Scare Me Once? Great Game. Scare Me Twice? Great Remake.

Die-hard fans wanted the floating spaceship of their nightmares, one stocked with mutilated zombies, improvised blowtorches and zero-gravity spectacles. The fictional engineer Isaac Clarke navigated this ramshackle vessel in Dead Space, the popular survival horror video game from 2008 that spawned two sequels.

But when developers at Motive Studios, a division of Electronic Arts based in Montreal, revisited the original for a planned remake nearly 15 years later, something was amiss.

What players remembered as terrifying seemed almost campy by modern standards because of technological advancements to graphics and artificial intelligence that have made gaming more immersive. The developers realized they would need to start from scratch, dismantling the spaceship, redesigning the zombies — known as necromorphs — and constructing new story lines.

“We don’t necessarily want to recreate the game as it was, but like you remember it,” said the remake’s creative director, Roman Campos-Oriola, who previously worked on the Ghost Recon franchise. “That often means breaking stuff, which has a ripple effect.”

Just as horror movies have been lucrative for theaters, nostalgia for the genre has benefited video game companies. A remake of the influential Resident Evil 4, considered by some to be one of the best video games ever, arrives on Friday, and a remake of System Shock, from 1994, is expected to hit computers in May. The Dead Space remake was the second-best-selling game in the United States in January, according to the NPD Group.

Horror remakes need to shock players in unexpected ways so they can’t predict what is around the corner based on previous playthroughs, said Yasuhiro Ampo, the director of the new Resident Evil 4, which reimagines Capcom’s 2005 release.

“One really big focus in development was to have respect for what people loved,” he said through an interpreter.

“It’s not only about making something prettier with modern standards for game graphics,” he added about a game originally released for consoles like the Nintendo GameCube and Sony’s PlayStation 2, “but to create that same feeling from when people played these games for the first time.”

The tension in the Resident Evil franchise, about a seemingly unstoppable virus that has turned people into monstrous zombies, is amplified by its game mechanics. Enemies crash into the player’s path at unexpected times, and the restrictive inventory system limits the amount of ammunition and healing herbs that can be carried.

Changes in the upcoming version include the removal of quick-time events — which required players to mash specific buttons during cinematic cutscenes — an innovation in the original that has grown stale through the years. More controversially, players will have the option to automatically sort their inventory instead of solving a Tetris-like puzzle inside an attaché case — a minigame many found soothing.

The remake now allows Leon, the grizzled protagonist, to place unwanted weapons in storage and customize his case with colors and charms that add minor perks, like increased levels of healing. A durability system returns from previous remakes in the series, meaning Leon’s trusty knife can break in the middle of blocking an enemy’s attack, leaving the player defenseless.

Even the tiniest changes, however, are subject to criticism. After Resident Evil fans criticized a new rainfall animation seen in a preview video, Capcom said it was working on a patch to adjust the visual effect.

Sometimes, veterans from an original series are brought back to help navigate the challenges of a remake. Mike Yazijian was a young artist when he worked on the 2011 sequel to the original Dead Space; he returned as the remake’s art director in his 40s.

One of the first changes Yazijian made was to the environment of the USG Ishimura, the marooned “gothic industrial” spaceship that holds horrible revelations.

“We upped the contrast,” he said, explaining that the lights were there not only to illuminate the path but also to “make you feel like you’re in a dentist’s chair.”

“The lights shine in the player’s eye to make them feel uncomfortable,” he said.

Yazijian went to extremes to remind players that his monsters were once people, trimming the zombies’ fingernails to a square-cut shape to better resemble those of human cadavers. He also decided to shave their heads, removing the unsettling spindles of hair. “Hair is very expensive to animate in games these days,” Yazijian said, explaining that getting the physics to behave properly is time intensive.

One of the game’s most noticeable changes is only possible because of more powerful software: Players can fully immerse themselves in the haunting Ishimura, walking from one end to another without being buffeted by loading screens. The original required players to traverse between sections via a tram system.

For the game writer Jo Berry, the challenge of creating new story lines for Dead Space — Isaac is notably no longer a silent protagonist — was about elaborating on the original to enhance the game’s immersive horror. She drew inspiration from the space thriller “Gravity” and the serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen’s version, in the TV series “Hannibal”).

“Narrative and gameplay should work together,” Berry explained. “You don’t want a rom-com when playing your dismemberment game.”

Several developers behind horror games described their task like choreography, requiring precise timing and deft choices to deliver the terrifying experiences that players crave. The Dead Space remake uses an artificial intelligence program that employees named the Intensity Director, which can inject stress by generating enemies or creating ominous sounds when players’ actions suggest they are feeling comfortable.

“We scaled it from 1 to 10,” said Campos-Oriola, the game’s creative director. “At 1, maybe a light will blink. At 3, maybe there’s a creepy whisper in your ear. Based on what happened next, we might cool down — or lure you into thinking it will be OK.”

Artificial intelligence has been an important part of video game design since the 1980s. Among other games, sports titles like John Madden Football trained the computer to mimic the strategies of professional coaches.

More powerful technology has allowed artificial intelligence to become increasingly erratic and human. Enemies in Resident Evil 4 are zombified humans with their mental faculties still intact, and the developers wanted to make sure the evil villagers, called Ganados, were capable of planning their attacks in the remake instead of walking in a direct line toward players. The technology was also applied to Leon’s companion, Ashley, who was a source of frustration: Enemies would easily topple her and she did little to resist unless the player intervened.

“In the original game, her character had a more systemlike approach where you had to check her health bar,” Ampo, the director, said. “That was one more thing you had to check on all the time.”

Now Ashley’s programming allows her to avoid some attacks and hide behind objects. However, she will not be attacking the zombies herself. As the president’s daughter, Ampo explained, she is not trained in combat.

When all these elements came together, the developers behind Resident Evil 4 felt like they had made a true remake of a classic game instead of a glossy imitation.

“We had created a tempo,” the game’s producer, Jun Takeuchi, said about the pacing of jump scares and zombie ambushes, “and had the epiphany that this was the game we wanted to make.”