my dad's a huge Beatles nerd. Not saying you're wrong, just saying that's how weird it is to be unaware. But that's not a process of remastering. at least, not inherently. There are exceptions. "The Who Sings My Generation" was remastered from stereo and some of the takes used on the original album couldn't be found, so they used other source material. But most of the Who remasters are quite excellent and the original content is faithful.

That being said, I like alternate versions of songs provided they don't try and replace the originals. I don't like it when they try and swap stuff in, but that again is not remastering.

So I have answered the question. Just wanted to make sure we were clear on what remastering is. Or more aptly, what it is not.

The remastered version was released in 2011. Maybe your dad has the older version.