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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."

9 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. One man's ripoff is another man's homage. by TechieHermit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Everyone in the art and fashion world seems to run around with their hair on fire whenever someone's work resembles someone else's. The game world seems to work similarly. Here's my two cents:

    First of all, EVERYTHING is based on EVERYTHING ELSE. Each of us creates new things by assimilating and processing all the old things that surround us. Our culture is a huge collaborative thing, and anyone who tries to tell you they've come up with something entirely new with no basis in anything that exists already is lying to you (or to themselves).

    Second, THIS IS A GOOD THING. I don't want every new first person shooter that comes out to have some new and unusual control scheme. I don't want grenades to work totally differently in every game. I don't want to have to read a fucking book before I can start playing. I WANT and EXPECT my games to follow some sort of reasonable conventions. This goes for storyline elements, too. I want a plot with a beginning, middle, and end. I want a game that places me in the middle of some sort of interesting situation and allows me to be, for at least a little while, right in the middle of things. In other words, I want game companies to figure out what is fun, and what works well, and produce it dependably. This means studying what already works, which means duplicating to some extent the gameplay of other games. AND THIS IS GOOD.

    Third, since when did everything have to be brand new and different to be valid? We don't suddenly decide that cars are "so last century" and begin driving 10 foot hamster wheels, do we? NO. We stick with the tried and true, with old reliable. Cars haven't been new and different for a hundred years; every car is totally derivative, a "ripoff" of the very first car. SO WHAT? It drives, it's nice, I like it.

    Anyway, that's my piece. People who use the term "ripoff" as though it's some kind of sin need to get over themselves.

    1. Re:One man's ripoff is another man's homage. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Taking an existing idea and improving it is a good thing, and is what drives innovation. Changing a few surface details and slapping a new name on it is intellectual theft. There's a huge difference, and you'd be wise to understand it.

      Most of what you're talking about is the former, and the article (which you obviously didn't read) is about the latter.

  2. Yeah, Nintendo's Guilty Too... by macserv · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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


    Most of that article, however, is about Nintendo getting ripped off, way bigger than Space Invaders. In its early days in the video game business, Nintendo did indeed make clones of Space Invaders (Nintendo's had COLOR!) and Joust. However, after Shigeru Miyamoto joined the Big N, they became the company to rip off: Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Super Metroid, and Donkey Kong are all mentioned.
  3. Pot, meet Kettle by The-Bus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I find it funny that this is a front-page article that appears a few days after the article praising Geometry Wars to no end.

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    Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.

  4. it's ksirtet, so what? by twitter · · Score: 3, Insightful
    this is about serious plagiarism, the sort of copyright-infringement stuff that makes the lawyers come running. Half of these games spawned court cases; the other half by all rights should have.

    The author likes lawyers?

    Three cheers for Namco for not bothering with them for Pacman clones. Some ideas are so obvious and have so much non computer prior art that anything but a direct copy is hard to call plagiarism. It would suck if you could not borrow bitmaps for parody. I'm glad big dumb companies can't claim the IDEA for a game and that clones can be made. Sure, those clones might not have the genius the "original" creator did, but that's not always the big dumb company anyway.

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    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

    1. Re:it's ksirtet, so what? by Ponzicar · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I agree that most of the time lawyers shouldn't become involved, but I think that a lawsuit would have been perfectly justified when it came to stuff like "Hangly Man."

  5. Re:First Psot!!! by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 1, Insightful

    (This is actually a bad rip off of the now famous "First Post!')

    Actually, from the place of your posting, I think the full name would be "First Psot from the Second Place" :P

  6. Rip-offs? by cgenman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You know, that's very hypocritical of him to write: plagiarism has long been the foundation of the writer's humble craft. (For example, that last sentence was stolen from somewhere.)

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    The ______ Agenda
  7. Re:Angband - Diablo by lustforlike · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have friends who play Diablo. I've introduced them to Nethack, etc. They keep playing Diablo. Obviously, Diablo added something important.