10 Video Game Remasters NOBODY Asked For

The subject of video game remasters has never been more contentious than it is right now, with some viewing the uptick in remasters of recent games being a waste of precious developer resources, while others cite them as important for accessibility and the preservation of the art form.

Wherever you fall down on the debate generally, there are certainly those remasters whose necessity is dubious-at-best, whether because the original release was fairly recent, has aged incredibly well, or simply isn't being treated with the respect it deserves by its publisher.

These 10 remasters, then, all arrived despite few asking for them to happen - or at least not like this. 

And so, while folks patiently wait for Sony to finally pull their finger out and get a Bloodborne remaster out the door - and that's without even mentioning the conspicuously absent PC release - consider that these remasters have all inexplicably happened.

The lesson here? When all else fails, publishers can just fall back on regurgitating their prior successes for another go-around, and we as players are generally all-too-happy to obligingly shove our hand in our pocket a few years after the fact...

There are only a few certainties in life - death, taxes, and Grand Theft Auto V continuing to sell copies by the shedload until the heat death of the universe. 

And so, it perhaps wasn't a huge surprise that, some eight-and-a-half years after its PS3 launch, GTA V was released on PS5.  Possibly in an attempt to skirt the negativity surrounding the "remaster" label, Rockstar dubbed it an "Expanded & Enhanced" edition of the game. 

However, this didn't stop the reveal trailer from receiving hundreds of thousands of dislikes on YouTube, with fans expressing frustration that Rockstar continued to refine a near-decade-old game already released on two generations of hardware rather than focus their efforts on Grand Theft Auto VI.

The prospect of triple-dipping simply wasn't there for most, especially with the clear appetite for Rockstar to deliver the long-overdue next instalment in their epic open-world crime actioner saga.