Super Mario All-Stars for the SNES to me is the definitive way to play the original NES classics. For today’s gamers who’ve been exposed to constant remakes of today, remakes even happened back then, they just weren’t a regular thing. This is one example of them and Nintendo hit it out of the park with this. The visuals are crisp, you would almost not believe that it was originally released back in the early 1990s before its re-release later in 2020. Just everything about this package of games, is the gold standard of what remakes should be about.
Super Castlevania IV is another example and yet another game I put in high praise as a remake. This entry of the series, though confusing at first, is the re-telling of the very first Castlevania game released. They just wanted to do it on newer hardware at the time and do things they couldn’t with 8-bit constraints. That really showed here because everything about this game is nothing short but amazing of a remake from visuals to music to even the additions that might’ve not been possible the first round.
Both of these examples are a testament to their craft because to this day, nobody is touching them to remake them from the ground up. They may get repackaged, but it isn’t like anybody looks at them with the thought of an entire do-over.
The gen 1 Pokemon remakes (FR/LG not LGP/LGE). Sure the graphics are better (and in color!) but what really makes them worth it is how they fixed how insanely broken and bugged so much of the originals were. That alone would make it worth it but also adding a whole new post game that was from a part of the anime we never got to explore in the games? That was exciting and fun! Plus as a nice bonus we got all the quality of life features that had been added to the series over the past 2 entries (which makes a big difference), a lot of general updated features from the series like breeding and abilities, and you could move Kanto Pokemon into future games again as the final cherry on top.
A much needed update with enough new added to make it fun to jump back in, and brought up to the features expected of more modern titles in the series that makes it a no-brainer when recommending the way someone should go back and experience the first gen of Pokemon. I only ever play through the originals purely for nostalgia nowadays.