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Ripping off successful works or products has to work once in a while, or else why do so many bother? There wouldn't be a point to being unoriginal if it was guaranteed to end in failure. Often, even mediocre clones still make money.
Yet once in a while, the clone is really successful. Not necessarily as successful as the leader, but still enough to hold its own. Sometimes there are enough successful clones to make an entire genre. There are several reasons for this.
- It's a commercial product offered with a value about as good as the original product. This is the easiest way to pull this off.
- It has a unique element that makes it stand out despite all the borrowed elements.
- There is almost nothing original about it except elements that are patented and/or intellectual property (in other words, it's just original enough to avoid a lawsuit). But it's somehow about as good as what it's ripping off. This is naturally the hardest, and rarest way to pull this off.
Now this isn't really a subjective trope, as the examples here must have critical and/or commercial success.
Can be a Sub Trope of Follow The Leader, if the clone is of a recent hit, but some can be derivative of older, more obscure works. If the clone greatly overtakes the origin in popularity, it becomes Older Than They Think. Contrast with They Copied It So It Sucks. Not to be mistaken for Send In The Clones, which is the non-meta version.
Method 1:
- Unless it's a unique or niche idea, you can expect copying among most commercial products. This is usually seen as fostering competition, hence better quality and/or value in products.
Method 2:
- In video game genres with tightly established conventions (as in you need the elements for the game to fit in the genre) and mechanics, this is almost a necessity.
- Puzzle games. If it has Falling Blocks, it's likely following Tetris. Yet Dr. Mario and Lumines are successful games in their own right. Also, all those games PopCap publishes have their own spin on established puzzle games (some actually involving spinning).
- Strategy RPGs even more than regular RPGs. Some games have broken out of the grid system, but still follow other conventions.
- Real Time Strategy
- Okami hasn't torn up the sales charts, but it's still acclaimed as one of the best Zelda clones ever (the game's developers did admit to taking after that series), due to its highly stylized look and gameplay.
- Charmed is pretty much a "family friendly" (and "less clever") Buffy, but that helped it last about as long as Buffy.
- Also, it didn't hurt that it had about three times as many witches in it and a lot more Fanservice.
- Not to mention being about adults, who deal with adult problems on the side rather than teenage ones.
- While some of the many Follow The Leader clones of Horrible Histories series deservedly sank without a trace, others, such as Horrible Science, Coping With and Murderous Maths have managed to become very successful by transplanting the dark wit and surreal cartoon work to other fields.
- Guitar Hero, at its core, is basically a certain Japanese guitar game with two more buttons.
- Harmonix next game, Rock Band is basically Guitar Hero with drums, vocals, and some timing changes.
- The vocal part is exactly like Karaoke Revolution, also developed by Harmonix.
- And Guitar Hero: World Tour is Rock Band with ... erm ... um ... cymbals?
- By the same vein, the beatmania-like DJ MAX series—more specifically, the DJ MAX Portable subseries. Though DJ MAX Portable was not the first Bemani-like Rhythm Game to grace a handheld system (beatmania has appeared on the Game Boy Color, though without much success, and as a keychain LCD game), it was the first game to do it right. It's since spawned three Korean-release sequels, an official American installment (DJ Max Fever), the Gaiden Game DJ MAX Technika, and the revival of DJ MAX on the PC...and a lawsuit from Konami.
- Supaplex is a clone of Boulderdash, but brings A LOT of new features and more responsive controls. To the point that it's even more famous than the original Boulderdash and has "supaplex clones".
- In the early nineties, Jazz Jackrabbit was as close to a Sonic The Hedgehog clone as you could get on a PC at the time, with level designs taking inspiration from the levels in Sonic 2 (compare Hill Top Zone and Chemical Plant Zone to Diamondus and Tubelectric, respectively)...only Jazz had a gun!
Method 3:
- Marathon was basically Doom for the Mac, but would even Mac owners have cared if the games weren't at least half as good?
- Same goes for Halo: though some of its big selling points had been done before (and, arguably, better), the game still compiled all these assets together to create the definitive Xbox Killer App.
- Even when a Strategy RPG doesn't differ much, it can still be a hit. Final Fantasy Tactics didn't really add much to the genre, but it certainly is considered one of the best of them. This, combined with No Export For You for many other games in the genre, can even bring Sequel Displacement where some players believe Tactics was the first.
- There are two kart racing games that are just as acclaimed as Mario Kart, Konami Krazy Racers, and Crash Team Racing, the former serving mostly to tithe GBA owners over until the release of Mario Kart, and the latter being one of the bestselling games on the Playstation. Diddy Kong Racing actually had the merit of having an adventure mode.
- The Dukes Of Hazzard TV series was openly and honestly
ripped off inspired from Smokey and the Bandit, but became a hit on its own and is probably more famous than its inspiration today.
- The Dukes inspired a large number of cloned series, all of which featured an improbable amount of car chases. As they said in those days, "The cars are the stars". The only one that was particularly successful was the very different Knight Rider.
- Knight Rider, in turn, inspired a similar crop of super-vehicle shows, the only one of which that was at all successful was Airwolf, which, while also clearly inspired by the film Blue Thunder, nonetheless managed to be unique unto itself.
- Bratz dolls may have odd faces, but ther were pretty much more hip versions of Barbie. They even outsold Barbie until Mattel successfully sued the maker of Bratz to have the dolls taken off the market (as he was still on Mattel's payroll when he came up with the ideas for them)
- Saints Row was one of the few GTA clones to stand out, if only for its over the top nature and character customization.
- In The Groove is the same thing as Dance Dance Revolution with longer songs (2 minutes as opposed to about 1'20"-1'40" for DDR songs), more modifiers, a different songlist, and more competition-based gameplay. Subverted in that Konami sued the developers and won, thereby cutting the series' life short, and that the series became a matter of controversy among fans of DDR clones.
- R-Type spawned dozen and dozen of other Horizontal-scrolling Shoot Em Up featuring some sort of gadget. Two of these clones (Last Resort and Pulstar) managed to be quite successful in their own right.
- Nosferatu is probably the best vampire movie ever. They actually did get sued by Bram Stoker's widow, though.
- The Simpsons Road Rage was a clear ripoff of Sega's Crazy Taxi. So much so that Sega sued for infringement. And won.
- Time Warp is basically Mythbusters sans everything but the highspeed camera. It still manages to be surprisingly good.
Up in the Air....
- There is a heated debate of whether or not Heroes is an X-Men rip-off, parody, deconstruction, or simply another take on similar themes.
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