Passion for Pixels: Ep 4 - Rebooting a Videogame Franchise

Photo: Greg Dunlap / CC BY

What is the difference between an evolution of a videogame series and a reboot? On this episode of retro gaming podcast Passion for Pixels, Danny and Stian look at differences between the Mario and Sonic series in this regard, and talk about how much the gameplay has to change to be considered a reboot.



While a reboot in other media, like movies and comic books, is a reboot of the storytelling, this is not necessarily true of videogames, where the game mechanics is what gets changed. While games like Punch-Out and Street Fighter have not been rebooted, classic gaming series like Metroid and Mega Man have, with variying degrees of success.

We also look at the Zelda series, and whether A Link Between Worlds is a reboot of A Link to the Past, how Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS differ from the rest of the series and how Zelda made the transition from 2D to 3D with Ocarina of Time.

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