7 Rip-Off Games You Thought Were Original

Every so often a game comes along that has us awestruck with its brilliance and originality. Occasionally though, those games are a total rip-off - coincidentally or intentionally - of an idea from a previous, far less popular and profitable game. Nice mind you have there, it'd be a shame if someone were to boggle it with seven games famed for their genre-defining originality that are actually massive rip-offs. Enjoy and subscribe for a video like this every Thursday from Outside Xbox!
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[@Silvershire]

Fun fact: the opening for the first Medal of Honor says you must "rise above and beyond the call of duty"

[@shinyagumon7015]

If they ever revive the series that should be their tag line.

[@RevanAlaire]

Ironic as they tried to do that and failed.

[@Gremlin23]

That would be because you win a medal of honour for 'rising above and beyond the call of duty'.

[@LuoSon312_G8]

@@RevanAlaire only for the era of modern warfare, their golden era was the world wars

[@kman9884]

@@RevanAlaire EA killed MoH because it was a direct competitor to Battlefield

[@rhysblaney3121]

"I'm not Angry Birds, I'm just Disappointed-Birds" is a line that will haunt me until the day I die in a scaffolding-based accident

[@liamhollands344]

I never thought I'd be in an era where Medal of Honor was considered to be forgotten. And then I have to remind myself how long it's been since it's been relevant.

[@TuHolmes]

Irrelevant. Perhaps. There was a VR game 2 years ago though.

[@benjamincady5597]

We played so much MOHAA back in my freshman year of college. You probably couldn't get away with making your dorm into a custom level these days like we did.

[@MrTaktic121]

Medal of honour and also conflict desert storm, I had more enjoyment out of them than cod .

[@KuueenKumi]

Makes me feel old. I wasn't even a big fan, just loved watching my dad play...20 ish years ago. Thanks to watching him play MoH:AA, I got interested in games. Really good memories

[@gimpyrules6714]

@Taktic121🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 desert storm was awesome I don't why warfighter did so bad though, the multi-player was pretty fun in my opinion

[@The_Kentuckian]

As someone who grew up with Medal of Honor games, I will never forget them.

[@dtdimeflicks6708]

The two original are my favorite FPS games of all time.

[@peyton6466]

Jesus Christ died on the CROSS FOR YOUR SINS REPENT OF YOUR SINS AND PRAY TO GOD FOR FORGIVENESS GOD AND JESUS CHRIST LOVE YOU NEVER FORGET THIS❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@The_Daily_Tomato]

The theme song is still in my head and i haven't heard it in years.

[@dtdimeflicks6708]

@@peyton6466 🙄

[@dtdimeflicks6708]

@@The_Daily_Tomato the entire score is on youtube. Great music.

[@NoMoreCrumbs]

Rest in peace, Crush the Castle. You and all your flash game brethren from Kongregate, Armor Games, and all other hosting sites are badly missed

[@ABadassDragon]

Those games were saviours of all kids during IT class

[@waelisc]

I remember spending hours on Nitrome and Miniclip, in particular

[@nicholasfarrell5981]

Anyone else use 2flashgames way back when?

[@simasimson5798]

@@ABadassDragon Gun Mayhem was the shit back in high school. Four guys playing on one shitty keyboard that freezes when you press 3 keys at once. Ah, the good old days...

[@nemo.refert]

This is as good of an opportunity as it can be to remember everyone that the entire Submachine series (including the spin offs, except SMU iirc) is going to be released on Steam as soon as Skutnik thinks it's good enough to be released, which, knowing him, is probably gonna take another decade or so

[@bjchit]

Fun fact about the OG Resident Evil: it *was* going to be a remake of Sweet Home, until said license losing, and even then, in the Japanese TV ads, they still used the battle music from Sweet Home overlain footage of Resident Evil.

[@PrincessOzaline]

That is interesting because people have commented that the English name Resident Evil kind of makes those games that don't focus on a residence weird, but it probably seemed like a safe bet to take given the inspiration.

[@snorpenbass4196]

Of course, RE also borrowed heavily from Alone In The Dark (the original).

[@MorinehtarTheBlue]

That's the thing about all of that. It's disingenuous to call something that's a spiritual successor a ripoff. In Sweet Home's case it wasn't so much an adaption as one of those tie-in promotional deals. There stories clearly diverge as well. Same with Wolfenstein and Doom which continued the trend with Quake. Or Wasteland becoming Fall Out. Though I'm expecting that to arrive when the commenters list gets made anyway.

[@juanausensi499]

@@snorpenbass4196 I was convinced they were about to talk about Alone in the Dark as the precursor of Resident Evil.

[@seancdaug]

@@juanausensi499 Honestly, I think the original Resident Evil is much more akin to Alone in the Dark than it is to Sweet Home. As much as Resident Evil borrows its themes from Sweet Home, the two games really don't play much alike. But the whole slow-paced, third-person, fixed-camera-with-tank-controls thing that defined Resident Evil? Alone in the Dark did it first.

