When game developers want their franchise to move in a different direction, they often create reboots. Sometimes reboots transition old mechanics into a new style — sometimes reboots abandon all previous games for a completely new genre.

All the reboots on this list stem from incredible, classic games. Sadly, the developers tried and failed to revitalize their franchises—even when those franchises didn’t need to be revitalized. Sometimes developers create disappointing reboots when fans would prefer a traditional sequel.

Most of the reboots below imitate the originals. They reuse old mechanics but “update” the franchise with improved graphics and extensive storylines. Unfortunately, these storylines aren’t any good, and they only get in the way of gameplay. Unlike the reboots, the original games waste very little time. Dedicating themselves to amazing gameplay, the originals explore video games’ mechanical capabilities rather than the art of storytelling. Storytelling obviously isn’t a bad aspect of video games, but these reboots tell poor stories that don’t work well in their respective gaming genres.

The remaining reboots expand the original games into new genres. Many of the reboots on this list have 3-D worlds and mechanics, whereas the original games have 2-D gameplay. Some reboots have wonderful innovations, but these 15 reboots only worsen their franchises.

15 Sonic The Hedgehog (2006)

via sonic.wikia.com

Released 15 years after the original Sonic the Hedgehog, this reboot greatly differs from the 1991 game. Sonic Team built toward 3-D games and complicated storylines with earlier 3-D games like Sonic Adventure, but Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) solidified this new direction. The reboot combines old and new characters in a story of confusing time travel, unnecessary plot twists, and inappropriate romance. Characters occasionally have great interactions and relationships, but most of the game focuses more on its ridiculous plot than its characters.

We love the original Sonic games for their well-written characters, simple plots, and amazing gameplay. The reboot sacrifices the best aspects of the franchise for excessive cutscenes and buggy gameplay. Fortunately, the franchise seems to be returning to its roots with the upcoming Sonic Mania.

14 Medal Of Honor (2010)

via ea.com

Medal of Honor (2010) has some entertaining multiplayer combat, but it’s not nearly as thrilling as the original game. The 1999 Medal of Honor has great multiplayer and an incredible single-player campaign with well-designed levels. The original game abandons realism for pure fun. Instead of running at a believable pace, you move at high speeds—which makes gameplay that much quicker. You’ll feel incredibly powerful as you battle armies and sprint through levels in fast-paced, fluid action.

The reboot features slower multiplayer combat and an even slower campaign. Whether you’re waiting for enemies or running from one point to another, you waste a lot of time in the single-player campaign. Even if you avoid single-player, Medal of Honor (2010) lacks the stellar gameplay that made the first Medal of Honor game so popular.

13 Star Fox Zero

via time.com

Reusing characters and shots from Star Fox 64, Star Fox Zero acts like a new starting point for the Star Fox franchise. However, Zero plays like any other Star Fox game. The franchise never needed a reboot: the games already focus more on gameplay and characters than on story. We appreciate the return of Peppy and Pigma, but Zero mistakenly discards Krystal, one of Nintendo’s greatest female characters.

Regardless of its connection to previous games, Star Fox Zero is a poorly designed game. With clunky Wii U controls, weird camera angles, and boring mechanics (the Walker is particularly simplistic and uninteresting), the game is easily the worst in the franchise. Apart from its beautiful graphics, Zero offers nothing new to the series and may lead to the end of Star Fox rather than a new beginning.

12 Need For Speed

via plati.com

Released in 2015, Need for Speed acts as a reboot for the 1994 game The Need for Speed. The original game encapsulates a fun racing game: your only objectives are to drive faster than the other racers and the police. With well-designed roads (which include the perfect amount of opposing traffic) and simple but beautiful surroundings, the game’s seven courses provide endless entertainment.

The 2015 Need for Speed abandons the original game’s simplicity by including a storyline and an open world. Driving around the open city is actually pretty fun, but the 1994 game packs more fun into a smaller package. The unnecessary campaign features awkward live-action cutscenes and terrible acting. If you avoid the storyline, you’ll enjoy Need for Speed, but the gameplay still lacks the pure thrill of the 1994 game.

