Shoddy Knockoff Product / Video Games

• A large percentage of Shovelware is made of these.
• Many unlicensed / bootleg NES games, especially by Thin Chen Enterprise (often sold under the Sachen brand name), are shoddy imitations of licensed ones, e.g. Rocman X (Mega Man X), Challenge of the Dragon (Double Dragon), Jurassic Boy (Sonic the Hedgehog), Mission Cobra (Twin Cobra), Street Heroes (Street Fighter II), Q-Boy (Kirby), and Pipes (Pipe Dream). There are also several "pirate original" games based on movie franchises, such as Deathbots (Terminator), Harry's Legend (Harry Potter), and Titenic (Titanic).
• Coffee Talk has an In-Universe example. In one of Myrtle's status updates in Episode 2, she finds the number of copycat apps on the app store "staggering".
• WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$: Dr. Wario (Wario's knockoff of Dr. Mario), is a parody of bootleg games, particularly the ones with head-swapped characters and edited titles, e.g. Super Bros. 11.
• Guitar Superstar is a plug-n-play knockoff of Guitar Hero.
• There are ads on this very wiki promoting an online game entitled Space Trek.
• Then there's "World of LordCraft" (from the same organization that's behind Evony), which has banner ads that urge you to "join the battlt now" (yes, spelled "battlt").
• The multicart Caltron 6-in-1, in addition to the original game Magic Carpet 1001, features knockoffs of Space Harrier (Cosmos Cop), Balloon Fight (Adam & Eve), Sokoban (Porter), Make Trax (Bookyman), and Buster Brothers (Balloon Monster).
• The POPstation (actually spelled that way) a Real Life knockoff of the Playstation Portable: acts as an extremely good example of this trope—as well as the former Trope Namer—and that's about the only good thing it does. Check out this video review. There are other products in the POPStation Watch series which are devices shaped like other consoles but have the same internals.
• Other Playstation Portable knock-offs include the GameStation, the Funstation, the PlayCentral, the RumbleStation (includes games from everybody's favorite NES producer, Color Dreams) and many oldies compilations put in a Nintendo 64 controller (Powerplayer Super Joy; they got shot down by Nintendo pretty quick). The Dingoo A330 is a notable aversion; it's nearly identical to the PSP but has far better build quality than other copycats and runs the Android platform, making it a good choice for emulation.
• Within weeks of the release of the Wii console, the Vii. Said to be made by Ken Sing Ton (Bland-Name Product knockoff of Kensington), but actually by Jungletac, who also made the Wireless 60, Air 60, and Wireless light gun plug-n-play mentioned below. Now we have the Vii 2. With its Porwer button and its new strangely-shaped controller, but with the same low quality games, it oughta be a blast! In a similar vein we have Tilt Games, the Zone-40/Zone-60, the MiWi, the Wü and the Wiii!◊
• DanceDanceRevolution knockoffs running on Famiclones are very common. One rather well-known ROM is Street Dance, which Vinesauce viewers will remember as the one that inexplicably has sprites of a dancing Jar-Jar Binks in it.
  • One such knockoff, called Dance! It's Your Stage, subverts the nomination by being a good bit less shoddy than most, even having its own songs. It gained a certain degree of Internet fame after Funhaus played it.
  • Another is literally titled DDR. No, not Dance Dance Revolution ... just DDR. Made by "DDR Game", apparently.
  • Namco-owned arcades in the U.S. got duped by a bootlegger that had made an entire shipment of DDR Extreme cabinets. They turned up being shoddy knockoffs. with a hacked PlayStation 2 inside running the U.S. home version of DDR Extreme (which A. is not the Japanese arcade release, B. illegal, and C. is a version that wasn't really received well by fans to begin with), low quality pads, and broke down quickly or just on arrival. Realizing their mistake, the machines were recalled quickly, but the move dispersed many legitimate machines to other locations, and only some managed to get their machines back. Namco did try to salvage the "crap-o-cabs" by rebuilding the pads and converting◊ them to In the Groove 2 though.
• The PCP Station. A PlayStation Portable lookalike with Xbox buttons that's named after a drug. It comes with "Street Overlord" and "Super Mary". Also, "Chanticleer Hegemony".
• Now there's the Nanica SMITCH (with the M being an actual upside down W). It looks a lot like a switch, and has 800 NES roms built in. It costs 50$. But at least the controllers actually do detach, and actually are wireless.