[@rickimaru915]

I still have the first two Medal of Honor games on the original PlayStation (MoH and MoH: Underground). I like how they both had you running espionage missions behind enemy lines, rather than essentially fighting a war by yourself on the frontlines like most war shooters now

[@lavrentivs9891]

Technical limitations of the time. You couldn't have more than a dozen characters on the screen at the same time, so easier to get away with small covert missions than full on battles.

[@roboticd]

I always preferred MoH: Pro Skater over MoH: Underground...

[@bustinarant]

​@@roboticdBut only one had Darth Maul doing kickflips

[@mattgrigsby8907]

​@@roboticd😂😂😂😂 don't you enjoy skating around as Shrek with a M1 Garand?

[@obiwanfisher537]

Frontlines kept that idea tho. As you essentially were behind enemy lines as a spy and saboteur, too.

[@Stratelier]

In _Smash Bros._ defense, you forgot its _other_ central mechanic: no health bars, all points are scored via "ring out".

[@Pearloryx]

The game is mostly based on Kirby game mechanic considering the game dev behind it

[@brotbrotsen1100]

​@@PearloryxI don't see the connection here. The only thing they have in common when it comes to mechanics is the 2d perspective.

[@aeloswindrunner]

I have a vague memory of Jane doing the "I'm not angry birds, I'm disappointed birds" but I might be just losing my mind. I definitely got a sense of deja vu

[@Aliuro]

You're right, there is a video where they use this joke. However, I don't remember which one it is)

[@Moomoomoomoon]

Rip off comment?

[@Moomoomoomoon]

Are we saying this is a rip off comment to a video about rip off games?

[@Aliuro]

@@Moomoomoomoon nah, more like reusing a joke)

[@thatoneswordguy]

yeah, I've noted a time where the script of an entry for two videos was nearly word for word

[@tept6007]

God, you've unlocked my coveted Crush the Castle memories! The progression in that game was wild, eventually unlocking fire, lightning, and acid to counter differing materials for the castles. I also feel like I remember custom community levels too. It was actually a blast for my middle school brain

[@ABadassDragon]

Same, that game was sick

[@Nicholasryan17]

One of the developers also made The Last Stand series

[@tnuoccaekafsi9808]

I just remember trying to one hit every castle for the coveted boulder

[@saintposeidongaming921]

Theres a mobile port for ios and android of the originals!

[@adam-vm3zj]

It really cemented my love for physics-based shenanigans

[@oriolgonzalez9328]

I like how educational these list videos can be sometimes, I only knew a couple of the "originals"

[@BratislavMetulski]

and still a lot of half knowledge

[@Paper323]

The originals they mention are well know in gaming circles and like half of their list I wouldn't even classify as rip-offs either.

[@LordBaktor]

Outfoxies was my favorite arcade game for a long while but I had forgotten the name of it. Thank you so much for bringing this memory back to me.

[@PO1PLE]

Wish they didn't lie though,played it, besides the fact you go around the stages, it is nothing like smash brothers

[@SonicRooncoPrime]

Being told Angry Birds and Medal of Honor are old and forgotten has scarred me for life.

[@ringosis]

The newest Medal Of Honour was from December 2020...

[@seracila432]

Same, especially Angry Birds..

[@immanuel6827]

🤣🤣🤣 take heart me dear❤️🫂

[@Cancer_Cam]

@@ringosis it’s a VR game, one I’d never even heard of. The last real Medal of Honor game was in 2012

[@Daktangle]

@@ringosis Which is a VR game with "mixed to average" reviews.

[@allenfox7186]

Loved Crush the Castle! Most of the hours I’ve played was the creative mode it had. Something angry birds didn’t have (to my knowledge)

[@adeadphish7931]

Yoooo, same! Glad someone else remembers that gamr

[@anoninunen]

Once spent an afternoon trying to build a single castle that could protect against the "Three Giant Bombs" weapon. One of many 'Demolition' games I enjoyd to completion.

[@Otterdisappointment]

Many flash sites had good content. 101Games is how I found Crush the Castle.

[@Regolith86]

Crush the Castle was definitely the superior game. Also, I seem to remember it coming out earlier than 2009, like in 2007 or something. But maybe I'm misremembering. 🤔

[@Skapologist]

Between Luke referencing doing “Danger Zone” at karaoke and Mike referencing doing “Don’t Stop Believing” at karaoke, I’m really wanting to see an OxBoxTra karaoke night stream.

[@johnsharplin]

The Outfoxies unironically looks incredible

[@invictors1]

Expect more videos like this text me on telegram above to claim 🎁🎉

[@peyton6466]

Jesus Christ died on the CROSS FOR YOUR SINS REPENT OF YOUR SINS AND PRAY TO GOD FOR FORGIVENESS GOD AND JESUS CHRIST LOVE YOU NEVER FORGET THIS❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@michaelchallis4129]

Wait, Jesus is in The Outfoxies? Sold.

