Topic: Every non-Nintendo game isn't a ripoff of a Nintendo game.

@NightmareEater: There's a general subsection on the forum: https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/general_discussion The Wii U subsection tends to clutter with unrelated topics, because a lot of people don't care where they post their topics.

We can alwasy ask @Darth_Vader to move this thread.

Nintendo fanboys be fanboys. There isn't much else to say really. There is a huge amount of gaming that exists outside of Nintendo, and lots of it is better than some stuff Nintendo does. Most of it isn't a rip-off of Nintendo stuff, it's just fans having trouble admitting that other companies might also make good or better games.

I think it's just a case of Nintendo having been hugely influential in a lot of genres. It's not just Nintendo fanboys who use the term "Metroidvania". And I don't know of anyone who doesn't call stuff like Sonic All Stars "Sonic meets Mario Kart". I don't think there's anything insane about using those comparisons as some are suggesting.

With the Halo games, you'd have to be blind to not see how the comparisons to Metroid Prime make sense. And they didn't appear until some of the later Halo games. It's no secret that one of the senior designers at Retro left and joined the newly formed 343 to work on Halo 4. So of course there are similarities in that game. It's not Nintendo fans being close minded when Halo is compared to Metroid Prime, because usually that's the thing they're observing. Knowingly or not.

But it also goes the other way. I mean what would you describe Splatoon as? It's not really like anything Nintendo has done before. The only Nintendo-game comparison I've heard is that it's "the FPS genre's Mario Kart". I've been saying from the start that it's like if you took Team Fortress 2, De Blob and Jet Set Radio and put them in a blender. It cuts both ways. But usually Nintendo is pretty inward looking, most of the time they're doing their own thing.

Most elements of the JRPG can be traced back to Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest itself was inspired by early cRPGs like Wizardry. And Wizardry was inspired by table-top RPGs like D&D.

Who are you hanging out with that actually believes any of this shenanigans? I've never heard anyone say the vast majority of this and have a sneaking suspicion you pulled most of this out of thin air. I also think you're confusing comparing two games with calling one of those two games a ripoff of the other.

Counterpoint: yes they are!

Who is even claiming this? It's utter nonsense.

Anyway, just because a game is the same genre doesn't mean it's a ripoff, there's at least several games in each genre that have unique mechanics. If there's any genre where that's even remotely true it's racing because of the tendency to rely on mascot racers and car sims, neither of which have really distinct mechanics, there's a lot more that could be done with the racing genre (I haven't seen any board racing, foot racing, or jet ski racing games lately).

This makes very little sense. Though I will just move it.

Geniune rip-offs are rare nowadays (remember the original Giana Sisters? That was a legit rip-off). A rip-off implies it's a shameless carbon copy of something.
But it's true many games are similar to each other in many genres, either intentionally by following the leader (like the aformentioned Doom and Mario Kart cases) or unintentionally (like Halo and Metroid Prime, mostly because both were inspired by Alien); if anything many indie devs are the ones dancing close to the rip-off zone because of nostalgia.

...Literally the only game you mentioned I would consider a rip-off is Playstation All Stars. Everything else I have never heard anyone call a rip-off of a Nintendo franchise, except for maybe a couple of kart racers and party games.

This has inspired me to create posts entitled "Water is Wet" and "Hey, we need food to survive".

@NightmareEater: Halo and futuristic shooters= Metroid prime ripoff (Halo: Combat Evolved began development in prior to 1999, Metroid: Prime seriously started in 2000 after visit from Shigeru Miyamoto. This is ignoring the Wolfenstein 3D is the start of the the FPS craze and Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold having a Sci-Fi theme).

Dark Souls, Uncharted, and other puzzle games= ripoff of Zelda (Dark Souls is a rougelike, Uncharted is a Tomb Raider ripoff, Zelda is a action-adventure title. The only thing in common is they are all loosely action-adventures)

Racing games= Ripoff of Mario Kart (That makes Mario Kart a rip-off of Test Drive, Pole Position, R.C. Pro Am and a dozen other predated racers. What Mario did is popularize the Kart Racer genre which many emulated to ride on it's success)

Party games= Ripoff of Mario Party (Yes, Mario Party was the first mini-game collection played out on a board, but Party Mix for Atari was the first "Party Game".)