• The Power Player Super Joy is a Famiclone shaped like an N64 controller. The second controller is a Sega Genesis controller.
• There's also a Famiclone Vii.
• Behold, Final Combat (Not to be confused with Sachen's Battle City knockoff of the same name), a Chinese knockoff of Team Fortress 2 that couldn't be more blatant if it tried. To be fair, the Striker does seem like a legitimately new class (albeit lifting Battlefield assets), but the Rocket, Firebat, Fatman, and Sniper are obvious ripoffs of TF2's Soldier, Pyro, Heavy, and... er, Sniper. Even the map most of the gameplay videos take place in is a blatant ripoff of Harvest (which is doubly insulting when you remember that Harvest was a fan-made map. Ouch.). Worse yet, closer observation will show that it's actually a ripoff of multiple games, as the other maps besides the Harvest lookalike are taken from Battlefield Heroes and parts of Counter-Strike's de_dust. Just how many stolen assets are actually in this thing?! (Answer: Enough for Valve, usually a fairly laid-back group, to start vigorously pursuing legal action.)
• In World of Tanks, there's a Chinese T-54 knockoff, labeled Type 59. It's one tier lower and generally worse than the original, except the armor slopes, which make it quite tough.
• Mole Kart from the Mole's World series is a Chinese ripoff of Mario Kart Wii, though it's less of a shoddy knockoff and more outright thievery. It is quite literally a texture hack of Mario Kart Wii being sold on the app store, complete with the exact same tracks (with minor texture edits to remove Mario references), the exact same items and likely everything else being the same as well.
• Rock Revolution, a painfully obvious rip-off of Rock Band. It ended up in discount bins in an instant. Ironically, it was published by Konami, who made the games that inspired Guitar Hero and Rock Band to begin with.
• An in-media example occurs in Fallout 3 during the Point Lookout Punga trip; along the bog trail, there are fake Bobbleheads called "Schmault-tec Bubbleheads" whose descriptions mock the player's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. abilities.
• Syrian Games don't even bother to change the names, but makes various "special editions" of the same game (often Grand Theft Auto) to entice people to buy the same game. Which is reportedly a broken mod lacking all story events and missions. The covers themselves are hilarious.
• Somewhere in China is a company making a jubeat knockoff called "Magic Box", videos of which can be found all over YouTube. By all accounts, the hardware appears to be very close to actual jubeat in both appearance and functionality, except Magic Box replaces the top marquee with a duplicate screen a la DJ Max Technika and adds some lights to the sides. The software, however, is painfully obviously inferior.
  • Said knockoff also goes by the name of e-Magic and Magic Touch in some markets. Notably tho, they filled the niche in markets where Konami won't export the official Jubeat machines.
• A Pump It Up knockoff has been spotted going under the name King of Dancer. It is most probably also made by the same company who brought us e-Magic and Magic Box.
• After Burst is a triple knockoff; it's a low-quality puzzle-action game that very loosely rips off Air Fortress and Thexder, but there's no way the robots on the cover art◊ aren't just recolored, Super-Deformed Mobile Suits!
• There used to be a Chinese smartphone game called Pao Mei (Gun Girl) that basically rips off KanColle replete with traced and downright stolen models.
• Kiddie rides, especially Japanese and European makes, are often shamelessly copied constantly by shoddy Chinese manufacturers. There have been records of recreations of R. G. Mitchells, Bafco and Amutec rides from the east where European rides are concerned, and recreations of rides by Hope, Sega and Banpresto where Japanese rides are concerned. And to show that they have no shame, there are records of Chinese manufacturers copying rides by other Chinese manufacturers- there exist a ripoff of a Chinese ride that is in turn a poor ripoff of R. G. Mitchell's Bertie's Fun Bug ride.