[@SergeantDoorknob13]

@@peyton6466 why do people make bots like you?

[@powermelodicdragonrecords9385]

I think so too! I will definitely check it out on an emulator

[@ethanliddle9008]

What I loved about Medal Of Honor was it tracked where your bullets landed on the enemy. So at the end of the stage, got a ton of headshots? It calls you a melon popper.

[@BrianGlaze]

That's pretty dope

[@imchips-topicsofficialsdad5546]

Dont forget if you only aim for the enemies dome.. you get the title of HEAD WAITER.

[@gryphonosiris2577]

Could also get one for headshots that was "Discount barber". Shoot them in the groin a lot and you get "Jewel Thief". I even got one once that was "Napoleon Blown-apart" :-D

[@FelisImpurrator]

Atrocious puns are objectively the correct way to handle killstreaks and skillshots.

[@gryphonosiris2577]

@@FelisImpurrator I admit that I nearly pissed myself laughing when I got the "Napoleon Blown-apart" marksmanship rating.

[@Drake5607]

I would have thought that Resident Evil precursor would have been Alone In The Dark with its tank control in 3D, horror atmosphere, object dropping, and its "find the weird key" kind of puzzles...

[@alexpage4355]

Yeah, when they suggested that Resident Evil was "the first time [western audiences] had experienced anything like it," Alone in the Dark immediately popped into mind. Resident Evil may have popularized the genre but it wasn't the first, not even in the west.

[@Nezumikniver]

It's what I thought of. It also had some crazy game stopping item puzzles pretty early on.

[@daltigoth3970]

Definitely agree to this. Additionally, calling it a rip-off of another game created by the same company that clearly looks to be more of a JRPG that simply has similar tone/themes is a bit of a stretch. Sweet Home fits more as a spiritual predecessor to Resident Evil than RE being a rip-off of it.

[@TimEd.o7o7]

it was a "rip off" because the original Resident Evil was supposed to be a remake of Sweet Home. But licensing failed so they had to pivot away from it at the last second.

[@daltigoth3970]

@@TimEd.o7o7 How does a company "rip off" their own creation? I'm really not interested in a debate here, but I am curious to know where that logic comes from. Its like saying one line of Nike shoes is a rip-off of another line of Nike shoes. No, they aren't rip-offs, they are just a different line of shoes made by the same company that have some similarities. Even if the second line of shoes were supposed to be the next iteration in the Nike Air Jordan line, renaming them to Nike Air doesn't make it a rip-off, its just a new product that had to be released under a different name for licensing reasons. By contrast, if Reebok released a line of shoes that looked a lot like Air Jordans and had some other NBA player's name attached to them, THAT would be a rip-off.

[@paulellington1505]

Thank you Luke for the Medal of Honor to Call of Duty. No wonder why those games played exactly like each other. A lot of FPS share the same control scheme, but that was the first connection I found between the two

[@sagasvensson8920]

*Mike

[@SILOPshuvambanerjee]

I realised just now

[@Eonymia]

IW were ex-MOH developers who wanted to make a more down to earth instead of "one man wins war" type of ww2 game, so they left to make CoD.

[@lonewolffang]

Other than the Outfoxies, I almost forgot about Joust. And also after Sweet Home, there was Alone in the Dark.

[@zulubunsen9067]

Even though I never played them, hearing Medal of Honor called "all but forgotten" makes me feel a bit old. To be fair, the series was already on that path when the last two titles released.

[@chucklebutt4470]

Lol same here! It feels like not that long ago when MoH and CoD were close competitors on the market.

[@KasumiRINA]

Last two? I remember dad playing expansions for Allied Assault then game kinda disappearing from radar since CoD appeared... there WERE more MoH games but never as popular. I even played through modern one, campaign was super short and kinda boring.

[@alexbailes91]

I'll never forget you, Medal of Honor ❤️ Christmas 1999, I got a PS1 and MOH. It blew my 8 year old mind.

[@Superstino]

You can really tell this video was well-researched and well-written! Good job guys, probably one of my favorites you've made :)

[@user-bv7kr5fq4d]

Except that resident evil was made by the same person that made sweet home soooo not a rip off. And to clarify not just capcom publishing but the director and creator is the same guy

[@subscribersWithnovideoscrazy]

@@user-bv7kr5fq4dthank you someone knows

[@Barracuda539]

I honestly thought the game you were going to say resident evil ripped off would be Alone in the Dark, both take place in a creepy mansion, both emphasis avoiding enemies over killing everything, and both have graphics and voice acting that leave a bit to be desired

[@boogulls9312]

It makes me unreasonably happy to see people talking about Outfoxies. I used to play it in a local arcade and even owned an arcade board at one point. It's such a fun and unusual game.

