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Best Clones/Copycats/Rip-Offs in gaming?

Original: Zelda
http://www.zeldadungeon.net/Zelda03/Walkthrough/02/007.png[IMG]

Clone: Alundra
[IMG]http://lparchive.org/Alundra/Update%2002/13-SLES_011.35_25082010_164606_0540.png[IMG]

Plays basically the same, apart from mind-blowingly difficult puzzles and a way darker plot.

Edit: not first, but damn it deserved some thumbnails.[/QUOTE]

I thought the whole crate stacking and jumping made it quite a lot different to play compared to Zelda, even if it's still so very similar.
 
What are your personal favourites from those?

Anything copying the shoto (fireballs/dragons) in an iconic blue or red attire type thing going on. . . (world heroes and some others I can't remember) but none are my favorites except kof series. Capcom made Dan as a parody of Robert/Ryo cos they were pissed.
 
Neutopia II. I'll let you guess what it's a clone of...

Neutopia2-turbografx-16-gameplay-screenshot-2.jpg


Neutopia-II-U-039.jpg


Neutopia+II+(U)-016.jpg
 
The Battlefront series was pretty much just Battlefield. Same devs made a Lord of the Rings clone of Battlefield as well.

Funniest part is when the Battlefield devs in turn ended up making a bad version of Battlefront, because it wasn't similar enough to their own game.

Overwatch is a better TF2, Hearthstone is a better Magic, Planet Coaster is a better Roller Coaster Tycoon, Cities: Skyline is a better SimCity, Stardew Valley is a better Harvest Moon... I'm sure there's more.

Diddy Kong Racing, Sonic & All-stars Racing Transformed, and Crash Team Racing are also worthwhile mentions.

dantes_inferno_ps3.jpg


I enjoyed it more than any God of War game.
Damn right.
 
Great thread!


Super Monkey Ball could... sort of... be considered a clone of Glover 64. Your goal was to carry a ball to the end of the stage.

Gex enter the gecko was a sort of Mario 64 clone too. And a very good one to boot.
 
Original; God of War


Clone: Dantes Inferno


I thought it was a great clone with a lot of undeserved hate.

Funny, I was gonna list God of War as a clone, but it borrowed from a number of games, really, not one in particular I can think of. Definitely some Rayman in there, Zelda, but it comes together to be very much its own thing.
 
Great thread!


Super Monkey Ball could... sort of... be considered a clone of Glover 64. Your goal was to carry a ball to the end of the stage.

Gex enter the gecko was a sort of Mario 64 clone too. And a very good one to boot.
Super Monkey Ball is Marble Madness though.

Of the two Wolf Zelda games released in 2006, Okami was the better one.
Both came out the same year, with Twilight Princess coming out after. Neither could possibly be clones of one-another.
 
Devil May Cry -> Ninja Gaiden Xbox ? (soon followed by Souls -> Nioh)

No...Ninja Gaiden is an Onimusha 1 clone (even down to the talisman of rebirth). I played Onimusha 1 for the first time just recently, and was shocked with how many ideas it ripped from this game. Souls to Nioh is a yes for sure though.
 
Crash Bandicoot is a fantastic Sonic clone.

Crash Bandicoot is a 3D SMB1 clone. It has essentially nothing in common with Sonic.

There are actually very, very few games that'd qualify as a Sonic clone. It's a surprisingly difficult game to copy.

Original: Sonic

Clone: Jazz Jackrabbit

jazz4.png


You were a cool rabbit with a bandana and you had guns and it was far superior to this Sonic trash

And another clone: Freedom Planet

Jazz Jackrabbit also doesn't qualify imo. In JJ you go from zero to 100% at the press of a direction (no momemtum at all, let alone pinball physics), you avoid touching enemies at all, you have a gun... the only things they have in common is the character is fast and the sprite for running is similar.

Freedom Planet is pretty much the only game I can think of that has any merit in being labelled a Sonic clone, and even that is like 50% Zool also.
 
I really enjoyed Salt and Sanctuary and Lords of the Fallen, and they're both shameless Souls clones. Lords of the Fallen got some negative press, but it's by far the closest another studio has come to emulating the Souls style of action RPG. Once I got over the "it's not as good as Souls" mentality I got a lot of enjoyment out of playing it for what it was.
 
Cities Skylines is a great SimCity game.
Stardew Valley is a great Harvest Moon game.
Terraria is better than Minecraft.
Salt and Sanctuary is a great Souls game.
FTL and Organ Trail are great Oregon Trail games.
Overwatch is a great TF2 successor.
 
Resident Evil is probably the most extreme example. I don't think there are many people who think the Alone in the Dark games are anywhere near as good.

Contra
Clone: metal slug

I'd hesitate to call Metal Slug a Contra clone, unless we're going to say that all run 'n guns are automatically Contra clones.
 
Saints Row was probably the biggest(and best) clone of all time. EVERYTHING was copied straight from GTA... well, except the driving was way better and it pioneered the online multiplayer for that type of game.

Also, wasn't Final Fantasy a clone of Zelda?

Edit: Forgot about Quake --> Unreal
 
Sölf;225182703 said:
Only second best? It's best for me, but yeah, a good choice. To bad they never made a second one.

They actually made a second Laundry game. It was even localized for the US although a different company brought it over.
 
Yea, Tekken's a good nomination. Not close the "rip-off" status of something like Dead or Alive though.

Namco did a good job of making it a good and different game, but there's no question Virtua Fighter was the inspiration. Namco went hard after SEGA's arcade market back then, and then their home market, too, by going exclusive to PS1.
 
I'm not going to deny that Cold Fear feels a lot like RE4, but the game came out 2 months after RE4. Is that enough to call it a clone?

Well, the over the shoulder shooting aspect of RE4 was revealed in 2003 I think. Cold Fear was announced a year later.

The game straight up felt like a budget version of RE4 but I'm not really knocking on it. I had fun with it.
 
Resident Evil is probably the most extreme example. I don't think there are many people who think the Alone in the Dark games are anywhere near as good.

Visually Resident Evil games are of course better but Alone in the Dark 1-3 are really good games. They have good atmosphere and lots of crazy stuff in them. I don't think as games they are worse than RE at all.
 
Saints Row was probably the biggest(and best) clone of all time. EVERYTHING was copied straight from GTA... well, except the driving was way better and it pioneered the online multiplayer for that type of game.

To me that series was always the crappy off-brand GTA until they changed the formula in SR4. I loved that game. One of the crucial changes for me was that they made driving unnecessary by giving you superpowers.

All the SR games have a complete shit model for driving. SR2 is more like driving a train on rails while 3 and even 4 have just a poor arcade driving model where different cars don't have much feel to them. Meanwhile GTA was starting to move towards more realistic driving models (albeit with a rather slow, boat-like feel in stock GTA IV).
 
Visually Resident Evil games are of course better but Alone in the Dark 1-3 are really good games. They have good atmosphere and lots of crazy stuff in them. I don't think as games they are worse than RE at all.

AitD2 is absolutely not generally regarded as a good game, AitD3 is pretty middling. We're talking about horror games best known for things like running around in a Santa suit beating dwarves to death with a frying pan.

The original is the only "classic" game in the series, and RE1 basically did the same thing but better.
 
R-Type to Last Resort (though I guess LR is closer to a spiritual successor since one of the designer on that game actually did work on R-Type).
 
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