• An in-universe example occurs in the Final Fantasy series, where recurring character Gilgamesh is continually fooled by the "legendary" sword Excalipoor, which has the special property of always doing 1 damage.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, he carries swords from several previous games, including Cloud's Buster Sword, Squall's Revolver, Zidane's left-hand blade Orichalcon, Tidus' Brotherhood, Odin's Zantetsuken, and two versions of XII's strongest Great sword. Most of them, though, gives away the fact that they are all knockoffs and novelty swords. Brotherhood has two prongs, rather than one, is shaped differently, and is much more translucent. The Revolver gunblade has the wrong engraving on it (that of a chocobo, rather than Griever) and no key chain. Orichalcon is shaped differently, and the Buster sword, aside from having 4 materia slots rather than 2, flat-out has the kanji for "Fake" right on the blade itself.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, he finds a Gunhalberd which looks like Bradamante, the weapon used by the Big Bad of 1.0's Legacy storyline, Nael Van Darnus. It was used to launch Wave-Motion Gun attacks on the party in battle. In true Gilgamesh fashion, it turns out that this weapon is actually Pradamante, which is a replica (as in, completely ordinary, and possessing no special features outside of the fact that it is a gunhalberd). Gilgamesh is of course not pleased to discover this fact.
• An in-universe example in Warframe. The Corpus MegaCorp manufactures inferior copies of long-lost Orokin "Prime" weaponry, such as the Braton, being the reproduction of the Braton Prime dealing almost half as much damage as the original, while also bad at Status Infliction Attacks. They also look industrial, lacking the trademark Oroking Bling-Bling-BANG! and being all boxified. However, since 2017 it has been retconned with Braton being redesigned to imply that it's a decent Tenno reproduction of Orokin weaponry instead of a mass-produced Corpus reproduction.
• An in-universe example in Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition occurs with Varric Tethras and his famous serial Hard in Hightown and its knockoffs Hard in Hightown 2 and Hard in Hightown 3: The Re-Punchening, much to his anger. His desire to find out who dared to write the knockoff for Hard in Hightown 3 is a War Table mission.
• Deltarune actually subverts this. You can buy the B.ShotBowtie from Swatch, while Spamton sells you to the BSHOTBOWTIE, that's much weaker than the one Swatch has. However, Swatch's bowties have the brand names removed while Spamton proclaims his bowties to be "EXCLUSIVE OFFICIAL SPAMTON", which means Spamton sold those bowties before going Riches to Rags, and kept some of the originals as they worsened over time.
• No Umbrellas Allowed has In-Universe examples. Some items are from fake brands, which have wrong or missing slogans or verified signatures, or the wrong materials, production years, or gems. These Brand Eraser tags remove the brand price from the item's appraisal value.
• Pokémon:
  • A virtual version of this is fake event Pokémon, ever since someone figured out how to create their own mons and inject them into the game. Sometimes, these can be spotted by things like an incorrect or missing ribbon, perfect 6ivs, or mistakes in the met location, game, date, etc. Events obtained from a Power Saves or Cyber Saves device are identifiable by always being generated with the same date on the fake wondercard. Others, though, are very good, and can only be spotted by dumping the file and checking the SID (Secret ID) to see if it's correct, incorrect or missing (although some events in earlier generations never had SIDs to begin with).
  • As for the games, bootleggers have managed to sell fake game cartridges in the earlier generations, either counterfeits of the licensed games or knockoff rom hacks loaded onto cartridges.
    • Counterfeited versions of the Pokémon games are almost indistinguishable in terms of gameplay, but are known for having buggy saving and, in the case of G3, Pal Park incompatibility. The game cartridges themselves can sometimes be very difficult to distinguish from the genuine product, making it a frustrating task to find a G3 game to migrate Pokémon into the later games.
    • Gen 4 Heart Gold and Soul Silver fakes have a similar issue connecting to the Poke Walker.
    • ROM hacks loaded onto cartridges are another issue. Whilst some hack cartridges are poorly-made hacks of other games to include Pokémon characters, there are also high-quality hacks made by fans that are meant to be distributed online for free which have been loaded onto cartridges by bootleggers. It's gotten to the point where fan hacks have started inserting disclaimers to explain that the game should be released for free, and that if you paid for a cartridge you are being ripped off.
  • The DS and 3DS games are more difficult to counterfeit, but bootlegs are still being circulated. Genuine versions of Heart Gold, Soul Silver and the Black and White games have an infrared port atop the game cards used for certain features (such as the Pokéwalker) which are not present on fake versions. Some G5 events had an infrared scanner at the entry used to detect illegitimate copies of the games.
