10 Classic Games that Got Ripped-Off Immediately

1 week ago 9

Published Jun 2, 2026, 8:30 AM EDT

Kevin Christopher Sullivan is a writer for DualShockers based in Cincinnati, Ohio, with gaming industry coverage experience dating back to 1999. He has previously written for Uproxx, Sportskeeda, TheSportster, How-To Geek, and Cultured Vultures, and is also a former Managing Editor for Austin.com.

Kevin currently focuses on list coverage, gaming history, trends, and humor-driven gaming features. Over the years, he has covered E3, Austin Comic-Con, and Retro Game Fest, bringing decades of gaming experience and a wide-ranging writing background to his work.

It's important to remember that the video game business is — and I know this may come as a surprise to some — a business. I know, I was shocked, too. So, when a good idea comes around, it's perfectly normal for other studios to jump on that good idea and, frankly, ride it into the ground. Sometimes, that happens way faster than anyone expects.

10 Video Games That Set A New Industry Standard

From Doom to Dune II, these are the games that forever changed the game.

Today we're going to look at ten different classic games that changed things — and changed them shockingly quickly. Every popular game has its copycats, but these ten? They were imitated almost immediately, and not particularly subtly, either.

10 Pac-Man

The Maze Chase

Let's start with the grandaddy of them all: Pac-Man. OK, actually, that title could probably go to Pong, but considering that it was the first game worth copying (let's be honest, nobody was making rip-offs of Computer Space), we're going to skip it. Space Invaders could also fit here, but Pac-Man was the game that really caught the imagination of the entire world.

Shortly after its 1980 debut, maze games were all the rage. While the arcades saw plenty of imitators, such as Lock 'N' Chase and Mighty Mouth, it was home consoles that saw the majority. Titles like Jawbreaker, Jelly Monsters, and K.C. Munchkin! all came out within a year of Pac-Man's debut – and all were hit with lawsuits. Not that this stopped anybody, as various records indicate anywhere from 60 to nearly 400 Pac-Man clones have been released over the years.

Games as Movies Finally Catches On

Metal Gear Solid Master Collection gameplay

It's often been said that the original Metal Gear invented the stealth genre. Now, that's not even remotely true, but it did popularize it. But, that's not the Metal Gear title we're talking about today. Instead, we're jumping ahead in time and talking about Metal Gear Solid. This was more than just a stealth action game — it was an action movie disguised as a video game. James Bond meets Snake Plissken with the fate of the world at stake.

10 Shameless Video Game Clones That Failed Miserably

These obvious copycat video games felt like blatant cash-grabs.

It wasn't long after MGS's release that titles like Syphon Filter and Splinter Cell (the latter of which really saw the light of day around the same time as Metal Gear Solid 2, but still...) began to emerge. Lesser celebrated titles such as Winback, Kill.Switch, and Spy Fiction (that last one being an insanely fun, underrated gem) also used the "lone operative" motif, even if they eschewed the "stealth action" element.

8 Grand Theft Auto III

The "Die Hard in a" of Video Games

Remember Die Hard? It came out in 1988, so maybe not. I was 10. Anyway, that movie was so successful that knock-offs of it came flooding out almost immediately. It seemed like every movie that came out after was described as "Die Hard in a...", like "Die Hard on a Ship" (Under Siege), "Die Hard on a Bus" (Speed), or "Die Hard at an NHL Game" (Sudden Death, which is a real movie, I swear to God.) Well, that same phenomenon happened with Grand Theft Auto III.

GTA III didn't just have straight-up copycats – other games you wouldn't even compare took elements from it. Jak 2 suddenly began touting its "mission based gameplay" near the tail end of its promotion leading up to launch. True Crime: Streets of L.A. pushed itself as a "Grand Theft Auto III, but as a cop." NARC was a... game that came out. Whether it was the edgy, adult content, open-world freedom, or mindless violence, everybody wanted to get a piece of that action, and quickly.

7 Doom

Everything was a Doom Clone. EVERYTHING.

Doom, obviously, wasn't the world's original First-Person Shooter. Nobody's arguing that. It was, however, the one everybody tried to copy. There's a reason nobody talks about Faceball 2000 Clones. Which is a shame, really. That game gets a bad rap. Anyway.

Once Doom launched in 1993, all bets were off. The term "Doom Clone" became more than just a description — it was basically a genre. Star Wars: Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3D, Heretic, Hexen, and Chex Quest (the greatest of them all) were just a handful of the literal dozens of games that played exactly like Doom following its release.