[@GimpyDingo]

I worked at an arcade and never saw this in the wild. I found it on Mame and its such a great game. I have a mame cabinet now. I did get to play Primal Rage 2 and Tenth Degree. Tenth Degree one of the developers was there playing against people... and losing. Such a bad game. We kept pointing him to Tekken and all the flaws Tenth Degree had. Wonder why it never released.

[@markschutz1012]

Before Wild Wheels, back in the 1980s, there was Ballblazer... a game where you pushed an energy ball towards a goal using a hover powered vehicle.

[@comettamer]

This whole list is extremely educational. I've been a gamer for almost 3 decades and knew about perhaps 1 of the entries not being as original as it claimed, and that was Call of Duty.

[@unkledoda420]

Same here COD was the only one I'd heard of. I'm 41 and i have never even heard the term "flash game" let alone know what it is.

[@riderofangmar4667]

I loved crush the castle growing up, it’s sequal’s weapon variations and custom maps were amazing.

[@PLAYER_42069]

It's amazing how ahead of their time some of these ideas were given the limited technology e.g. Utopia, 1982.The video game industry isn't that old (40-some-odd years), and we've come so far in that "short" amount of time. People love to be dramatic and claim, video games have stagnated and there are no good ideas, but this video proves there are always good ideas out there. It's just sometimes the execution prevents it from really taking hold and/or appealing to a broader audience.

[@MorinehtarTheBlue]

It's not stagnation that is most effecting the video game industry now a days. It's the rampant monetization strategies companies use while frequently extracting the actual fun out of the product.

[@StraightOuttaJarhois]

Jane's colour coordination in this video is absolutely top notch.

[@BenPotts]

she looks amazing

[@MSte21]

Jane is genuinely a fashion icon.

[@DoNkEy_LoVE]

Her hair looks great also

[@brianc3761]

I also enjoy sarcasm

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@brianc3761 Who's being sarcastic? She looks great, as always.

[@Omnifarious0]

4:19 + Arguably that Atari ST game isn't the first. Prior to that was a Lucasfilm Games game for 8-bit computers called Ballblazer. Though it was so primitive that most of the features weren't there. And I'm impressed you recognized midi maze as a predecessor to Doom multiplayer. 🙂

[@fungi5350]

Video idea: 7 times you turned the table on NPCs. I was replaying Assassins Creed 2 recently and had a bit of fun with Leonardo and Maria Auditore during the early game delivery mission where you deliver paintings for your mother. You’ll walk with the box of paintings at the weird pace usually reserved for the NPCs while your two accompanying NPCs have to awkwardly do their best to keep pace without getting ahead.

[@Michael_Lindell]

I once saw a competition about dying. It was a RIP-off.

[@samtepal3892]

Take my like and get out of here.

[@kip258]

I'm all out of likes so you'll just have to leave without taking mine

[@katherinevasper1791]

Boo... boo.

[@Chonkems]

What do you call a cheap circumcision? A rip off. :) I'll see myself out.

[@davidburnett5049]

For shame

[@Zenlore6499]

Oh my god, I LOVED Crush the Castle! I played it all the time!

[@JustinLeeper]

2 games down, and I’m blown away! I was a game journalist for 8 years, have spend almost that much time as a game designer, and I never heard about those 2 originators! You all are awesome!! ❤

[@nickburkhardt3229]

Andy describing angry birds is the best part of my week

[@MacGuges]

Doom was pretty amazing when it came out, and I can still fondly remember many deathmatches I'd played on our campus network. But it wasn't the first online multiplayer shooter that I played in uni, because I had also played Netrek. In that game you piloted a starship, shooting your phasers and photon torpedos at the ships of opposing sides. Every one would be piloted by a human player (though there were some bots available for Netrek who could give you a run for your money in a one on one melee, they weren't considered competent or interesting enough in their strategic choices). Each player joining a game of Netrek would choose a starship class, such as scout, battleship, bomber or starbase. Scouts were nimble, battleships balanced mobility and weapon systems, and each team could field a single starbase which brought devastating attacks. Since Netrek was a non-commercial game only available for X Windows, it wasn't a pretty game. Starships were rendered as top down wireframes, a la Asteroid, so imagine a monochromatic bullethell shooter. The closest analogue today to Netrek's class-based chaos would be Team Fortress.

[@Erikcleric]

Doom not only was amazing, it never stopped being that. Oh man I played so many matches in dif game modes in the ZDoom/GZDoom sourceport using the Doomseeker server browser.

[@glow2hi]

The last metal of honor was actually medal of honor above and beyond in 2020 for vr. it was fittingly made by respawn

[@Daniel__Nobre]

Great video, although I feel that when it’s basically the same developers doing the following games you can really say it’s a ripoff.. in the case of Resident Evil I feel Alone in the Dark was actually the one the “iterated” upon.

