A 'Demake' is a port a videogame on a less powerful platform. This is done mostly cutting down parts of the game while still keeping it recognizable: they mostly still have the original basic rules but some gameplay details may be stripped down, levels may be simplified and graphics or music may be readapted to the older platform limits. Despite it is a relatively modern concept and its beginning is set around 1990s, when in China and Hong Kong unauthorized adaptations of modern games like Final Fantasy VII or Tekken were produced and sold into the black market, I think that every videogame porting from 1980 can be considered a demake, since they share all of its key characteristics. Sega's Out Run (1986) had a plethora of portings on different 8 and 16 bit systems and most of them tried to keep the original appeal while stripping it down: I clearly remember its Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum ports and, while both of them were graphically inferior due to their limited power, the first one lacked the characteristic forks at the end of each stage that were in the second one but the Commodore 64 one had both music and sound effects. The same was for every arcade port of that time, from Pac-Man (1980) and its legendary faulty Atari 2600 port (demake?) to Ghost 'n Goblins (1995) which had a glorious and still not very faithful Commodore 64 conversion.

A 'Remaster' is port a videogame on a better platform instead, keeping its gameplay intact by improving media quality, such as music and sound effects. While it makes an older game more acceptable by a modern audience, remasters often fails on keeping the original videogame meaning. I'll try to explain this with an extreme case: Space Invaders (1978) or Pac-Man (1980) remasters are quite useless, since, despite its appearance, they became a symbol of a generation due to their formula, which became inflated shortly after their launch and can be found everywhere as basic part of many gameplays nowadays. In my opinion, games that are successful enough for a remaster usually continues their legacy living in other games as tiny parts, becaming just a dull shell that hardly can be improved by a fresh coat of paint.

'Remakes' are ports a videogame on a better platform, not only improving its appearance but updating or extending its gameplay. Probably the first remake was Pitfall II (1985) from Sega which, despite its name, was a remake of the original Pitfall!, with more levels, colors and better graphics. Remakes are mostly a risky labour of love: it inherit the delicate gameplay features selection from demakes but remastering most of them. In my opinion, best remakes aims to update the original gameplay in order to transmit its original meaning again. My favourites remakes are the Pac-Man Championship Edition (2007) series, which keeps all of the original mechanics but recreates the anxiety of moving on a haunted maze and the feverish search for the high-score of the original Pac-Man adding progressive techno music, ever changing mazes, a strict time limit and a detailed 'performance chart' at the end of every match.

A 'Reboot' produces a brand new videogame starting from few components of a previous one, like some of its game mechanics elements, characters or backstory. Since the original game bits are way less than in the other variants, reboots are considered marketwise brave and risky moves. Fans of the previous title usually fears that what they liked will be missing while the others will link the rebooted title to the original, perceiving it unappealing as before. Anyway, when successful, rebooted games can bring more fans to brands that lost its appeal during the years. Tomb Raider (1996), which built a wide fanbase around the strong and sexy heroine Lara Croft, was rebooted with another Tomb Raider (2013), with an younger, sensitive but tenacious Lara and updating its gameplay with open world exploration and cover-based firefights, following the modern tastes in videogames, movies and TV series.

That said, let's talk about Snake - the game of the hungry and stretching snake we probably still remember. Snake legacy was born with Blockade (1976) by Gremlin Industries as arcade videogame. Blockade worked mainly like the Snake we know, except that the player character grew indefinitely from its starting point. It eventually evolved on many platforms and with many variants: from the appearance of a tail to multiplayer gameplay and then to the movies, with the Tron (1982) iconic light cycles. Many of us remember Snake as one of the pioneer of mobile games on 1997's Nokia 6610 mobile phones or as the viral online game slither.io (2016). Snake can be considered a 'series without owner' that had a countless number of remakes, demakes, remasters and reboots that spans over the years, the technologies and the platforms, since its gameplay is so recognizable and simple that we still know the game with its legendary original name: Snake.

But now, plot!

Serpents is a fictional 1990's Commodore 64 remaster of the Nokia Snake, with a rebooted different gameplay change every two levels! Use UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT for moving your snake and... that's all!

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