10 Video Game Character Redesigns NOBODY Asked For

One of the riskiest things any major video game franchise can do is redesign a major character. There isn't a whole lot to be gained by doing so, and it can so often lead to the core fanbase being left alienated by the change.

After all, a beloved character's look will be cemented in players' minds after a game or two, and so to aggressively depart from that threatens to take away one of the key artistic tenets of the series.

Though there certainly are redesigns that paid off dividends - cyborg ninja Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 4, Doomguy in the more recent Doom games, Final Fantasy VII Remake's Tifa and so on - it's far more common for these aesthetic retoolings to fall flat on their face.

These redesigns certainly did, stretching the bounds of the fanbase's tolerance to snapping point with their "adventurous" - that is to say, ill-advised - attempts to reinvent beloved characters for a new gaming era.

In some cases it spoke to the series itself suffering to adapt to the changing industry, while in others it was nothing more than developers or publishers hankering for a change that most fans never asked for...

Upon his 1996 debut, Crash Bandicoot epitomised cool: though cute to look at, he was a little edgier in the aesthetics department than Mario and Sonic, and became a mascot synonymous with the irreverent, forward-thinking nature of the PlayStation brand.

But as the series' popularity began to decline in the late 2000s, developers Radical Entertainment made the desperate decision to give Crash a most bogus makeover for 2007's otherwise-not-bad Crash of the Titans.

All of the game's major characters were given "punk" updates, resulting in Crash now having mussed-up fur and, most egregiously, sporting a howingly hideous set of tribal tattoos on his arms. Ewww.

And like that, Crash was transformed from an effortlessly marketable icon into a lame try-hard. Trash Bandicoot, even.

Though Crash's garish tattoos were lightened for the follow-up Crash: Mind over Mutant, it wasn't until the release of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy that the bandicoot truly felt like his classic self once again.