Here's an idea:
Final Fantasy 2 for NES, made satisfying.
There have been plenty of modifications over the years that have made the game easier--too easy I would say--but the game still provides little satisfaction as far as gameplay in any existing form. This is a true shame because FF2 had a spectacular story for its day, amazing graphics, music, dungeon and monster design, and set forth more conventions for the rest of the series than the original. I truly would love to play it on regular rotation with the other classic FF's but it's just too miserable of an experience. Here is what should be changed to the original NES rom for an ideal version of the game.
I would throw out the entire stat up / stat down mechanics for a traditional level based system. While the mechanics would be nothing innovative, I think it's safe to say that us retro gamers still love straight forward leveling even though we've played through hundreds of these systems. The way I conceive of this concept, Firion would be balanced between gaining physical and magical stats on each level, Gus would lean toward physical stats and Maria would lean magical. Each of the characters would have specific weapon and spell options they could equip with mild overlap between characters. Weapon and spell levels would be programmed to automatically level up when each character hits a benchmark level (ie, every 5 character levels, each of their weapon and spell levels would increase by 1 for instance). This would solve the worst problem of the game requiring the player to cast each magic spell hundreds of times just to make the spell viable, along with giving each character a few viable weapon options at any given time. Standard difficulty should be set close to that of the original Final Fantasy release, making the game feel like it belongs between FF1 and FF3 (satisfying us old school purists), but we could also have a double xp / gil optional patch for all the folks who hate grinding.
That's my pitch. I'd love to be involved in the concepts / balancing / bug testing if anyone wanted to take this on. Even if not,I'd simply love the chance to enjoy this game for once.
Thanks for listening!