TOP 10 BEST VIDEO GAME RIP OFFS
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Or the basis for a lawsuit, as a few of the numbers on our list today proved to be.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that throughout the last several decades, many developers
have taken notes from games that have come before them, but sometimes, that inspiration
goes a tad too far, and a game ends up becoming a total knock off.
And as is the case with the games on our list today, sometimes those knock offs are pretty
damn great.
So today we’re counting down the top 10 best video game rip offs.
Let’s jump in.
10 Pong Let’s start our list off our list with one
of the most notable additions to the video game industry.
Pong is highly considered to be the very first console video game.
But did you know that it’s a rip off?
Atari initially manufactured this table tennis game, developed by Atari co-founded Nolan
Bushnell.
But Bushnell had based it off of a game that was included in the Magnavox Odyssey, the
first commercial home video game console, that connected to your television and was
capable of displaying three square dots on your screen, which were manipulated in different
ways to provide different games on the console, and came with plastic overlays and props that
were included in your gameplay.
One of which was a ping pong game.
Atari was sued.
9 The Great Giana Sisters The Great Giana Sisters lets you play a girl
who suffers from nightmares traverses 32 dungeons full of monsters, in search of her sister
Maria, who then wakes you up if you win the final battle of the game.
Sounds neat, except for the fact that the game itself is pretty much a carbon clone
of Super Mario Bros.
The 2D platformer almost identical aesthetically, with owls replacing goombas and diamonds replacing
coins.
There was even an alleged lawsuit, an urban myth that claims Nintendo sued the developers;
a rumour that begun when The Great Giana Sisters was pulled from stores.
Nintendo admitted to have influenced the games’ stop of sales, but denied the lawsuit.
All that aside, the game has gotten rave reviews, and has been noted to have one of the best
soundtracks from that era.
Plus it’s follow up, Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams, diverted more from the Mario franchise.
8 Bayonetta While the protagonist of the game is definitely
unique in her own right, it’s the rest of Bayonetta that shares quite the chunk of similarities
with another hack and slash game - Devil May Cry.
With many similar gameplay mechanics, combat system and visual cues, many think that Bayonetta
is a sexier version of Devil May Cry, and actually the superior of the two.
Which shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the games are created by the same man, Hideki
Kamiya, who created Devil May Cry and directed Bayonetta.
7 Saints Row Series Saints Row shares many qualities with another
specific open world crime-driven franchise - Grand Theft Auto.
The two share similar mechanics, similar fictional locales based off real cities, and to an extent,
similar tones pertaining to humour, with Saints Row being more so over the top.
But, to be fair, Saints Row has really come into it’s own in recent years, further developing
it’s tone and style into something much more original and unique, even if it’s game
play mechanics still feel familiar to GTA fans.
6 FarmVille A small indie company called Slashkey created
a Facebook game called FarmTown; an addictive little game that was on the road to success,
with over 3.7 million daily active users playing it.
Then, months after it was created, a larger company name Zynga released a game that was
a replica, almost matching Farm Town to a tee.
FarmVille went on to hold the title of most popular game on Facebook for over two years,
but how the mighty fall.
After 2011, it began a steady decline, dropping to the 110th most popular game on the social
media site.
FarmVille’s developer Zynga as a history of ripping off other games, and has been sued
in the past by the likes of EA.
5 Angry Birds - Crush the Castle When you really think about it, Angry Birds
is a little absurd.
You slingshot odd looking birds into delicate structures and the pigs that live in them
in order to destroy them.
So, it makes a little more sense when you take a look at Crush the Castle, a game that
is pretty much medieval warfare - use a catapult in an onslaught against your enemies castle.It’s
Angry Birds verbatim.
The game uses almost identical game mechanics, simply replacing the assets for more ludicrous,
colourful characters, but keeping most of the same features and projectile types.
Except now they’re Angry Birds.
4 Guitar Hero Guitar Hero was released in 2005, developed
by RedOctane and Harmonix.
Prior to that, the team at RedOctane had worked on creating hardware for Konami’s arcade
game Guitar Freaks for the North American release of the game.
So, of course, they made their own knockoff version, using a similar plastic guitar that
came with the game as a controller.
Which was exactly like the one in Guitar Freaks.
Additionally, the game play was visually very similar, both with meters that showed the
player how well they were doing, with a Game Over if they missed too many music notes.
And had the added bonus of licensing music to bring in rock classics rather than just
feature generic music.
3 Rock Band It wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine for
Guitar Heroes there on out.
Before the development of Guitar Hero 3 began, Harmonix parted ways with the games publisher
Activision, and created its own musical game with the aid of MTV and EA.
Activision wasn’t too happy about that, and boasted that the game would just be an
imitation of it’s franchise.
But it wasn’t entirely - it excelled past Guitar Hero, using the game guitar mechanics,
but also adding other musical instruments into the mix, with a more realistic approach
to it’s aesthetics.
2 Sonic & Mario While this number may have some people’s
blood boiling, it’s worth discussing due to the nature of Sonic’s inception.
Sonic was created by Sega with the intention of giving Nintendo’s Mario series direct
competition by creating their own icon that would give the Italian plumber a run for its
money.
And it did.There’s even been multiple Sonic games that have been noted by critics to share
similarities with Mario games released prior to them, with the biggest being Mario Galaxy.
Luckily for us, Sonic has become much more than that, holding his own in the video game
industry, but not without fans still noticing the parallels between the two.
These franchises rivalries would go on for years and years, even to this day, with reviewers
noting that Sonic Forces has a few similarities to Mario Odyssey, like the removal of limited
lives.
1 Ms Pac Man Turns out that Ms Pac Man is a rip off of
a rip off of Pac Man.
So, let’s back track a bit.
Pac Man was released in arcades in October of 1980, and was a huge hit.
While it was blowing up, three young programmers were trying to break into the industry, with
a company they created called General Computer Corporation that made plug in boards for arcade
machines, which theoretically would save arcades a ton of money since owners could upgrade
their machines with these plug ins and introduce new games without having to buy new machines.
Developers didn’t like this much though, and sued them for some of the games they had
developed with these plug ins, which were essentially knock offs.
One game they had developed was called Crazy Otto, which was a knock off of Pac Man, and
since Midway was getting ansy about getting a Pac Man sequel up and running, the General
Computer Corporation sold them Crazy Otto.
And they re-skinned it, turning it into Ms Pac Man.
There we have it friends!
Did you know all of these games were rip offs?
Let us know in those comments below.
And if you want more videos on rip offs, or just video game history in general, give us
a shout about that too!
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Thanks for watching everyone!
I’ve been Kelly Paoli and this has been top 10 gaming.
I’ll catch you all in the next one.