  • Pokémon GO practically begged for this to occur, especially after Niantic/Nintendo made a (since withdrawn) announcement that the game would not be launched in China and were very secretive regarding their launch schedule. As the total result of their actions, ripoffs have flooded the Chinese iOS store, as well as the various unofficial Android appstores in the country. Toys and fake trading cards also had the Go logo slapped on them because bootleggers knew it would lure in unsuspecting fans. Some were simply game screenshots made into cards. For the record, the only official product for Go is the Gotcha game accessory. Official tie-in trading cards were released in 2022, but as part of larger expansions and not with the Go logo on the cards anywhere.
  • Mobile games love ripping off Pokémon, even going as far as to put actual Pokémon in ads seen on places like YouTube. The games aren’t usually that good, though.
• There are several inexpensive portable consoles for sale at reputable retailers, like the VG Pocket and the Dreamgear MyArcade. Most of these are relatively decent quality in terms of materials and construction, but are loaded with dozens or even hundreds of forgettable, unlicensed copycat versions of classic arcade and 8-bit games. The MyArcade mini-cabinet actually has a decent handful of legit early-era NES games like Urban Champion and Balloon Fight (plus a few that were originally only released in Japan), only with heavily modified graphics to disguise what they are (two exceptions are Tag Team Wrestling and Pinball, which have most of the trademarks removed, but are otherwise untouched). A plug'n play TV variant of the MyArcade is the Retroplay Controller, which was called the "worst plug n play console" by Caustic Critic Rerez. Thankfully, manufacturers eventually cottoned on to what a neat concept these mini-cabinets are and began selling licensed versions featuring the real arcade games (although these most frequently include only one game per unit, for a few obvious reasons).
• The original Crysis has an In-Universe example. Nomad encounters a group of North Korean soldiers wearing Power Armor based on the US's multi-billion dollar nanosuits. Nomad explicitly says they look like cheap knockoffs, and in gameplay they are; while Nomad's suit can flip between bullet-resistance, super strength, super speed, and cloaking, the KPA suits can only boost their resistance or strength. However, in multiplayer the US and KPA suits are a case of Cosmetically Different Sides.
• Beware the Polystation! This one's a Famiclone that looks like a Playstation until you open it up and see a cartridge slot.
• Sepia Go! is a Chinese mobile port of the first Splatoon. It looks exactly like a low-poly version of Splatoon, reuses music from the game, and has official art from it. The game would be discontinued within months for obvious reasons, but the creators would return two years later with Paintman Go!. The new game swapped out the Inklings with Captain Ersatz characters that turn into robots instead of squids, and replaces the music with suspiciously similar tracks, though this version would also disappear within months (this time due to server costs).
• The infamous 7 Grand Dad, which is The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy, but Mario's head is pasted on Fred's body. The only other difference is the title screen. The game wouldn't be very noteworthy if not for both Joel and SiIvaGunner, the former reacting to it during a Chinese bootleg stream, and the latter basing his entire channel around doing Bait-and-Switch videos, usually with the "Fleenstones" theme from the title screen. Watch Joel's reaction here.
• In-universe example from Dark Souls II: The Bluemoon Greatsword is a knockoff trying to pass itself off as the Moonlight Greatsword forged from the tail of Seath the Scaleless, which the Chosen Undead cut off many ages ago in Dark Souls. It is the family heirloom of Benhart of Jugo, and he couldn't be prouder of being the current owner, as his family thinks it's the real thing. Magerold of Lanafir mentions meeting him once, and says he could tell the sword was fake right away, but couldn't bring himself to tell Benhart because it would break the poor man's heart. It's worth noting though, that the Bluemoon Greatsword is still a big sword that hurts a lot when you hit something with it, and with no stat scaling it is a perfect candidate for Raw infusion. It just lacks the magical properties of the real thing. Its durability is also absolutely terrible, even worse than most katanas, so it's still shoddy in that aspect.
• The Wireless Air 60, said to be the worst console of all time, is a completely unworkable Kinect knockoff, and recycles many games from the aforementioned Vii and Zone/Wireless 60.
• The Wireless 60 itself contains many knockoffs of classic games, including Go-Kart (Rally-X), Deep Storm (Space Harrier), Dream Bubble (Tetris), Totally Jet (Wave Race), Bump Jump (Arkanoid, not to be confused with Bump 'n' Jump), Pop Ball (Buster Brothers), Lightning Plan (UN Squadron), Jewel Fever 2 (Bust-a-Move), Auto X (Super Mario Kart), Motor Rally 2 (Super Hang On), Ice Climber (Ice Climber), Treasure Hunt (Lode Runner), Bomb Hero (Bomber Man), Ballroom Bonanza (Bejeweled), Milk Mania (Boulder Dash), etc.
