Publishers love a remaster. They’re (relatively) easy to produce, rely on existing assets, and if marketed right can net executives a tidy net profit. We’ve seen them done well and we’ve seen them done poorly but the most common criticism of this particular industry is that the same titles are updated over and over again.
Despite its undeniable excellence, no-one thinks that The Last of Us needed to become The Last of Us: Remastered then The Last of Us: Part I and finally end up part of The Last of Us: Complete Edition alongside The Last of Us: Part II Remastered, itself a remaster of The Last of Us: Part II — I just said “The Last of Us” a lot. Likewise, GTA V is already on its third version and Bethesda are just releasing Anniversary Editions for fun at this point.
Volunteering the same games for a fresh coat of paint every few years has allowed some crucial parts of gaming history to fade into obscurity. In that spirit, here are ten games you can’t play anymore: why they’re important and why they should make a comeback.
Grand Theft Auto
The Grand Theft Auto franchise has over the decades morphed into a sharp satire of modern American life set against Rockstar’s inimitable brand of expansive open-world crime. IV laid bare the immigrant experience and American Dream, V skewered the excesses of consumerist capitalism, and the upcoming VI looks to be tackling the pitfalls of modern social media. Additionally, older 3D titles such as GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas have been made readily available to players as part of basic ports or the much-maligned Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition. The missing piece of the series’ legacy is in fact the very first game released in 1997 for the original PlayStation and developed by DMA Design a.k.a. Rockstar North. Even from its top-down perspective, Grand Theft Auto made a splash with its ‘violent’ content and controversial marketing campaign that echoed the moral panics over 2D fighter Mortal Kombat and serial-killer simulator Manhunt.
Originally a police-pursuit arcade racer inventively named Race ‘n’ Chase, the game instead follows a silent driver navigating the criminal underworld across three fictional cities – Liberty City, Vice City, San Andreas – where players must accumulate points to progress. Many of the hallmarks of the franchise started here: getaway driving, wanted systems, open-world exploration and a satirical tone. Without this little racing game you wouldn’t have the vast library of classics Rockstar is famous for today.
Despite the gaming industry’s relative youth compared to other storytelling mediums, it remains essential to maintain access to the titles that have informed the modern gaming landscape, such as Ape Escape and Syphon Filter. It’s frankly criminal that audiences aren’t able to witness such a storied franchise’s humble beginnings. And while we’re on the subject, can someone port Grand Theft Auto IV to somewhere playable? If I can stream ‘Red Dead Redemption’ on my goddamn Netflix, then I should be able to find Niko Bellic on modern consoles.
Spec Ops: The Line
White Phosphorous. There was a moment back in the early 2010s when any gamer worth their salt knew what you were talking about. Spec Ops: The Line was a maddening scream against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq masquerading as a traditional third-person shooter, exploiting its own linearity in order to take huge narrative risks. Spec Ops will consistently force the player to commit heinous war crimes in the name of completing mission objectives. There are no secret choices here: you will always (unintentionally) burn women and children alive, destroy civilian water supplies, and execute enemy soldiers, to move the story forward. Developer Yager also smartly included scenarios where non-lethal solutions hide behind traditional design. Take this example: squad leader Captain Martin Walker and his buddies are stranded in the desert whilst facing down a crowd of angry locals. No-one’s attacked yet, but the mob is approaching slowly. The decision to open fire appears a foregone conclusion. Instead, the first shot scatters the crowd. You could have fired over their heads – and saved yourselves – without murdering the man who now lies bleeding at your feet.
Forcing the player to engage with the stark realities of military combat and American interventionism via the typically restrictive design of the shooter campaign makes Spec Ops possibly the most valuable military narrative ever produced by this industry. Unfortunately, the game was recently delisted from Steam, leaving no remaining avenues for its purchase. One of the most profound games of the modern era cannot and should not be left on the scrapheap of history on account of expired music licenses.
Ultimate Spider-Man | Friend or Foe | Web of Shadows | Shattered Dimensions
Despite the Spider-Man license’s strong footing under the direction of Insomniac Games, the franchise has maintained a steady rhythm of releases for over four decades. A fantastic run of Spider-Man titles through the late 2000s – Ultimate Spider-Man (2005), Friend or Foe (2007), Web of Shadows (2008), and Shattered Dimensions (2010) – were unfortunately delisted once publisher Activision’s licensing deal with Marvel expired in 2014.
I began reading the Ultimate Spider-Man comics as a child, nearly a decade before I approached the mainline title. I found the tie-in game tucked behind my childhood friend’s PS2 and minutes later we were swinging around Queens. The cel-shaded art style and comic-panel cutscenes give the now-twenty-year-old title a timeless feel that helps soften the aging visuals.
