The 5 Worst Game Remakes Farted Out By Beloved Franchises
Video game remakes have a reputation for being a lazy way for developers to make some quick cash off an old idea, but not all of them are like that. Sometimes the creators (or re-creators) put a lot of time, care, and effort ... into completely baffling shit that totally ruins what the original was about.
So, the next time you complain about the "HD remaster" being way too similar to the classic version, remember that it's possible to go too far in the opposite direction ...
Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) Adds Heartwarming Interspecies Romance
Pretend you don't know anything about Sonic The Hedgehog and want to learn more about this franchise (like, maybe you just ran into some Sonic erotica on DeviantArt and are suddenly intrigued). Logic says that the 2006 game Sonic The Hedgehog would be a good place to start -- it has the same name as Sonic's original 1991 game, there are no stupid gimmicks or sidekicks in sight, and the cover is just a simple image of Sega's radical mascot doing what he does best: running fast and frowning for no reason.
To be fair, his forehead is probably stuck like that by now.
So you start playing the game to find out what Sonic is all about. And what Sonic is about turns out to be ... frolicking in the grass with fancily dressed girls?
The default Windows XP wallpaper is the perfect place for tender bestiality.
Rather than sticking to the simple robot-busting formula of its namesake, this version is full of what one reviewer kindly described as "convoluted manimal melodrama." You play as Sonic and every other pointless furry friend he's ever had as they travel to Soleanna, a Venice-like magical kingdom confusingly inhabited by contemporary-looking humans. Among them is Princess Elise (voiced by the star of Christian Mingle: The Movie), a princess who has a time-travel science demon trapped inside her tears. You must move back and forth in time to save Elise, prevent the apocalypse, and hopefully stop by the meeting where this plot was decided and check if anyone is having a stroke.
Even the virtual children inhabiting the game hate what Sonic has become.
But the really disturbing part comes when Princess Elise and Sonic develop feelings for each other, leading to an interspecies make-out scene. What, you thought the creators of all that Sonic fan fiction out there were weirdos. They knew where this shit was going.
Knuckles likes to watch.
Speaking of which ...
A Space Invaders Reboot Gives It The Gritty Sex Appeal It Always Needed
If you've been in a coma since 1978 and have never heard of Space Invaders (or if you're under 20, we guess), here's all you need to know:
Even if you've never played this, you're still hearing the
"beep" and "bop" sounds in your head right now.
That screenshot encapsulates the entire plot of the game: Aliens are coming down to invade a narrow patch of land of unknown cosmic importance, and you have to shoot pixels at them until they're all dead. How do you ruin such a straightforward concept? The answer, of course, is "by adding Adam Sandler." The other, less known but equally terrible answer is "by turning it into a gritty street-level drama."
You're not imagining "beeps" and "bops" for this one, but please do. It's hilarious.
Released a quarter of a century after the original game, Space Raiders for some strange reason took the action from space to a series of lurid ghetto streets and grimy alleyways. We can't tell if these aliens want to eradicate the human race or just sell us some premium weed. We do know that the developers were clearly smoking something a little stronger than that when they penned its plot, which involves three protagonists: a teen, a police officer who inexplicably dresses in a NASA suit, and a big-boobed fashion photographer. Can you guess which of the three got the steamy (NSFW) shower scene?
Can't blame her. We'd feel dirty for being involved in this mess too.
She just stops by her apartment while the city is being destroyed by aliens, stares sadly at a photo of her currently missing/probably dead boyfriend, and then decides this would be the perfect moment to take a hot, relaxing shower. Again, that is a cutscene that happens in a remake of Space Invaders. Presumably, if they'd gotten around to remaking Centipede in the same style, they would have felt obligated to include a full-on orgy.
Your face when you realize you're a downgrade from a green pixelated cannon.
Punch-Out!! For Wii Replaces Mike Tyson With Donkey Kong
Punch-Out!! was released in the '80s for the original Nintendo and featured rookie boxer/presumed micro-penis-haver Little Mac punching his way through increasingly harder opponents to become the boxing heavyweight champion (despite the fact that he is clearly in a vastly different weight category). The game ends in a fight against a 12-foot-tall Mike Tyson, who hits as hard as, well, a 12-foot-tall Mike Tyson.
Mario was suspended from his refereeing job after allowing this brutal beating to take place.
Twenty years later, Nintendo decided to combine their two biggest hobbies -- resurrecting dead franchises and shoehorning pointless motion controls into things -- to create a new version of Punch-Out!! called ... Punch-Out!! also. Really? You couldn't afford an extra exclamation mark? Then again, it's appropriate that the game should have the exact same name as the original version, since it also has pretty much the exact same characters. Besides Little Mac himself, there's good old Glass Joe:
Who is definitely part of some mobster betting racket.
Japanese boxer Piston Honda:
Seeking revenge after you left him sterile.
And the final boss, Mike Ty- uhhhh, oh shit.
Good to see Mario's shed some weight, though.