Sims and other life simulator= Ripoff of Animal Crossing (I am afraid that The Sims released an entire year prior to even the N64 Animal Forest game, and Maxis has been producing Sim games for years before that: SimCity, SimFarm, and SimLife are just a few. Little Computer People on the C-64 predates both by five years).

Playstation all-stars and fighting Games= Ripoff of Smash Bros and Punchout!™ (Playstation All-Stars is a Smash clone, but Punch-Out is really a puzzle game more than a sport game. Fighting games themselves would be probably started with Data East's Karate Champ in arcades in 1984 and ripped off by International Karate in 1985.)

Klonoa and kiddie games that featured cute characters as the main characters= Ripoff of Kirby (yeah, there is too many to count as evidence against this claim. Donald Duck's Playground on C-64 is probably the first I played as a kid).

2D & 3D Platformers: Ripoff of Mario Bros and Donkey Kong games (Donkey Kong brought the genre into existence, but it is also built upon games like B.C.'s Quest for Tires on ColecoVision which introduced smooth side-scrolling screens and Pac-Land which pre-dated Mario and Wonder Boy and included parallax scrolling. While Mario set the blue-print for 3D platforming in Mario 64, again others have built, innovated and improved the genre over time)

RPG: Ripoff of Mother and Xenoblade (Wow... I guess you never heard of Zork (1977), Ultima (1981), Bard's Tale (1985), Dragon Quest (1986), or Final Fantasy (1987) which all predate Mother (1989) and Monolith's first game which was Xenogears (1998)
Games where you train: Ripoff of Wii fit trainer (1986's Computrainer and even the Power Pad with Athletic World which was developed by Bandai until Nintendo bought the rights wants to have a word with you).

So I think it is safe to say that Nintendo has made many contributions to the various genres and even popularized them in some cases, they aren't the sole inventor of genres or gameplay. Like most art, there are clones/imitators and innovators to what was done beforehand.

@Darknyht: I was half way typing pretty much what you typed...then read your post lmao. I am guessing you remember Rockford (from Boulder-dash) being such a personality he hijacked the margins in Zzap64 (and later had a bit of a war with Thing-on-a-spring.) Ahhh golden era.

Admittingly for a incredibly stupid (but understandable in origin) thread, I've learned a bit in video game trivia.
Thanks @Darknyht, very informative post.

But yeah, comparing things to a more popular thing is ridiculously common in any form of media. Its easier to say X-style game or X-rip off to describe something than describe in detail usually as it gives people an understanding what something is with less words. Nintendo games are usually referred to because their games are well known and even something new to a genre.

I've heard people make comparisons between games, and I do it myself too, i.e. "Rune Factory is basically Animal Crossing with Action gaming, crafting and levelling, monster taming, villagers that aren't complete pillocks, and romance" but I have never heard anyone use the word "ripoff" when talking about Nintendo.

The only time I've heard people say a game is a ripoff of another is when talking about Diablo clones, Minecraft clones, and Overwatch. And even when they do so, it's generally an unfounded opinion

So it feels like OP is complaining about a non-existant or barely-existant issue. It's not relatable, and they haven't even linked an example to help make it relatable.

Sony actually admits they rip off Nintendo... so does that make them trolls or they have to stop too?

In their defense, there was no other way to market PSASBR as anything other than a Smash rip-off. It literally lacks an visual identity other than being "inspired by Smash Bros", despite the fact the game was completely mechanically different from Smash.

Yeah, well.... when your brain switches isnt for is then the insanity starts. Apologies to @NightmareEater. The grumpy old man will go home now.

Unfortunately I am from the US, so I missed that specifically. But I am old enough to have cut my gaming teeth on our old Odyssey II and Intellivision. Eventually we got C-64 (ironically three plus a C-128 before it was all over for that particular machine) before getting the NES for Christmas one year. I do remember my dad having a subscription to one of the magazines with programs in them, and spending too much time typing it into the C-64 in order to play the equivalent to a Warioware mini-game.

I'd say there just needs to be a change in that Nintendo fans need to stop pretending that Nintendo is their personal friend who makes games for the sole purpose of bringing smiles to children's faces while acting like Sony and Microsoft are run by demons out to pillage the collective wallet of every consumer. But that would be like asking a bear not to poop in the woods.