• A Chinese Overwatch ripoff mobile game (Detailed by YouTube user "ohnickel" here) has some very blatant design theft. Even if some characters don't look like their Overwatch counterparts, their moveset gives them away. Some characters take inspiration from Final Fantasy VII, League of Legends and for some mysterious reason, Mad Max. One of the more blatant (and hilarious) ones is the knockoff!Torbjorn: instead of being based on World of Warcraft's dwarves, he's based on their gnomes! But even still has the exact same tattoo on his shoulder. It's pretty easy to tell at a glance what each character is stolen from.
• Mario 3: Around the World, a Russian bootleg game.
• Super Bros. 11, also known as Mario Adventures, a Mario hack of Adventure Island 3.
• Super Shrek Bros., a hack of Super Mario Bros. that turns Mario into Shrek.
• Super Mario 14, a hack of Kid Niki: Radical Ninja 3 that changes the title screen and replaces a few of Kid Niki's sprites with Mario.
• Sonic Jam 6, a hack of Super Mario Bros. with Sonic in Mario's role.
• Somari, the inverse of the above, with Mario playing Sonic's role in Sonic the Hedgehog.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the NES, a pirate SNES hack of Sparkster with Sonic's sprites instead of the original Sparkster sprites.
• Шрек (aka Shrek), an unlicensed Russian hack of Adventures of Yogi Bear for the Sega Genesis. The game is unchanged except for the sprite of Yogi being replaced by Shrek.
  • Шрек 2, a sequel to the above, a sprite hack of The Ottifants which replaces the main character with one loosely based off Shrek and also translates all the text to Russian.
• Ben 10: Alien Force, is an unlicensed Russian Sega Mega Drive port of a beat-em-up Ben Ten game. You can only play as regular boy Ben, and the enemies are the same three aliens over and over again.
• Spongebob Squarepants, a Russian re-skin of Cool Spot, with Spongebob Squarepants replacing Cool Spot.
• LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, an Russian unlicensed Mega Drive game based off the movie series of the same name.
• Angry Bird 2, a ROM hack of Moai-kun that has replaced the sprites with ones loosely based off the Angry Birds characters.
• Feng Yin Dao, a Chinese backport of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening made for the Famicom.
• Ultimate Battle Royale, a mobile game which attempts to mimic Fortnite Battle Royale, but fails due to being slow and clunky, with horrible controls and constant advertisements with every move the player makes.
• Battleground Royale, a mobile rip-off of Fortnite Battle Royale which uses Minecraft graphics.
• Super Mario World 64, a pirated port of the SNES Super Mario World for the Sega Mega Drive.
• Super Mario World, a hack of Squirrel King for the Sega Mega Drive, which itself is a bootleg of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers from the NES.
• Mario 4: A Space Odyssey, a hack of the existing bootleg game Mario 3: Around the World. While the game adds a few changes, it plays pretty much the same as Mario 3: Around the World.
• M.C. Mario, a hack of McKids that changes the title screen and replaces the two kids with Mario and Luigi.
• Pizza Pop Mario (also known as 'Mary Pizza Pop'), a Pizza Pop hack which changes the title screen and replaces the pizza delivery boy with Mario.
• Super Bros. 10: Kung Fu Mario, a hack of Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu which changes the title screen and swaps out Jackie Chan's head with Mario's.
• Sonic 3D Blast 5, a pirate Game Boy hack which was later re-hacked as Sonic Adventure 7 for the Game Boy Color.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 4, a pirate game which is in actuality a hack of the Speedy Gonzales video game Los Gatos Bandidos.
• Sonic for the NES, a pirated version of Adventure Island which is identical to the original apart from the main sprites and title screen.
• Super Mario 'n Sonik 2, a pirate hack of the video game Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers 2.
• Sonyc, a 1995 fan game/pirate game for MSX 2 computers.
• World Heroes 2, a bootleg fighting game in which players can play as Mario, Chun-Li, Sonic the Hedgehog and Leonardo, among others.
• Harry Potter (or Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen / "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", to use its full title), a pirated game for the Sega Mega Drive, which plays somewhat like a 3D Pac-Man clone.
