Top 20 Blatant Rip Off Video Games

Top 20 Blatant Rip-Off Games

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 20 Most Shameless Copycat Games.

#20: “Palworld” (2024)

Palworld took the world by storm last year. It pretty much felt like it came out of nowhere and everyone just had to try it. Have you noticed anything… familiar with it? Do you see these creatures? Don’t they look suspiciously similar to Pokemon? Of course they do! And you probably know that we aren’t the first ones to point that out, either. Although it plays a bit differently to Pokemon games, many saw it as just Pokemon with guns. As it turns out, Nintendo thought so too and filed a lawsuit against the developers over patent infringement.

#19: “Golden Axe Warrior” (1991)

In the late 80s and 90s, original game IPs were kinda new and video game companies were still finding their groove. That’s why some of the most blatant copies are from this very early generation of gaming. Enter Golden Axe Warrior, released just five years after the original “The Legend of Zelda” game. It plays like Zelda, and it looks like Zelda, to a pretty suspicious degree. Reviewers back in the day were quick to point out its similarities back in the day resulting in lower review scores. And honestly who can blame them!

#18: “Final Combat” (2011)

If it looks like TF2 and plays like TF2, it’s probably TF2… except that’s not the case here. Final Combat much like its way more famous counterpart was a team based first-person shooter. Not only did it have the exact same type of gameplay system with classes and similar weapons, it also looked nearly identical. If you aren’t a Team Fortress 2 fan, it’ll be difficult to tell them apart. Even the audio sounds the same! Final Combat was a little more than just ‘inspired.’ They also had their own off-brand imitation of TF2’s “Meet the Team” videos!

#17: “Call of Duty” (2003)

“Call of Duty” is such a huge franchise today that many have pretty much forgotten about its original competitor. Back when the first “Call of Duty” was released, many were quick to point out how the game played very similar to the “Medal of Honor” series of games. Well there’s a very good reason for that, it’s because a good amount of Infinity Ward’s development team consisted of people who worked on the third game in the series, “Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.” Unfortunately for EA, the copycat would go on to reign supreme, whereas the original would fade into obscurity.

#16: “League of Legends” (2009)

Okay, put down your torches and pitchforks! Yes, League of Legends was both heavily influenced and directly inspired by Defense of the Ancients, also known as DotA. While League of Legends was developed by Riot Games, Riot was formed by a lot of the same people who had actually worked on DotA! If you were on the fence about the games being similar before, just know that Riot was so inspired they had to take extra precaution to differentiate their first characters’ abilities and kits solely to seem more original.

#15: “Killer Instinct” (1994)

Look at this sequence. Your opponent is already defeated but you have the option to finish them with a flashy cutscene-esque sequence done by inputting a series of buttons. Does it look familiar? If you thought this looked exactly like a Mortal Kombat Fatality, you’re not wrong! Killer Instinct is directly inspired by both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. But it went both ways, somehow! Mortal Kombat would actually go on to copy elements from Killer Instinct themselves. Mortal Kombat is the bigger game though, and the original, so if you don’t know what Killer Instinct is, you might wonder “Which Mortal Kombat game is this?”

#14: “Haze” (2008)

If you’ve been around the internet for a while, and especially in gaming communities, or if you just followed popular gaming media outlets at the time, you may know that this game called “Haze” was often dubbed a “Halo killer.” As we know now, that obviously didn’t happen. It was Ubisoft’s attempt to replicate the success of Microsoft’s Halo series. It was marketed and anticipated as the next big first person shooter, but it almost immediately failed to do so upon its release as ratings and reviews of the game were terrible. The concept and gameplay are just a little too similar to Halo, but with underwhelming features that just made it worse.

#13: “Need for Drive” (2023)

If you’re a Switch owner, you may have noticed quite a few rip-off games on the store like Gran Carismo. But how about Need for Drive? That name seems awfully familiar and the gameplay feels a little bit like this “totally small and unknown game” called… oh that’s right, Need for Speed! The name is a totally shameless attempt to get people to buy their racing game. The promotional material and images look the exact same, so it’s no surprise if someone bought it thinking that they were getting the latest Need for Speed!