Yeah. That happened. Nintendo doesn't have the rights to Tyson's image anymore (though we can't imagine they'd be terribly expensive these days), so they replaced him with serial kidnapper Donkey Kong instead. That is, they turned an iconic black figure into an iconic monkey, who apparently sheds little bananas every time you punch him. Did no one at Nintendo stand up and point out that this could be slightly misconstrued? Apparently not, because everyone was too busy debating the ethics of putting Princess Peach in the game. (They decided against it, if you were wondering.)
She's already punchable in Super Smash Bros., anyway.
We can't argue with the decision to keep Tyson's mug away from a place where impressionable children might accidentally see it, but why not draft another boxer or, heaven forbid, create a new character? We don't want to suggest that Nintendo would ever be intentionally racist, though. Sure, the French character is cowardly and surrendering, the Russian apparently likes vodka a little too much, the Italian is called Pizza Pasta, and Little Mac's trainer looks like this:
But, uh ... we forgot what our point was.
Conker: Live & Reloaded Censored Material That The Nintendo Original Allowed
Conker's Bad Fur Day is a game for the Nintendo 64 in which the only thing more colorful than the visuals is the language spouted by its foul-mouthed protagonist. The whole point of the game was watching a cute-as-sin little squirrel dropping F-bombs and shooting Nazi teddies to shit on the same machine where your little sister played Mario Party 14: Princess Peach's Tea-Time Rumpus.
Mario? OK, we'd pay good money to see that crossover.
Man, if the developers at Rare managed to get away with all of that under the watchful eye of a notoriously kid-friendly company like Nintendo, can you imagine what they could do if the game was on a console for hardcore gamers? Well, you don't have to, because there's already an Xbox remake called Conker: Live & Reloaded, and the answer to our previous question is: They censored the s*** out of it, the m************ a*******.
Nintendo.
Xbox.
Weirdly, "shit" was one of the words Rare felt needed to be censored ... and double-weirdly, an actual shit was also censored. That's right: The Great Mighty Poo's song, perhaps the most famous and hilariously crass moment from the original Conker's Bad Fur Day, was heavily bleeped out for the Xbox remake. It's a sad day when a giant, sentient turd can't even mention his own kind without the censors clamping down on him.
They only kept the word "scat" by convincing Microsoft that Mighty Poo is a jazz fan.
The Terminator joke was completely removed, since it depended on the line "Buff you, asshole," and speaking of assholes, the cavemen no longer show you theirs while taunting you. Hell, even the name of the game itself was censored: It was originally Conker: Live & Uncut, but they didn't call it that in the end because, well, it wasn't. As a result, an entire generation of impressionable Ninten-kids with irresponsible parents have probably grown up swearing a blind streak, while a bunch of Xbros are moping sadly to themselves because they had to rely on Halo's voice chat to provide all the squirrel-voiced cuss words.
EA Turns Dungeon Keeper Into A Soulless Mobile Game/Scam
Dungeon Keeper is a beloved 1997 strategy game in which you manage a devil's dungeons by basically being as much of a dick as possible. You control a giant hand that goes around slapping demons to make them work faster, activating deadly traps, and torturing people. It's a lot like The Sims, when played correctly.
You can also unlock DJ mode and drop a sick beat on that death wheel.
Despite its popularity, the game got only one sequel before EA Games bought the company, dissolved it, and sat on its intellectual properties. Cut to 15 years later, when EA realized they had a game where an obviously evil demonic overlord treats its subjects with scorn and disdain and gets away with it, and that for some reason resonated with them. In 2014, they announced a remake and released a trailer -- and sure, it looked a bit cartoony, but everything was there: isometric grid-based views, numerous building elements, slapping minions, etc. And, hey, you can even play it on your mobile device!
Wait, this is an EA staff photo.
Actually, you can only play it on mobile devices, because it's not actually a game -- it's one of those deliberately constructed money-sucking black holes that feeds on our wallets and misery. The game is literally unplayable unless you keep throwing money at it. Events that took less than a minute in the original now demand absurdly long waiting periods: The very first dungeon you raid has a four-hour waiting time, while it took one reviewer two days to mine out a four-by-four room. You can speed it all up, of course ... as long as you help finance EA's new solid-gold yacht in 40-cent increments.
"Twenty-three hours? Guess I'll just boot up the original while I wait ..."
In other words, they took a cult PC game with a dedicated fan base and aimed it at the FarmVille market. And yet, there must be something to the game, because it has a surprising amount of 5-star reviews on both Google Play and iTunes. EA were quick to point out that this was evidence that game journalism was just being mean to them ... and not, you know, the fact that EA were adding extra hurdles for anything other than 5-star reviews. If you give it a lesser review you get rerouted to EA's site to explain yourself, while 5-star reviews go straight to Google/Apple, artificially boosting the rating. Hmm, what does a meddling-free site like Metacritic have to say?
Can't argue with the "offensive" part, synopsis.
Gamers everywhere were outraged with EA and their sleazy tactics, and no one ever supported their games ever again. Just kidding, they went on to show 51 percent growth. Yay, video games!
What is it about remaking previous properties that is so difficult? Like that time Rob Zombie completely botched one of the best horror movie villains of all time. That and more in 6 Movie Remakes That Missed The Point. Or see why Little Miss Sunshine and Vacation are actually the same movie in 6 Movies That Inadvertently Remade Other Movies.
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