[@dallydaydream]

Though I had never heard of it before, scrolling through the comments and seeing all the love and nostalgia for Crush the Castle warms my heart. Seems like you tapped into a bunch of childhood memories there!

[@unfortunatelyevil1767]

Angry Birds going hyper popular was the final nail in me believing the myth of a meritocracy. A game that had existed in many iterations before, and just happened to be the one that explodes in popularity. Later, I learn of pop star research where given a group of somewhat equal singers, test groups will always push one into a super star, but each test group had a different star get pushed, absolutely no correlation between the star and their popularity.

[@sethwick8348]

I don't think that's a very good example of lack of meritocracy. Crush the Castle used the same concept first, and I think did it better, but it's not like Angry Birds brought nothing to the table. Its presentation and, more crucially, touch controls and availability on phone platforms, made a huge difference. Crush the Castle was fun but not terribly compelling long term compared to other games you could be playing on a computer, even a cheap PC allowed you to play much more in depth games. But phones were the perfect platform for such a simple, quick session game. Crush the Castle just wasn't on the right platform to explode. Can't blame people for playing Angry Birds on their phone instead of a flash game that wasn't actually playable on their phone.

[@unfortunatelyevil1767]

@Sethwick A) As mentioned, just the final nail, not peak example~ And similar games existed well before Crush the Castle. B) You mention it just being on the right platform at the right time, which is exactly what I am talking about~ Has practically nothing to do with the merit of the game, and everything to do with external factors!

[@Barrillel]

​@@unfortunatelyevil1767 You appear to define merit based heavily on being first with the concept or idea versus the details for executing on that concept or idea. Am I correct in this assumption? If so: Should art design and UX not also be considered for merit? How about implementing it for mobile platforms versus as another PC game? Should having good advertising and marketing be considered for merit? I'm genuinely interested in how you rate the merit of those above factors.

[@MetallicD3ath]

I know I wasn't the one asked, but personally, I don't think advertising and marketing should generally count as a factor for merit. Rather, these factors are counterproductive to the idea of merit/a meritocracy. Because they aren't involved in the execution of the actual idea/product, but instead play to the idea of "he who has more power (money) can more easily maintain that power." Granted, even if this was a world where everything ran on merit alone, those resources would make it much easier to design something more meritable, but I think that's (A) outside of our control and (B) getting too far away from the discussion. Everything else you mentioned though, totally. Platform I feel like *should* be lesser, but it's still true that choosing an optimal platform is still a part of design, and thus merit. Ideally the highest merit weighting should go to (in this example) gameplay elements (and possibly story or graphics/art design, where relevant - mostly depends on the focus) but things like user interface (taken separately from gameplay or art design, e.g. "how intrusive is this button prompt") and platform design aren't completely irrelevant, along with other things you didn't mention (how easy is this game to learn, how is the voice acting or *is* there voice acting, etc.)

[@unfortunatelyevil1767]

@MetallicD3ath Broadly I agree. As for Platform choice mattering, someone on the 90's *couldn't* choose to develop on the iPhone. And for UI, there were thousands of games on the iPhone that had UI as clean and friendly as Angry Birds. Which is why I mentioned the study on equivalently talented pop stars. Run the world again, and we'd have a different game go viral rather than Angry Birds. However, once something goes viral, it becomes *very* hard to compare it with others without the bias, and without comparing it to obviously lower quality ones. If we could have said (before they were loaded to the store) that Angry Birds were a billion times better than the other games, then the stock market wouldn't be a thing~

[@alastaircollins1145]

"In search of hidden frescos": Truly, an everyman motivation. Also, between this video and the last Outside Xtra, I don't know why the eyeshadow has suddenly become more vibrant, but I definitely dig it.

[@KoolKy04schannel]

WOW! i haven't watched this channel in years, used to love it when i was younger. can't believe they've kept the same format, so nostalgic☺️

[@sylvancochran1572]

In crush the castle 2 players pack, if you beat survival mode you get an infected chicken to use as a projectile. The game even calls it an "enraged poltry".

[@CBrown]

I've concluded that most successful ideas aren't original but that with the benefit of hindsight they were able to improve upon existing ideas in such a way that said success becomes possible.

[@ZaoJin]

Yep. That’s art

[@lucithedemonminer]

"In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes" - Andy Warhol I assume this is part of what he was referring to. And think, he couldnt even fathom Tiktok. *hides from scary ass future under MLP blankie*

[@leafandryly]

Diggs at both call of duty and mountain dew in one video. Awesome. Thank you Mike, this made me smile

[@LordJazzly]

Another issue that Crush the Castle had was that it wasn't Gemcraft or Creeper World, which were also flash games that you could play in your browser for free on many of the same sites that hosted it.

[@Dumgui]

I think I would attribute the origin of what we know as survival horror games now, would be "alone in the dark". I don't think "sweet home" was envisioning anything anywhere close to what we see as a survival horror game, but alone in the dark has it dead to rights in 1992.