Friend or Foe similarly holds a special place in my heart, having played the hero-villain co-op title with my little brother while we constantly fought over who got to play as Spider-Man and who had to slum it with The Prowler and Silver Sable. Of course, Spidey’s co-op partners eventually get an upgrade in movie favourites such as Doc Ock, Green Goblin, and Sandman as well as heroes Iron Fist and Blade. Despite its shortcomings in level and boss design, I can’t deny that taking another look wouldn’t be an enjoyable trip down memory lane. Even Web of Shadows – the title of which I’ve played the least – seems like a grand time in a symbiote-soaked Manhattan considering the rather lacklustre Venom storyline in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
Finally, Shattered Dimensions was one of the first modern Spider-Man titles to introduce the concept of a Spider-verse, a full four years before writer Dan Slott, inspired by his work on this game, would pen comics event Spider-Verse and eight years before Lord & Miller’s critically acclaimed Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse would land in theatres. Spider-Man titles under the stewardship of Beenox eventually descended into movie tie-in slop but the prior run of games helped to establish Spider-Man in the modern gaming landscape. A huge piece of this iconic character’s gaming history has been lost to the storefront aether, and it would be amazing to have them back in play.
P.T.
Exit 8. LUTO. Resident Evil: Biohazard. Observer. So many copycats have sprung up over the last decade, but none can touch Hideo Kojima’s P.T. Originally a playable teaser (hence the name, P.T.) for the since-cancelled Silent Hills, the demo’s iconic looping hallway featured a number of satisfyingly obtuse puzzles that sparked a vibrant community trading solutions and fan theories to this day.
The answering machine. Foetus in the sink. Lisa. P.T. was never short on truly disturbing visual and audio design throughout its 90-minute runtime. The messy fallout between publisher Konami and creator Hideo Kojima after the 2015 cancellation of Silent Hills would result in the removal of P.T. from online storefronts – preventing even those who already owned the title from re-downloading. PS4 consoles with the title pre-installed began selling at huge markups online. P.T. was a revelation: a new approach to horror that spawned an entire sub-genre. Returning the title to storefronts ahead of the release of Kojima’s spiritual successor O.D. would be a fantastic way to honour the original looping hallway.
Deadpool
Deadpool’s global popularity brought on by the release of Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool has left much of his earlier non-comic appearances languishing in obscurity. One such appearance is his 2013 action game (also called Deadpool) that sought to bring Wade Wilson’s specific brand of fourth-wall breaking absurdity to consoles. The level design and environments are somewhat repetitive and bland – ditto for the 3rd person slicing and shooting – but exciting cameos, humorous QTEs, excessive fourth wall breaks, and inventive ‘meta-gameplay’ make the experience worthwhile on balance. Nolan North’s Merc with the Mouth skewers developer High Moon Studios and the X-Men universe in equal measure, smartly mining his knowledge of gaming tropes and relationships with heroes like Mystique and Wolverine.
Another victim of the lapsed licensing deal between Marvel and Activision, Deadpool has been languishing in storefront purgatory since late 2017, making the Merc with the Mouth unavailable to the vast majority of gamers who solely play on traditional screens. This should be a no-brainer given the character’s current popularity, especially considering his recent foray into VR.
Revelations: Persona | Persona 2: Innocent Sin + Eternal Punishment
The Persona franchise has been in something of a remake era (à la Resident Evil) as developer Atlus reached into the series’ back catalogue between development cycles. Persona 3: Reload released to critical acclaim, next year Persona 4: Revival will hit storefronts, and presumably Persona 5 will receive some kind of update in the far-flung future. That leaves the series’ earlier entries, Revelations: Persona and Persona 2: Innocent Sin (and its direct sequel Eternal Punishment) in limbo. Starting out life as an offshoot of the legendary Shin Megami Tensei series on the SNES, the first Persona established a number of franchise hallmarks: a day-night cycle split equally between teen drama and demon-hunting dungeon crawling, as well as turn-based group combat and the eponymous Personas – magical beings summoned to the battlefield to deal damage, heal allies, or cast spells among other abilities.
The North America localisation for Revelations: Persona was notoriously terrible, and given the series didn’t truly gain popularity outside of Japan until the third entry, it’s understandable that Atlus haven’t made re-releasing the first two titles a priority. Still, I hope Atlus get around to giving them both the Reload treatment. I dipped my toe into the Atlus pool last year with Metaphor: ReFantazio, and I can’t wait to start my next adventure with the studio. Why not take us back to the beginning?
Overwatch
The heyday of genre-defining hero-shooter Overwatch was something to behold: a monocultural smash hit that brought together a diverse array of gamers under one roof. Sharp gunplay, inventive character design, layered maps, and crazy special abilities all contributed to a six-year obsession that touched every corner of the gaming landscape. A shame then that Overwatch 2 sucked. Hard. A switch from loot boxes to paid battle passes, the hefty price of in-game cosmetics as well as the removal of planned PvE content irked a large percentage of the fanbase and just two years later nearly 40% of the player base had abandoned ship – around the same time as the 2024 launch of Marvel Rivals.
Servers were shut down for the original just in time for the sequel’s launch and it’s been unplayable ever since. Frankly, the original was better designed, less infected by microtransactions, and fairer in its progression. Reopening the servers would be an easy way for Blizzard Entertainment to claw back a touch of goodwill from the fans.
What are some of the games you think should have made our list? Let us know in the comments below and on our social media!