#12: “Dead to Rights” (2002)

In 2001, Max Payne revolutionized action shooters with its fun mechanics and well-developed gameplay systems. And let’s not forget “bullet time!” So “Namco Hometek” naturally saw that and decided to release a knock-off only a year later in 2002 called Dead To Rights. It outright has all the mechanics of Max Payne and is often dubbed as “Max Payne meets Grand Theft Auto” which is ironic given how Rockstar would get involved with later sequels of Max Payne. It has similar scenarios, character designs, graphics and they even took bullet time. They just have different names!

#11: “Fortnite” (2017)

We all know Fortnite. It’s the de facto Battle Royale game, an absolutely gargantuan gaming giant developed by Epic Games. But most people today don’t know it was heavily inspired by “PUBG,” perhaps even copying them. You’ve probably heard of PUBG. It practically invented the Battle Royale format of dropping from the sky onto a big shrinking map, where you find your own loot and fight in 100 player matches. Does that describe Fortnite, or PUBG? Well, we were explaining PUBG, but Epic Games took that idea and ran with it for their all-time classic Fortnite. The more you know!

#10: “Wacky Wheels” (1994)

When Nintendo invented the kart-racing sub-genre with Super Mario Kart on the SNES, other developers scrambled to get their mascots into miniature, combat-equipped vehicles. Konami Krazy Racers was pretty late onto this particular rip-off bandwagon in 2001, coming seven years after Wacky Wheels first hit stores. Released as an animal-themed karting option for the PC, its obvious copying in power ups, race types, tracks and graphics from Mario Kart mean it isn’t a bad game; it’s just not well-polished or very wacky. An innovative duck-shooting mode and hedgehog weapons do distinguish it slightly and add a certain degree of quirkiness, but it is never enough to prevent Peggles or Blombo from eating Mario’s dust.

#9: “Quantum Theory” (2010)

From the very first scenes, the similarities to Gears of War are rammed down your throat, perhaps intentionally to benefit from the success of Epic Games’ sensation. A gruff, muscle bound hero immediately blasts humanoid creatures from behind cover in a third-person perspective – nothing like a bit of subtlety. Even Syd and Filena’s animations look the same as Marcus and Dom, albeit with a clumsier, unfinished feel compared to the slickly designed world of Sera. Further reinforcing the on the nose likenesses, the fathers of the protagonists are almost the exact same character: both are mysteriously absent and have knowledge the perceived enemy have exploited – when the commonalities are that specific, you know something’s fishy.

#8: “Saints Row” (2006)

Of all the GTA clones you have to choose from – and oh boy there are serious numbers of them – the Saints Row series has consistently been your best alternative for when Rockstar are developing their next open-world titan. Released a year before GTA IV on next-gen hardware, it improved considerably upon San Andreas by adding online multiplayer and a GPS navigation system that GTA would soon incorporate. However, some of the staple missions do seem to be imitations of typical GTA set-pieces, taking away from a surreal originality and humor that made modes like Insurance Fraud – where you jump into traffic for cash – possible and a definite change to the gritty, realistic universe Rockstar created.

#7: “Kasumi Ninja” (1994)

If you’ve never heard of this Mortal Kombat rip-off or the hardware it was developed for then consider yourself lucky: it and the Atari Jaguar are incomprehensible messes that flopped with a whimper. Developers Hand Made Software evidently forgot that Mortal Kombat’s popularity wasn’t just its gory novelty, but also its slick controls, which this game is sorely lacking. The Jaguar’s notoriously complicated controller compounds a clunky control system while movesets and color palettes are routinely copy-pasted throughout a slapdash experience. Sadly this game is probably the last we’ll ever see of Angus and the fireball hiding under his kilt.

