Remake it from the ground up instead of using the busted Gearbox port, and I may be interested.

Depends on the story, and IIRC it has shifted with time. But yeah, the general trope is they are stuck in a small vessel, and they offer/are extorted into one or more wishes to free them. Why they are stuck ranges from evil sorcerer trying to enslave them to noble hero stopping their rampage.

Arguably, patches started even earlier. It wasn’t uncommon to release another whole title that was basically a bug/balance patch. See Japanese Pokemon Blue, and all the various Street Fighter 2 versions.