Much like movie reboots and remakes, every year video game developers and studios inundate us with re-releases of old video games. Some purport to remaster the original games, others claim to entirely remake them, and some just keep quiet, hoping we won’t notice. Well, guess what? We do.

While there are plenty of re-releases worth your time, energy and loot, there are many more that are, at their core, just pure lazy. When studios run out of ideas or need a quick cash injection, they punt one of these through the system and expect you to snap it up. Sometimes you prove them right, and sometimes you throw it back in their faces and let them collapse under the weight of their own idleness.

These aren't games that are necessarily worse than the original – and, in many cases, they are actually a bit better. But they are all low-effort, disappointing and not at all what we expect. And hey, a few of these have genuinely started out as an attempt to bring a video game from previous generations onto current gen consoles in a good way – but the end result is what counts.

Whatever the case, these are 20 video game re-releases they thought you'd buy. But did you? 

Super Mario is one of the longest-running game franchises today and one of the most commercially successful, penetrating the culture across generations and remaining relevant to gamers for four decades. Part of Nintendo’s ability to capture such an audience over this timespan has of course been the endless merchandising, but also the company’s interest in innovating and expanding upon their Mario offerings.

As such, when a new title drops, gamers flock in their millions to grab it – without even reading the back of the box first. This was certainly the case for Super Mario 3D All-Stars, commemorating the 35th anniversary of the little Italian plumber back in 2021. Gathering together Super Marios 64, Sunshine and Galaxy for the first time in high-definition on the Switch, it seemed like a no-brainer. And it was, just not in the way you think.

Nintendo updated the graphics and the controls, and then decided that was pretty much all that was needed. The games are straight ports of the originals, with no meaningful extras or additional content. To make matters worse, the release was time limited, with both the physical and digital versions on sale for just six months, and this kind of pressure selling makes the laziness of the port even more insulting. Sure, if all you wanted was to play the games on a modern console, maybe this was enough, but to fans of the franchise who still had and played the original games this was fifty quid spaffed up the wall.