#6: “PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale” (2012)

From the early stages of development for this PlayStation mascot crossover brawler, the comparisons to Smash Bros were widespread. However, It probably wasn’t wise for Sony to explicitly exploit player’s interest in Nintendo’s similar series by including Smash Bros tags in their E3 trailer. Press perception didn’t improve once the game was released either: most were underwhelmed by a complicated power-move system that put off newcomers, missing the unpredictability of its inspiration. Perhaps most damning of all, the roster of mascots lacked defining figures of the early PlayStation experience like Lara Croft and Crash Bandicoot, icons who could feasibly rival Mario and Link’s popularity. Instead of Sephiroth as the main antagonist, we got 17-year-old cast off Polygon Man. Really Sony?

#5: “Dante’s Inferno” (2010)

You could put the overarching narratives of this hack n’ slasher and God of War side-by-side and barely notice a difference: cutscenes and stylized animation reveal that both Dante and Kratos are warriors whose wartime atrocities force them to gain redemption and leaves their bodies emblazoned with symbols representing their sins. Each jacked protagonist then proceeds to hack apart powerful mythological figures in grand set pieces with a signature weapon – that’s a hefty list of similarities. However, this interpretation of Dante Alighieri’s famous poem starts diverting from God of War in how laboriously shabby the core gameplay becomes in the latter circles of hell you descend through, a flaw that the exceptional, disturbing environmental design could never absolve.

#4: “Candy Crush Saga” (2012)

You’ll be familiar with King; they’re the guys that make “Saga” freemium apps and the literal royalty of rip-off developers. They began with Bubble Witch Saga in 2011 – a clone of Taito’s Puzzle Bobble – before moving onto their imitation masterpiece, Candy Crush Saga. Taking the renowned match-three gameplay of Bejeweled and the art style of Candy Swipe, King added an attractive sheen and strategic depth and variation, all the while using their financial clout to bully any who might be alienated by this questionable development strategy. This approach may not be moral, but it’s one that has been vindicated by over 500 million downloads and the many millions more it has made through players skipping tortuous waiting times.

#3: “Gloom” (1995)

It could be argued that any FPS developed since Doom released in 1993 is a clone of that genre pioneer, but few have been as brazen as Gloom in acknowledging the influence of id Software’s title, using a similar name to arguably benefit from confused consumers who thought they may be buying that gory game they’ve heard so much about. Using a similar pseudo-3D presentation as Doom, the limitations of the only system it launched on, the Amiga, limited Gloom’s graphical capability. Despite the difference in presentation quality, Gloom gets credit for adding more puzzle elements and a greater range of enemies to Doom’s near-perfect formula. Who knows, had things been different, Gloomguy could have become the 90s, monster-blasting icon.

#2: “The Simpsons: Road Rage” (2001)

Despite the obviousness of copying on this list, it’s remained relatively litigation-free. Until now. Sega’s Crazy Taxi requiring you to drop off passengers with as much flair as possible, while Road Rage is essentially that with a Simpsons skin. These similarities were so unacceptable to Sega that they alleged Fox had infringed a patent concerning Crazy Taxi’s freeform driving, jumpy pedestrians and massive arrow guiding you to your destination. Sega wanted Road Rage pulled from shelves yet many critics argued that although the parallels are clear, those gameplay concepts were not groundbreaking enough to warrant legal action. Fox eventually settled out of court and Road Rage is remembered as a lazy derivative – just enough to satisfy Sega.

#1: “The Great Giana Sisters” (1987)

Today we know Mario and Luigi as the definitive Italian siblings of gaming, but there was a brief period when their status was threatened. In the late 80s, the NES and titles like Super Mario Bros. were still extremely expensive and so this German platformer sought to provide an affordable experience for various systems. It wasn’t in stores for long however: Nintendo rapidly noticed the first stage was a carbon copy of Shigeru Miyamoto’s iconic design, right down to the color palette, block power-ups and mushroom-like monsters. While Super Mario Bros’ features aren’t wholly unique, the game popularized a genre, giving Nintendo leverage to get Giana and Maria removed from sale from certain stores, inadvertently turning it into a copycat cult classic.Some of these games are even better than the originals! Which ones did YOU play? Let us know in the comments below.