We’re not in the habit of doing game reviews here at Lungfishopolis, so I’m phrasing this in terms of game remakes, and what makes them good. Yeah, I know it’s still more a review than anything else, but let’s pretend it’s not. M’kay?

I’m so glad that video game remakes haven’t gone the way of television and movie remakes. Whereas the new Bionic Woman might as well have been the new Monkees, and the Pink Panther remake was crap, Nintendo’s “Virus Buster” remake of the old NES Dr. Mario is brilliant, as was the “Pirates” remake titled “Sid Meier’s Pirates!”.

I bought the Final Fantasy IV remake for the Nintendo DS a while back, and having not played the original, I found the game to be enjoyable, and I could see how it had been improved over the old NES version. But Dragon Quest IV went even further.

The first thing you can’t help but notice is the beautiful new title screen and remastered music. Similar to Virus Buster, they’ve come up with a new version of that same old catchy music, and I love it. They’ve also added a quick save feature, which has become standard in many portable games. If you’re playing on a bus or subway and you hit your stop, you don’t always have time to run back to the inn and save the game before you look up to find you’re at the end of the line in White Plains. So hit the quick save to save your game anywhere, and it shuts your game down, but when you next turn on the DS, it loads and deletes that save. It’s kind of like a long-term pause.

They’ve also retranslated all the text in the game, which I noticed right off when I found that all the characters in Burland spoke with Scottish accents. It took me a while to realize that “bairns” were children. The monsters have been mostly renamed too. What’s a Chump Stump?

One of my biggest surprises came when I tapped a shoulder button just to see what would happen. The view, which until now looked like an improved version of the 2D original, rotated. Whoa! It’s 3D! A very nice feature for seeing around corners. And in towns and dungeons, the top screen serves to expand the viewable area, so you can better see what’s ahead. In the wilderness, the top screen is a world map.

Lastly, my favorite feature. When you enter a town, if you hit the Y button, up pops a list of all the shops in the town, their locations, what they sell, and how much everything costs. How convenient is that? A brilliant update for an old-school RPG, especially one on a platform geared towards those with too little time on their hands. I’ll be pulling out this game frequently for 5-minute grindfests.

I’ve also got a copy of the Resident Evil remake “Resident Evil: Deadly Silence” sitting in my DS case, but I tend to play that much less, largely due to its lack of the improvements Dragon Quest 4 has. I absolutely love Resident Evil, but if I could quick save my Resident Evil game rather than hunting for typewriter ribbon, I’d likely play it more often.