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (not to be confused with the official Game Boy Color game), a hack of a McDonalds game called Global Gladiators.
• Harry Potter, a hack of Magic Carpet 1001.
• Harry Wrestle, a hack of Panic Restaurant.
• Harry Boy and the Chamber of Secrets, a bootleg game which uses a variant of the Super Mario Bros clone engine. In the game, you play as Harry Potter - starting out as a frog, with pieces of meat returning you to Harry form.
• Harry Potter 3, a Chinese shoot 'em up for the Game Boy Color released in 2002.
• Harry Potter 2 (also known as simply Harry Potter), a Game Boy Color made by the company BBD.
• Donkey Kong Country 4, a pirated port of Donkey Kong Country made for the Famicom. It was later re-hacked as The Jungle Book 2, replacing both Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong with Mowgli.
• Super Donkey Kong 2, a pirated Famicom port of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest.
• Donkey Kong 5: The Journey of Over Time and Space, a bootleg game for the Game Boy Color. The game itself is a remake of the first five worlds of Super Mario Bros., with Donkey Kong as the main protagonist.
• Super Donkey Kong '99, a bootleg game for the Mega Drive. Instead of a port, this game is an original platformer based on the Donkey Kong Country series.
• Super Donkey Kong - Xiang Jiao Chuan, a Chinese Donkey Kong Country bootleg for the Famicom.
• Star Wars Escape From Hoth, a hack of Asteroids for the Atari 2600.
• Star Wars Galaxian, a hack of the original Galaxian video game.
• Star Wars Invaders, a hack of Space Invaders.
• Star Wars: The Battle of Alderaan, a hack of the video game Star Strike for the Atari 2600.
• Star Wars, a hack of the game Battle City for the Nintendo NES.
• Super Star Wars 2, a hack of the game Baltron.
• Super Star Wars, a hack of the game Argus.
• Yoda Bros, a hack of Super Mario Bros. with Yoda in Mario's role.
• Yoda's Adventure, a hack of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link where Yoda replaces Link.
• Star Wars: Jedy, a hack of Wolfchild for the Mega Drive.
• Star Wars: Episode 2, a Game Boy Color bootleg game that was only sold in China.
• Zelda: Triforce of the Gods, a hack of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past made for the Famicom.
• Shen Qi De Mao Zi: supposedly a backport of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap for the Famicom, but it's a turn-based RPG for some reason.
• Lord of the Rings, a bootleg game which copies Konami's Japan-exclusive NES game, Getsu Fuuma Den.
• Mo Jie Qi Bing, a bootleg Kiki Kai Kai clone with characters from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
• Lord of the Rings, a hack of Stormlord.
• The Lord of the Rings 3: Return of the King, an extensive graphical hack of Chinese Fighter III.
• King of Ring, a Lord of the Rings bootleg by the developer Sintax.
• The Media Mega Drive is a Famiclone in Megadrive/Genesis clothing that claims to be built with Sony components from Japan.
• Top Hunter, a plug'n play light gun system, otherwise simply known as "Wireless" (as reviewed by Rerez), already rips off the name of a Neo Geo game and the controller design of Big Buck Hunter, along with including knockoffs of Area 51, Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters, Tomb Raider, and Ranger Mission, but what really takes the cake is Duck Hunt, which outright plagiarizes the NES game down to the sound effects, along with featuring a Daffy Duck expy on the Game Over screen.
• On the more serious side, arcade bootlegs are a huge problem for the industry and collectors alike:
  • Snow Bros 3 is just a romhack of the first Snow Bros game combined with a blatant attempt to cash in on the 2001 Japan-Korea World Cup.
  • Bootlegs of SNK MVS cartridges are plentiful and one should be careful when buying them. Specifically, there exists a bootleg copy of Metal Slug 6 that is actually nothing more than a romhack of the first Metal Slug game^note The real Metal Slug 6 is released on the Atomiswave platform and thus come on Atomiswave cartridges, not Neo Geo MVS cartridges. Aside from that, there’s the usual Plus 20xx bootlegs to contend with, be it Metal Slug or The King of Fighters titles.