[@abeingofpureenergy]

Oh wow, I never thought I'd hear about Crush the Castle again 😂 That takes me back

[@azuredragoon2054]

Solomon's Boneyard would be a prequel version of Vamprie Survivors. Solomon's Boneyard was an Apple-only app that featured you surviving as long as you could against unending hordes of the undead. You started with one attack, got upgrades for it which were given by RNG, and you could gain other skills and attacks over time to give you even more power. What it did most differently from Vampire Survivors, though, was have you manage resources and controlled as a twin-stick shooter.

[@taelim6599]

Minecraft is secretly a ripoff of a far less known game called Infiniminer that released two years earlier and was shut down less than a month after its release. Infiniminer was intended to be a game where two teams race to mine as many ores as possible and deliver them to the drop off point, but people instead preferred to build structures, which minecraft capitalized on.

[@gldni17]

Resident Evil could be on this list twice, since it also was heavily influenced by Alone in the Dark.

[@jclarinet6347]

I LOVE Crush the Castle and still play it frequently. Such a classic. ❤

[@Caedus9001]

I think they re-did MIDI maze(or made a version for) on the Original Gameboy. I think it was called FaceBall. Played that one and did one of them 'point and squint' looks when you showed gameplay for MIDI

[@gwishart]

They did. The GameBoy version was called FaceBall 2000, and was one of the few games that supported the GameBoy 4-Player adapter. There was a SNES version too, but that only supported two-player split screen.

[@BlandoGaming]

Haha, I just commented about this as well. Wasn't sure anyone else ever played Faceball. Never knew about Midi Maze though so I was kinda shocked.

[@realitynowassigned]

"you don't often associate music with murder" Mike's never heard a rap song

[@philtkaswahl2124]

Man, I remember _Medal of Honor: Allied Assault_ as the first "serious business" WWII FPS I really got into, and _Pacific Assault_ was in a net cafe me and some college buddies visited between classes. We had a lot of fun murdering each other in multiplayer.

[@sarahvest3676]

I LOVED Crush the Castle 🏰 😍 I used to play it during during free study late in high school. 😅 Guess that's why I never really got into angry birds... 🤔 Also another flash game I played that maybe a rip off is Happy Wheels (very reminiscent if Clop and similar games) and Cubefield, which is very like any continuous fly into oblivion until you hit something and die game... and yes that's the correct genre name lol

[@nyperold7530]

Ooh, that burn was... Flamin' Hot! I didn't think I'd heard of MIDI Maze, but it looked more familiar when I saw gameplay. While I'd never played it myself or even seen it in action before, I knew I'd seen it in the pages of Nintendo Power. And sure enough, when they converted it for the Game Boy, they called it Faceball 2000.

[@jasonsorin1021]

just get the pacman license and say it's what he's doing with all those dots.

[@MorinehtarTheBlue]

They converted it for several Nintendo consoles under that or similar names. Obviously Midi references weren't going to make sense in those cases.

[@Endgame_01]

I remember the Medal of Honor series well. The main playable character was a soldier named Jimmy Paterson. The funniest thing about that is that in later levels the nazis recognize you and yell "Its Jimmy Paterson!" before you murder them. Great stuff

[@KasumiRINA]

Except in Underground, you play as his boss, Manon Batiste. A La Resistance girl turned OSS officer.

[@Rangaisia]

Capcom's 1985 arcade hit Commando is generally credited with popularizing the overhead run n' gun genre, but it owed a lot to Taito's 1982 arcade game Front Line, including its military theme and grenades as secondary weapons. Front Line also had tanks the player could enter and exit, so it preceded Ikari Warriors as well.

[@bjchit]

How dare you call Medal of Honor forgotten! It is one of the greatest WW2 FPS of all time! Why must you make me feel old! 😭

[@SuspiciousKoala]

Medal of Honor wasn't really obscure though, lol

[@hugofontes5708]

Apparently, it is if you are young enough

[@travismurtland3257]

Crush the Castle was my absolute jam, and I think the massive "ARMOR GAMES" logo made it easy to find

[@invictors1]

Congratulations, got something special for you text me on telegram above to claim 🎉🎁🎉🎁

[@MetallicD3ath]

Okay but the idea of making Utopia a multiplayer create-an-island rts-like where you could invade your opponent's island, but ultimately the goal is to outperform your opponent, sounds like a really neat idea. Hang on a second, I think this describes the Civilization games more than the SimCity games!

[@blakearmentrout7717]

I said the very same thing while watching this :D

[@ringosis]

Warfighter is not the most recent Medal of Honour game. Medal Of Honour Above and Beyond came out less than 2 years ago.

[@RediRoc]

The Outfoxies would definitely be a big hit on YT/Twitch if it were released today.

