10 Video Game Reboots That Saved Dying Franchises

6. Wolfenstein: The New Order

For a while, it looked as though Wolfenstein had earned its retirement. The series actually debuted all the way back in 1981 as a rudimentary shooter, but it wasn't until Wolfenstein 3D kicked into gear that it became a household name. However, while both it and Doom were once the giants of the FPS genre, the Nazi-killing series struggled to maintain its trajectory following the first handful of titles.

Wolfy 3D dropped in 1991, and there wouldn't be another game until Return to Castle Wolfenstein 10 years later. When that failed to catch on, Activision tried again with a clean reboot in 2009, which came out two years too late, as the world had moved away from WW2 and towards modern-military shooters.

At that point most publishers would have just given up, but new owners Bethesda pushed on, and dropped Wolfenstein: The New Order, which kept the protagonist but remixed everything else, and somehow managed to breathe new life into a three-decade old series.