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Clones That Are More Popular Than The Original

R

Rapscallion

Member
I recently saw a television ad for Bubble Witch Saga. The game, as far as I know, is a standard bubble shooter in which you match bubbles of the same color to clear the screen.
It's a clear Puzzle Bubble clone, but with a different theme and less appealing graphics. I actually witnessed a friend of mine playing the game, so I decided to ask them if they by chance had heard of the original Puzzle Bubble/Bust-A-Move. They had not.

bubble-witch-saga-3-ios-1.png
Click to expand...

Evidently, it's a pretty popular game; I've seen multiple people play the game, and according to sites that track mobile games' revenues it's doing pretty well for the developers. This of course isn't the first time a franchise has been blatantly ripped off, and not even the first time this specific developer had success with a clone; Candy Crush Saga is infamously a more popular Bejeweled clone. Nor is this the only bubble pop clone that is potentially more popular than Puzzle Bobble.

So it got me thinking, what other games out there are clones of a less popular franchise? Are there some clones so popular that the original source games are almost completely unknown?
 
H

Hasemo

(；・∀・)ﾊｯ?
If I recall correctly, 2048 has been much more popular than the original Threes.
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
I feel like calling Minecraft an Infiniminer clone is pretty overblown. Maybe at extreme early pre-alpha, but Minecraft quickly expanded off the basic idea.
 
R

rrs

Member
Rapscallion said:
Wow, that's a big one I had never heard of. With Minecraft being the juggernaut it is today, I can't imagine how the developers feel about it.
Click to expand...
honestly, it was for the best as Zachtronics would go on to make difficult tech themed puzzlers instead of grinding out a mining game everyone ditched the intended gameplay for
 
V

vegohead

Member
Dynasty Warriors and it's spin-offs. From what I've seen the offshoots are more popular and bring in an audience who aren't aware of the expanding Warriors series. (mostly applies to Hyrule warriors)
 
N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Rapscallion said:
I'm not sure. I feel like Harvest Moon is a relatively popular franchise, but perhaps Stardew outsold it. Not sure which is more apart of the collective consciousness though.
Click to expand...

Stardew Valley did 2.5 million copies on Steam alone, whereas I'm not sure if a Harvest Moon ever hit 1 million copies.
 
K

Kaban

Member
2048 is a straight-up rehash of Threes, which even the programmer admitted was the case. Yet it somehow gained more popularity as a web-browser game and free app. A shame since a lot of time and effort went into refining Threes, and it's obviously the superior game.
 
F

FiraB

Banned
Rapscallion said:
I'm not sure. I feel like Harvest Moon is a relatively popular franchise, but perhaps Stardew outsold it. Not sure which is more apart of the collective consciousness though.
Click to expand...

HM is very niche and has never come close to Stardew Valley sale numbers, I think the most popular title to date reached 320,000 sold (been a while since I seen numbers though). Stardew definitely counts as being both a better game and more popular then the title that spawned it, really hoping the dev is working on a sequel because he nailed what HM players wanted all these years.
 
P

Primethius

Banned
League of Legends is far more popular than Dota. The latter is a popular game. The former is one of the biggest games in the world.
 
petran79

petran79

Banned
Since Amiga port of Street Fighter 2 was very bad, Body Blows was the more popular fighter on the platform.

On computers there was no Outrun game, so Lotus was more popular. Game included also a level editor.

Same with Gianna Sisters and Super Mario Bros.
 
W

Weetrick

Member
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has sold an insane amount of copies. I haven't played other games in the genre but it doesn't seem radically different.
 
P

pa22word

Member
God of war has always been kind of a crappy devil may cry.

One of the reasons I think the new one looks interesting is they finally gave up and dumped their dreadfully boring attempt at character action combat and seem to be moving in a more methodical direction that I always felt would have been a much better fit than the one they took for 1-3.
 
R

rudy

Neo Member
wow over everquest.. most blizzard games are actually much more popular than the original game they cloned/copied..
 
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