7 Worst Remasters That Ruined Beloved Games

Remastering a game seems straightforward: you take an old game, make it better, and then money comes out. But a bunch of publishers forgot about the “make it better” part, instead choosing to make a game worse in the process of updating it for modern audiences, whether through weird new graphics or botched gameplay updates. Just contemplate these seven times remasters actively made beloved games worse. Enjoy, and yes, Grand Theft Auto, this was inspired by you. Item one. Get ready.

---

Outside Xbox brings you daily videos about videogames, especially Xbox games. Join us for new gameplay, original videos, previews, lists, Show of the Week and other things (ask us about the other things).

Thanks for watching and be excellent to each other in the comments.

#7things #outsidexbox

[HOTD_]

The worst part about a lot of these remasters, especially GTA "Definitive Edition", is that it's active cultural erasure. Often the original versions are delisted from online stores once the remasters come out. It's the video game equivalent of if someone repainted the Mona Lisa and then took away the original painting so all anyone could see going forward was the repaint. Utterly reprehensible.

[orbitwhitegum]

One of the most influential things that the original Monkey Island games did was give us countless list items from Andy

[konstantinkh]

Honestly, Monkey Island games get a pass from me for including the option to just toggle to the original on the fly. That was a solid move, and from there, they can take whatever licenses they want with the "upscaled" version. It still lets you enjoy the old game the way it played on the old systems without having to figure out how to configure DOS Box or the like, and that's honestly a win in my books.

[sinteleon]

Think Conker's Bad Fur Day should get an honourable mention, for implementing censorship into a game that's about being vulgar. That and some of the animations were completely butchered/non-existant in the reloaded version.

[cognitivefailure]

Surprised there was no mention of the music purged from the GTA remasters. Listening to classic songs while cruising in your car is an essential part of these games. To be fair that's nothing new, it happens every time a game with licensed music is updated -- but it's obviously not an improvement.

[madanotap]

Man, I wonder what possible recent events could have inspired this list? It could have been… Oh. I literally didn’t get finished writing this comment before Andy outright said it…

[EGRJ]

Wind Waker HD showed how to update a cel-shaded, stylized game, and Telltale has several examples of those games, so it's not like the XIII developers have any real excuse. Some people think they were going for the Fortnite look, because that game's audience are well-known for their love of single-player thriller-inspired FPSes from 2003. /s

[jamillefrancisco]

Kudos to GTA for releasing such a disastrous remaster it inspired a whole list to be compiled

[gorimbaud]

Honestly, I really liked the new art style on the Monkey Island remasters. It was a really nice fit for the tone of the games. Plus, given that you could toggle back to the original pixel art (which i frequently did because i wanted to see how everything looked in the original), it's a total non-issue.

[MrTomFTW]

Personally I thought the Monkey Island remasters were really good. The art had a good Lucasarts quirkyness to them that reminded me of the likes of Full Throttle and the control scheme made a lot of sense. Also that grog puzzle wasn't difficult as you could just press "I" to open the inventory.

Anyway, replayed them both this year. Both still great games.

[TransSappho]

Can’t believe you didn’t mention the GTA remastered bug that made cars get progressively wider if you fishtailed them back and forth

[TheDan]

_“Imagine if, when they rebooted_ Robocop, _they also made it so you could never stream the original movie.”_

_[Transition to a segment about “Special Editions” of LucasArts games]_

I can think of three _non-hypothetical_ film examples that would lend themselves to a segue here.

_[Andy mentions the ghost of Hayden Christensen.]_

There they are.

[ectofriend]

The Monkey Island remakes aren't as bad as you're making them out to me, and at least they had the courtesy to let you switch to the old games if you wanted to.

[ryssalsief]

10:37 you know what Nintendo could probs do to fix this, is add a function to turn this on and off and give players a choice of whether they wanna breeze through the game or have a challenge. The Xenoblade chronicles definitive edition did something like this by adding Casual Mode, which makes the game easier for players who wanna just go through the story and not have to grind levels

[captainsemicolon]

I personally thought the new Monkey Islands were very well done and thought the art was excellent. The only bit I do agree with was the grog puzzle which I did have to switch back to the classic mode to complete

[spookyghostwriter]

As a warcraft 3 fan, let’s just say that even the new textures were pretty hated.

There was one particular professional tournament where they had to play the same game three times because one of the computers just kept crashing. Pros hated the graphics for the strain it put on the computers, fans hated watching the cheesy animations, and now the entire professional scene is also dead because blizzard pulled funding.

F.

[victoriousf.i.g.]

Let's not forget Skyrim Anniversary Edition, which added in all the Creation Club extras, improved graphics for current gen users, and made it impossible to play the game via the black screen loading glitch. I got to experience this personally and, while the black screen glitch was patched, that same patch now causes graphical glitches that regularly crash the game, rendering it equally unplayable.
Bethesda finally did it. They managed the perfect Skyrim re-release: One that doesn't let you play Skyrim.

[MoostachedSaiyanPrince]

The "definitive" GTA Trilogy was handled by Grove Street Games, the same group of incompetents that handled the ports of GTA San Andreas to the Xbox 360 and mobile. And they used these garbage ports that were already known to be notoriously bad as the base for the "Definitive" Trilogy, seemingly without fixing any of the problems those ports had. I'm not saying Rockstar is blameless though, in fact, I'm saying the opposite because the trash tier studio they put on this project already had the track record to prove that they either didn't have the ability to deliver a good game, or simply didn't care to do so. It's ALL their faults, so screw them.

[Giga-lemesh]

“When you gran’s been pressing buttons on her tv remote, and you have to go round and fix it” this is extremely relatable to me 😂🤦‍♀️

[SinistralWolf]

The worst thing about the EXP Share in BDSP is the code is in the game for it to be an option to have it on or off, but they made it so the player can't see that and it's always on instead of being a choice.