6 Super Mario Bros.

It's-a Me, the Side Scrolling Platformer

Whoa, didn't mean to get all obscure and indie there, folks. I'm kidding, obviously — Super Mario Bros. is probably the most recognizable video game of all time. And, arguably, the most influential. The Nintendo Entertainment System was the reason people started playing games at home again — and Super Mario Bros. was the reason they were buying the Nintendo Entertainment System. Simple as that.

Unlike the previously mentioned Doom, Super Mario Bros. didn't get a bunch of straight-up clones. Sure, you had stuff like The Great Giana Sisters, but in general, most games just took the concept of the side-scrolling platformer and ran with it. Of course, SMB had two things those other games didn't — Shigeru Miyamoto's imagination and sharp as a diamond gameplay.

5 Street Fighter II

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting

Honestly, is there a title that has spawned more copycats than Street Fighter II? It wasn't the first one-on-one fighter out there — I mean, there's a freakin' "2" in its title. But, it was the first one to get everything right. Multiple characters, combos (even if they weren't originally intended), and skill-based gameplay brought something to the table that games seemed to be lacking — actual competition between players.

Before you could say "Hadouken," the copycats came out of the woodwork. SNK built an empire on games like this, launching Fatal Fury, Samurai Showdown, and King of Fighters into the world (hey, we said these were copycats, we never said they were bad copycats). The popularity of SFII led to the creation of Mortal Kombat, which took fighting games into a whole different direction. And then there was Fighter's History — a rip-off so blatant, Capcom sued the developers.

4 Wii Sports

Move it

Wii Sports Best Sports Games With High Replay Value

To be honest, this entry is as much about the Nintendo Wii itself as it is its mega popular pack-in program, Wii Sports. Of course, Wii Sports saw plenty of copycats, both on and off of the Wii itself. But, it was the console's motion controls that had everybody talking, and that's what led to things like the PlayStation Move (eh...) and the Xbox Kinect (yikes!). Both of those peripherals saw their own variation of a "sports" title, but Wii Sports was hardly the only one to pop up on the Wii.

It was a time in the gaming industry that if you had money invested in standard controllers (which I don't think you can actually do, I'm just trying to paint a picture here), you would understandably be pretty nervous. After all, do you want to push buttons to throw a punch, or actually throw a punch (on second thought, don't answer that)? Fortunately for those people who (probably) don't exist, the motion control craze died down. Still, for a brief moment there, everybody was ditching buttons for waggling.

3 Guitar Hero

Living the Rock Star Dream

What's better than waving a TV remote to pretend to do something? Using an object that's shaped just like that thing you use to do the thing you're pretending to do. This is a long-winded way of saying that guitar-shaped controllers were a big thing for a long while. Thanks, Guitar Hero. You helped bring back looking silly while playing video games, and we thank you for it.

Guitar Hero could be played with a standard controller, mind you, but what fun is that? Significantly less fun, that's how much. Soon, competition came in the form of Rock Band which added drums and singing to the mix — so Guitar Hero did that, too. Then they introduced a pretend turntable to be a pretend DJ in DJ Hero. And then a pretend skateboard in Tony Hawk's Ride, which was totally not lame and totally didn't cause any injuries whatsoever.

Thankfully, like motion controls, this fad died down, cooler heads prevailed, and people stopped falling off pretend skateboards. Mostly.

2 Resident Evil

Boo!

When Capcom brought Biohazard/Resident Evil to the original PlayStation, other companies thought, "Oooh, scary game with monsters, we can do that!" And so they did. And when Sega brought House of the Dead to homes and arcades around the same time, those same companies said to themselves, "Yeah, maybe not like that."

Resident Evil kickstarted the whole Survival Horror craze in games, inspiring titles like Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, and Siren. It's a genre and a series that's still going strong today, despite a few bumps in the road. Resident Evil Requiem released not too long ago to stellar reviews, and even the Silent Hill series looks to be back to form. Sometimes all you want is just a really scary game.

1 Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Sometimes Even the Black Sheep is the Cool Kid

The Adventures of Link screenshot of Link stabbing Slimes in a dungeon.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

I love how Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is called the "black sheep" of its franchise, considering it's got — once again — a friggin' "2" in the title. Not exactly precedent, you know? Despite its reputation, it's easy to forget that Zelda II was a massive success financially. And when something in the video game business makes money, it's not long before other companies take a look and think, "Well, crud, we can do that!"

All sorts of games, ranging from Battle of Olympus to Faxanadu to even Rambo, all took Zelda II's combination of side-scrolling combat and RPG elements. It's not a style that had a lot of staying power but, for a moment, it was all the rage in the 8-bit world.