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Worst of the Retro Rip-Offs

Posted by Zonk on from the mining-the-past dept.

1up has a piece looking at some of the worst blatant rip-offs of classic games. By retooling old ideas and putting new labels on them, a developer can make a pretty penny at the cost of our childhood memories. From the article: "Space Invaders, right? Nope -- it's actually Space Fever, one of the first arcade games produced by Nintendo. Lest certain internet forums break out into a rash of OMG TAITO COPIED NINTENDO threads, I'll be very clear: it was Space Fever that was the ripoff. Much like how America was taken over by Pong and clones in the 1970s, a few years later, you couldn't swing a dead neko in Japan without hitting a Space Invaders machine. The fad was so prevalent that all sorts of imitation machines sprouted up."

6 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Thank god Tetris is sacred! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    You know, jokes become less funny the more you explain them.

  2. Rainbow Arts by Perseid · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm sure nobody cares, but the company that made Giana Sisters was not a "tiny shareware outfit." They were a moderately sized, commercial game company in the early 90s, making mostly C-64 and Amiga games.

    http://www.the-underdogs.org/company.php?name=Rain bow+Arts/

  3. Re:Castlevania ripped off Super Metroid? by despisethesun · · Score: 2, Informative

    Do you really need everything spelled out for you? SoTN and every 2D Castlevania since were the games he was referring to.

    --
    This poo is cold.
  4. Re:Angband - Diablo by gpw213 · · Score: 5, Informative
    And Angband, of course, was a rip-off of rogue, which is about 10 years older. In fact, hack, nethack, moria, angband, etc are collectively referred to as "roguelikes".

    You might take a look at Wikipedia's article

    --
    However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -- Winston Churchill
  5. Re:Rip-offs in the Casual Game space by bVork · · Score: 3, Informative

    I find it rather amusing that you mention Zuma, which is itself a direct clone (gameplay-wise) of Puzz Loop, which already had home ports on Playstation and Nuon(!) as Ballistic, and a PC port under the original name.

  6. Re:Angband - Diablo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Actually, one of the developers mentioned "Nethack" as an inspiration, rather than Angband, in an interview I saw ages ago about Diablo I.
      In response to the guy who considered Diablo innovative because it's real-time -- that's nothing original, there have been real-time roguelikes going back at least as far as this old VIC-20 cassette tape of Epyx's "Star Quest I - Rescue at Rigel" I've got, and it was printed in 1980.
      (By the way, just to taunt those who know what I'm talking about -- I also have the original cassette of "Ultima -- Escape from Mt. Drash." The image doesn't seem to work in Vice's Vic-20 emulator, though.)
      -- mantar