[@mattalan6618]

its concept was ahead of its time

[@CartopCarrot730]

For like 2 weeks

[@JeedyJay]

Duck Game proves it.

[@OriginalPiMan]

I was expecting Minecraft in this list. I can't imagine that Infiniminer was any more known than Crush the Castle.

[@connorburton1009]

I would fight you for disparaging mountain dew like that, but I don't have the energy for that on account of drinking so much mountain dew.

[@saffral]

Project Firestart is a 1989 survival-horror game for the Commodore 64. It was just a case of parallel development with Sweet Home, similar to the Apple II's stealth game Castle Wolfenstein and the NES' Metal Gear. For another example of this type of "rip-off", The Elder Scrolls was heavily based on Ultima Underworld, a spin-off of the Ultima series, which was notable for having full 3D exploration in a first-person RPG. The Elder Scrolls I: Arena traded in a lot of interactivity from Ultima Underworld in exchange for a massive open world, something the series has carried on to this day. Ultima Underworld also inspired Arx Fatalis and System Shock, being a progenitor of the immersive sim genre. Oh, and another fun one is that Wizardry was a big inspiration on early JRPGs.

[@MarkDeSade100]

Ultima Underworld and the sequel Underworld 2 are amazing games that should never be forgotten!

[@kiri101]

The original Medal of Honor game was amazing at the time it came out, I spent countless hours exploring it.

[@petesmart1983]

It was rubbish compared to cod mainly cause cod was a pc game and PS2 couldn't compete

[@flamingson]

@@petesmart1983 it really wasn't and without MoH CoD wouldn't exist...

[@ringosis]

@@petesmart1983Yeah, but did COD let you ping the hat off of every Nazi you saw? No? Shit game.

[@rubz1390]

@@petesmart1983 the origional MoH came out on PS1 in 1999

[@lo-keyloki9986]

I loved Frontline. I played it so many times that I would just pop the machine gunners in the bunkers at the beginning as soon as I hit the beach. I can't remember if they respawned endlessly though.

[@TumoFiji]

One other thing to note about Rocket League rip-off - There were several games that had a similar concept as a minigame unlockable within the main game. 2 games that did this off the top of my head are MX2002 feat. Ricky Carmichael on PS2 and Monster 4x4 World Circuit on Wii.

[@FaisalAli-wr8no]

Hey, just wanted to say Mike's message at the end convinced me to like/subscribe, which I almost never do for anything. Watched loads of your videos and always enjoy it, and heard his message and thought "If it really helps the crew, then why not?"

[@sergentboucherie9813]

Wolfenstein 3D was not the first Wolfenstein game, it was Castle Wolfenstein from 1981, it was not a shooter but more of an infiltration game The original Prince of Persia game was released in 1989

[@jaded718]

Resident Evil was the second time I'd experienced a survival horror like that; I'd played Alone in the Dark years prior

[@joylessgaming]

I'm compelled to point out that the West did see something almost mechanically identical to Resident Evil before: Alone in the Dark (1992). Fixed camera angles, trapped in a mansion beset by supernatural horrors (and horrible graphics), male and female playable characters. Was only on PC though, so didn't have the same potential market as Resi did. I also remember a tabletop game from when I was a kid, where you made a wall out of plastic bricks to protect a keep and would take turns using rubber-band powered catapults and ballistae to attack your enemy's defences. I forget what it was called though.

[@smolbb713]

I thought Alone in the Dark was the basis for Resident Evil

[@ultimatetybreaker3467]

Wow, this video brought back all the memories of playing Crush the Castle on the school computers when the day ended, I really miss those flash games.

[@wholelottamemesyes9426]

Maybe the real ripoff were the games we played along the way … wait no

[@Giga-lemesh]

😂

[@HostileTakeover2]

I played hours and hours of Crush the Castle, its sequel, and the fan levels. Also loved me some MoH!

[@MrNucleosome]

I love this video format, very well researched and very interesting. Please do more

[@ZombieWilfred]

One of my favorite videogame memories is from Medal of Honor, during the undercover mission. Guard: "show me your papers!" Me: *Hits wrong button and accidentally whips out suppressed 1911.* Both of us: 😮😮 "Thwap!" Guard: 💀 Me, waiting for alarms to sound: 😬 Me when they don't: 😅

[@kip258]

Crush the castle was superior to angry birds in every way. Better launching controls, better physics, and even a level editor!

[@justinroux1610]

Dude flash games need to make a comback

[@frodobaggins7710]

Luckily Crush the Castle eventually did get a port to phones, and I spent quite a bit of time playing around with the late game weapons

[@philipmarsh8298]

I actually played Utopia when i was a child and had forgotten about it until this video. Thanks for bringing back my repressed traumatic memories.

[@mirroredchaos]

as long as a game takes a concept and adds its own properties to it and not make a direct copy of it like Wolfenstein, I like it when we get different varieties of game ideas.