11 Star Wars Battlefront

via starwars.ea.com

Star Wars Battlefront came out ten years after the previous Battlefront game and excited fans across the world. Trailers revealed amazing graphics and thrilling combat, making everyone believe the game would be an instant success.

Sadly, Star Wars Battlefront disappoints most players. While the first Battlefront games blew players away with great shooting mechanics, excellent team dynamics, and well-designed maps, nothing in Star Wars Battlefront pops out apart from its first-person perspective. We admittedly love using jetpacks while shooting in a first-person point of view, but the jetpacks don’t last long.

With little content and bland weapons spread across massive maps, Star Wars Battlefront feels empty. The game contributes nothing new to the franchise and abandons the best parts of the prequels.

10 Killer Instinct (2013)

via gamespot.com

Whereas the 1994 Killer Instinct features ten characters from the beginning, the 2013 reboot forces you to purchase characters. You can play Killer Instinct (2013) for free, but you may only play as one character. In order to play more characters, you must buy them individually or in groups. Treating every character as DLC already annoyed players, but fans became particularly angry when the developers released a new batch of characters in 2014 and another in 2015.

The reboot also features inferior combat. Both games utilize combos, but the 2013 game traps players in ridiculous, deadly combos. Each hit produces a short delay to make the game more “epic,” but these delays—as well as the cutscene-like combos—interrupt and slow down gameplay that deserves a fast, smooth pace.

9 Bomberman: Act Zero

via gamingsnack.com

The original Bomberman games stole players’ hearts with creative platforming, quirky music, and an adorable hero. Bomberman: Act Zero replaces everything you love about Bomberman with a dark, dystopian setting and zero platforming. You run around square rooms filled with pillars, which turn the room into a grid. Placing a variety of bombs throughout the map, you battle AI or other players in a weirdly indirect manner.

The bombs require a bit of strategy, but the gameplay is far less interesting in Act Zero than in its predecessors. Instead of throwing bombs, you set bombs in plain view where players can easily avoid them.

Bomberman himself—as well as the levels he runs through—looks awful. Act Zero lacks color or charm. The game tries to look “cool,” but the colorless sci-fi setting bores players and infuriates Bomberman fans.

8 Prey (2017)

Prey opening

Combining the weapons and combat of Half-Life with its own innovative sci-fi mechanics, Prey (2006) wonderfully expanded the first-person shooter genre. Portals and multiple gravitational directions are just a glimpse of the game’s brilliant mechanics. Prey makes full use of its sci-fi world, leading to extremely entertaining gameplay.

The 2017 reboot, on the other hand, possesses very few innovations. You move at a slower pace through a larger world, producing a frustratingly slow-paced experience. Prey (2017) admittedly has amazing enemies. With blurry bodies that seem to exist between dimensions, the aliens look amazing and original. Apart from that, the reboot fails to revitalize the sci-fi genre like the previous game.

7 The Legend Of Spyro: A New Beginning

via youtube.com (Rabbit OST)

The original Spyro games have problems like mediocre voice-acting and occasionally clunky mechanics, but they are far better than the Legend of Spyro reboot. As a collectathon series, Spyro focuses more on exploration and quirky, fun missions than combat and story. The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, on the other hand, places Spyro within a story-driven action-adventure game. With repetitive combat, uninteresting plot, and a generic world, A New Beginning abandons everything that made the Spyro games so fun.

In addition to its boring gameplay, A New Beginning features terrible voice-acting. Celebrities like Elijah Wood (Spyro) and Gary Oldman (Ignitus) poorly deliver the game’s poorly-written script. Despite Krome Studios’ desire to revitalize the franchise, the cinematic action-adventure is far worse than the original Spyro games.

6 Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

via mirrorsedge.com

Mirror’s Edge features amazing parkour missions with fluid stunts and combat. The storyline, on the other hand, is terrible. If you persevere through cutscenes and focus on the gameplay, the thrilling adventure ends in only a few hours.

When EA announced Mirror’s Edge Catalyst several years later, the gaming world exploded with excitement. The reboot had so much potential: EA could fix the first game’s flaws and give us a longer, refined, greater experience. Instead, Catalyst feels like an identical game with zero improvements. The new story is even worse than the last one, and the game only lasts a couple hours longer.

