No video game can be truly original, and every great game was built off something else. Castlevania drew inspiration from Metroid. Dragon Age took a lot of its lore from Game of Thrones. Street Fighter was inspired by Karate Champ.
But at a certain point, when does a game stop being inspired by a property and start stealing from it? The sad thing is, a lot of great games have become immortalised for mechanics that those developers didn’t invent. Did you know Angry Birds wasn’t the first game to have the player catapult its character into buildings? How about Minecraft not being the first game where the player mines blocks for resources?
Even Pong, one of the oldest games of all time, is a ripoff of another property. Some of the most famous titles have made billions of dollars, launched franchises, and had movie adaptations, despite the fact they are complete knock-offs.
In some entries in this list, you could argue the similarities between the games are simply coincidental. But in other examples, you will see some games resemble each other so much, you won’t understand how nobody noticed it sooner.