[@Jeremy-ql1or]

Lol, I remember telling people about Crush the Castle when Angry Birds was popular. There were so many great Flash games I would love to play. There are a few, like Cactus McCoy and VVVVV, that I was able to download but most of them seem gone forever. It would be great if someone could buy the rights to some of the good ones and sell them as packages on Steam (the ones that are still playable, of course).

[@Zoso14892]

Does anybody remember Castle Clout? At this point I almost think I imagined it, but I'm sure that's an even older version of Crush the Castle. Some of these were unknown to me, but some just made me feel ancient.

[@hugofontes5708]

I do recall an even older flash game similar to Crush the Castle, in fact I think I might have liked it better

[@bennicus4901]

I thought Alone in the Dark was much more of an "inspiration" for Resident Evil - it came out 4 years earlier and Resident Evil is almost just a graphics update for AITD

[@bwagner23]

Sweet Home, the movie, has never gotten a western release either, which is a shame. It's an interesting haunted house movie with really great effects (by the same guy who did the effects for The Exorcist)!

[@vanntooot]

Correction: Medal of Honor actually started back in the PS1 era. It had clunky controls then but it didn't take itself seriously at all, which for me is its appeal over CoD

[@KasumiRINA]

it literally supports dual analog controls tho. One of very few PS1 games to have modern controls as option (it was exotic at the time).

[@vanntooot]

@@KasumiRINA yes, which is why it was so enjoyable. I didn't care that it took me 10 seconds to aim properly, I felt like a badass using both analog sticks

[@lemagicbaguette1917]

“I am a game, not a movie. Have fun dealing with these controls :)”

[@LegendStormcrow]

Anyone else glad to hear them mention Crush the Castle? I'm pretty sure it's older than they claim though. Like maybe from 06'

[@benjamincady5597]

I could have sworn it had been around a few years before Angry Birds as well, an archived version of the production notes do indeed say April 2009. All I know is that when Angry Birds first came out it was immediately obvious it was a blatant rip off.

[@LegendStormcrow]

@@benjamincady5597 I KNOW I played something of that style before. In 08 and the 2nd half of 07' I had no internet.

[@broEye1]

I've long thought movie makers should do anime/manga adaptations this way: pick something obscure, take advantage of the obscurity to be extra creative and loose, and produce something that many wouldn't even realize was inspired by any existing work. For instance, take The Summer When You Die. As a mystery story it has real potential, a boy with deductive skills haunted by the ghost of his crush despite her still being alive, having to deduce from what little the "ghost" has just when in the future she'll die, who will kill her, and why, and thus prevent the crime before it even happens. It's not near well-known enough for people to be bothered by changes to the plot, but the concept is plenty solid. Heck, there are plenty of anime/manga out there with good ideas that either needed a bit more polish, a bit more understanding from the editors or just a little more luck, which could make for great stories. I mean, we already practically got that with Truth or Dare from '18, which looks frightfully similar to The King's Game.

[@GeoffreyHellington]

Allied Assault is what got me into FPS games. The beach landings, the level design, the extend3ed theatre of war, the M1 Garand sound... Ahhhh, good times

[@todd3143]

i remember finding that crush the castle game riding the high of medieval themed flash games, then finding angry birds on my ipad sometime later whilst finding for something similar cus i liked the concept so much

[@lifta1809]

Medal of Honour frontline was definitely was up there as one of my most cherished childhood games, what a classic

[@theodoreblumkowski9400]

This is the equivalent of opening your fridge drunk and dipping your thumb, pointer, and middle fingers into your roommates leftovers and then telling them you have no idea who crab clawed the leftovers.

[@MetallicD3ath]

What kind of Gex the Gecko level of referencing am I missing here?

[@thatcher00]

Medal of honor was huge though

[@Samouraii]

Alone in the Dark was also a big influence on Resident Evil in regards to 3D Survival Horror. Jwlar has a great retrospective documentary about it on KZbin, worth checking out.

[@MrUkraider]

Great insights outside xbox, I had no idea so many 'original' games arnt what they appear to be, thank you for bringing this info to our action and to gave the real originals their proper recognition they deserve.

[@galogiha]

I preferred the OTHER crush the castle rip-off: "trucks and skulls". It's angry birds, but better. they replaced the floor with lava, the pigs with daemon skulls, the birds with rocket powered trucks and made the music awesome.

[@DigidesteinedSayian]

Pokemon is not the first Mon game. That goes to Megami Tensei for the Fanicom, where you talk demons into joining your party. Megami Tensei had a whole bunch of sequels before Pokemon came out.

[@davisvoelzke8011]

Disagree

[@phantomnite]

Yup, pokemon is definitely a megami tensei RIP-off. Even if it wasn't deliberate

[@burgermike92]

@The Phantom Knights of Thievery The only thing similar is the monster collecting. Other than that they're vastly different. Having similar concepts doesn't make it a rip off.