You move faster in Catalyst, which quickens gameplay but removes the wonderful realism of Mirror’s Edge. Whether she’s sprinting at unnatural speeds or instantaneously circling enemies, Faith moves unnaturally in Catalyst, making the reboot far worse than its realistic, invigorating predecessor.

5 Shinobi (2002)

via retrogameage.com

Both Shinobi (1987) and its 2002 reboot test players’ reaction time. Enemies move quickly as soon as they appear. Because of your limited perspective, you must react quickly in order to counter their attacks. This works wonderfully with the original game’s 2-D design but falls short in the 3-D remake. Since enemies can encircle you and attack from any direction, it’s impossible to keep an eye on all of them.

Even if you enjoy the 3-D design of Shinobi (2002), the reboot has too many small problems to surpass its predecessor. The TATE attack wonderfully encourages combos, but the following cutscene unnecessarily slows gameplay. Ground attacks and sprints perform smoothly, but jumps take far too long. Shinobi (2002) could have wonderfully carried the franchise into the 3-D gaming world, but only half the game’s mechanics work well.

4 Space Raiders

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Several franchises shifted from 2-D to 3-D graphics during the 1990s and early 2000s. While this shift benefitted some games, it ruined others—particularly Space Raiders. The 1978 Space Invaders uses simplistic controls and graphics to produce amazing combat, but Space Raiders spreads itself too thin. The new weapons and powers aren’t very fun, and the three playable characters play so similarly that there’s no point in trying them all.

While Space Invaders focuses entirely on combat, Space Raiders mistakenly pays more attention to story and visuals. The lengthy cutscenes waste our time with an insignificant plot (why would you ever want a plot for a Space Invaders game?), and the 3-D graphics feel out of place since combat takes place on a single, 2-D plane.

3 GoldenEye 007 (2010)

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GoldenEye 007 (2010) imitates its 1997 counterpart in many ways. Both include the voices and faces of current James Bond actors (Pierce Brosnan in 1997 and Daniel Craig in 2010). Both have amazing music within a first-person shooter—but the 2010 game feels like any other shooter. The 1997 game advanced the shooter genre, giving us smooth mechanics and thrilling missions. Trusting the player with difficult tasks and little direction, GoldenEye 007 (1997) focuses on player interaction.

The 2010 reboot forces players through linear stages and “epic” cinematic sequences. We experience a wider variety of combat thanks to tanks and battles aboard moving cars, but this combat is too simplistic to feel rewarding. GoldenEye 007 (2010) is fun, but the reboot only makes us miss the challenging, ingenious combat and puzzles of the original game.

2 Thief

via gamespot.com

Of all the reboots on this list, Thief is the best. With realistic camera movements in a first-person point of view, Thief makes its stealthy gameplay absolutely thrilling. However, the original game still surpasses the reboot. Thief: The Dark Project revolutionized the 3-D game genre. Released in 1998 when 3-D games were still relatively new, The Dark Project baffled audiences with its beautiful world and extensive map. Streetlamps realistically light up dark streets, while lanterns illuminate the sewers below. The lighting and 3-D maps would work well in any game, but they combine particularly well with the stealth mechanics of the Thief franchise. Even though the 2014 game features good gameplay and pretty graphics, the reboot pales in comparison to the 1998 game.

1 Turok

via torrents-gamespc.com

Despite their similarities, the 1997 N64 game, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, plays much more smoothly than its 2008 reboot, Turok. Both pit you against dinosaurs and men, but the first game makes those enemies powerful and terrifying. In the reboot, both you and your enemies move at an incredibly slow pace. Enemies only move quickly once you’ve killed them: if you run into a corpse—even the large corpse of a dinosaur—it moves with you like a weightless ragdoll. Turok strives for realistic graphics and movements, so the corpses’ bizarre physics contradict the rest of the game.

The reboot also looks much worse than Turok: Dinosaur Hunter despite the improved graphics engine. The N64 game uses color and varied environments to visually entertain you; Turok places you in a bland, unchanging environment. With terrible aesthetics and mechanics, Turok is inferior to the 1997 game in every way.