Highlights
- Many classic video game franchises have been given a second chance through remakes or reboots, with some achieving success after multiple attempts.
- Franchises like Wolfenstein, The Legend of Zelda, and Call of Duty have experienced multiple reboots throughout their history, with varying levels of success.
- The Doom franchise has seen both a successful reboot in 2016 and a previous reboot with Doom 3, showcasing the ability to reset the series and tell a fresh version of the story. The Final Fantasy series, while not strictly rebooted, has introduced new universes and spin-offs, offering a variety of different stories within the franchise. Similarly, Tomb Raider has undergone multiple reboots, reimagining Lara Croft’s origins and changing the focus of the franchise.
The world of video games is in constant flux, with many franchises trying to find new ways to continue being interesting for public consumption. Despite there being some franchises that are able to keep innovating across decades to stay at the top of the gaming industry, there are plenty of others that aren’t able to achieve this and have faded into history at times over the years.
With the current fad of remakes, many classic video game franchises are getting a second chance at life. But over the years, it is usually more popular to completely reboot a franchise that has been failing, in an attempt to try a bold new direction with it. Oftentimes, this doesn’t work, but certain franchises are happy to just keep rebooting as often as it takes to find a successful hit.
6 Wolfenstein
The Wolfenstein franchise is actually one of the longest-running game franchises in history, despite generally being released to much less acclaim than other franchises that have been around for that length of time. One of the first ever FPS games in existence, Wolfenstein was also one of the first ever video games to get a reboot, with Return to Wolfenstein rebooting many elements of the original franchise.
Since then, the franchise has been rebooted twice more. A game simply called Wolfenstein was released in 2009, which acted as a modernized reworking of many elements of the franchise, taking on the feel of games more like Call of Duty. After this disappointment though, another remake, adding even more modern elements and focusing more on narrative aspects, was released in 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order. This reboot was more popular and managed to garner some success in addition to multiple sequels. Wolfenstein finally regained the level of acclaim it had in the 1980s with some of the original games in the franchise, even though it took a long time and a lot of reboots to get back there.
5 The Legend Of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda is a strange franchise, telling different stories of heroes all called Link, usually involving other similar characters like Princess Zelda and Ganondorf. However, given the fact that the hero and all the characters are completely different in many different tellings of the story, it is difficult to not call these many different stories reboots of the original franchise.
With the release of Breath of the Wild, the entire Zelda timeline is a bit more conclusive than it ever has been before. Even so, the different heroes that have saved Hyrule over the years feel more like reboots of the franchise than any kind of continuation. For this reason, many Zelda games are great jumping-on points, and while there are some games that are sequels to earlier games or continue the story of that same Link, most of the entries in the franchise have taken the approach of a completely fresh slate, just like a remake.
4 Call Of Duty
Call of Duty is a franchise that has always attempted to find new ways to retread old ground. Instead of exploring further into the past of war, they chose to go over the same World War II battles a number of times, and now have added a remade trilogy of the Modern Warfare games to their history of bringing up their own past as opposed to other areas of humanity’s past with war.
After heading for a period into the future with entries like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, the franchise returned to its roots and made Call of Duty WWII, which went over many of the same events as Call of Duty: World At War, while the remade Modern Warfare trilogy was a full reboot which even included many of the same characters as Captain Price as the original Modern Warfare trilogy which made for some of the original hugely popular entries in the franchise. What’s even stranger is that there could be more reboots on the way.
3 Doom
Doom has had one of the best resurgences through a reboot of any video game franchise. One of the major series for which the rise of FPS is credited, Doom was rebooted in 2016 to great success. The updated, modern style that retained many of the story aspects from the older games in addition to the violent nature of the franchise made for a phenomenal game. The sequel to that reboot, Doom: Eternal, has been hailed by some critics as one of the greatest and most original FPS games of all time, an impressive accolade.
However, many fans, especially those newer to the franchise, will have completely forgotten that Doom 3 was actually a reboot of the series as well. Completely ignoring the events of the previous games, Doom 3 sets the series on the familiar planet of Mars and pits a space marine against hordes of demons who are seeking to escape onto Mars and onwards to Earth from the facility they have taken over. Each telling of the Doom story is similar, but the franchise has been totally reset on multiple occasions in order to tell a fresh version of this tale, which could happen again soon with some new inspiration.
2 Final Fantasy
Though Final Fantasy has never had a game that is a strict rebooting of the franchise, every new entry tells a different story entirely, the chronology of the JRPG series going completely out of the window. Since there are spin-off games and various entries set within the same worlds and universes though, it is clear that the Final Fantasy franchise has had a variety of real reboots with the addition of completely new universes in some timeless ways.
The Final Fantasy franchise and the amazing different universes, friends, and foes that have been introduced throughout have influenced the gaming industry in some incredible and wide-reaching ways. There are few fans that are die-hard enough to have experienced every incarnation of this franchise, now on its sixteenth main entry in addition to a huge variety of other media surrounding the most successful and beloved games.
1 Tomb Raider
Lara Croft has become one of the best-known protagonists in gaming history. As such, given the longevity of her character, it is hardly surprising that her history has been completely reset on multiple occasions over the years. The most surprising thing is just how relatively short the time between remakes was, the first being Tomb Raider: Legend, released in 2006. This was a re-imagining of Lara’s origins, detailing her quest to hunt down the infamous sword of Excalibur.
This was only the first time though, and another reboot would follow in the more successful 2013 Tomb Raider game, which once again re-imagined Lara’s origins and changed the focus somewhat of the franchise away from combat, making exploration and survival much more apparent. This was the first of a trilogy of games based on Croft that focused more on this style, which has proven hugely successful among both long-time fans and newer gamers, even inspiring other similar games.