• Yakuza:
  • Jo Amon weaponizes this in his Optional Boss fight in Yakuza 0, as throughout his fight he repeatedly pickpockets Majima, replacing his items with useless Amon-branded tissues and a knockoff of Staminan Spark called Staminan Spork (which has the exact same appearance and description as the original, with only a single-letter typo being the difference.) While Staminan Spark fully restores your health and Heat meters, Staminan Spork instead causes huge amounts of damage and drains your Heat meter.
  • By the time of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Ono Michio-kun (the in-universe small town mascot introduced in Yakuza 6) has become so virally popular throughout Japan that counterfeiters have started to make fake Michio figurines to cash in on his popularity. Not only do the "Fauxno Michio" figurines look off design-wise in just about every respect, but their crappy voice chips and batteries are flawed, making them an explosive hazard if not handled carefully.
• The so-called "1.8" handhelds are several editions with misleadingly different stylings (Game Boy, Game & Watch and Xbox 360 controller lookalikes all exist) of a handheld LCD multigame featuring particularly oddly-titled selections (and numerous reskins) of loose knockoffs of games ranging from Game & Watch classics to more recent mobile hits. Besides familiar titles which may include Donkey Kong, Tetris, Angry Birds (retitled either "Anger Birds" or "Angry Chicken") and Plants vs. Zombies, they also offer games titled after such mundane activities as Baggage Claim, Beer Waitress, Car Parking and Receive Gift, as well as bizarre-sounding titles like Bear vs. Bald, Beware Cross, The Bird Home, Boldly Egg, Destroy Hubble (which turns out to be a Pang clone and nothing to do with the Hubble Space Telescope), Eatting Balls (sic) and The Ftpunk. Whoever developed this system also seems to have believed that the C library functions "tolower" and "toupper" would also be good names for video games. One of these may be the only handheld video gaming device ever to be sold as an "eyecare console." Ashens reviews one of the earlier versions (while glancing at another) here. Despite the presence of a fair number of Nintendo Entertainment System games commonly seen on bootleg multigames, none of these units are actual Famiclones; the earlier ones run on hardware closer to the Timetop GameKing (itself designed as a low-budget substitute for the Game Boy Advance), while later the games were ported to a platform similar to some of the aforementioned Wii knockoffs.
• An in-universe example occurs in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, and serves as part of the backstory for Claire Rieveldt, which is revealed in the third game. Years before the main plot, her father and uncle ran the Rieveldt Company, which prided itself on high-quality musical instruments. However, her uncle was smuggling in cheap knock-offs from abroad and selling them under the Rieveldt label to make a profit. Her father caught on to this, and was about to expose the scam. However, her uncle hired someone to kill him in a car crash to Make It Look Like an Accident, which also killed Claire's mother and younger brother. Claire eventually caught on too, and was able to gather the evidence needed to expose her uncle, who was given the death penalty for his crimes.
• The Great Giana Sisters for Commodore 64 was such a shameless rip-off of Super Mario Bros. that its makers even had the audacity to write "The brothers are history!" on the cover. Copies of the game were swiftly ripped from the shelves after a mere month when Nintendo made some legal threats, but pirated versions of the game were widely circulated as it was a floppy disk game with no Copy Protection because "being so similar to Mario that Nintendo got upset" actually managed to be a fairly glowing endorsement to Commodore 64 fans. The game ended up getting an unofficial sequel, fan-made remakes, and not one but two official new entries in the series that completely avert this trope.
• The Nintendo Switch isn’t immune to these. Most are cheap gaming tablets loaded with retro game roms and made to resemble the Switch’s colors and button layout.
  • Even before, when Playstation Vita was in circulation, there existed the same thing but with Vita's layout.
  • And as an odd step-up, they are made to run Android or Raspberry PI instead of being NES or Genesis clones like before and loaded with so many actual (instead of hacks to inflate number) games of various consoles (usually from the NES to 1st generation Playstation) due to the advent of gigabytes large internal storage unit. Due to the lack of quality control however, their performance left too much to be desired, not to mention all the loaded roms are less than even legally questionable. One such infamous bootleg right below...
• The Souljagame, a weird attempt by Soulja Boy to sell videogame and specialty electronic products. They consist of re-sold knockoff consoles.
• Here is a Game Boy clone that was made with similar hardware to the official console. It was sold on the market when the official Game Boy wasn’t available in the country it’s from. It actually can play Game Boy game cartridges. There’s also a cheap Game Boy imitation called Game Child.
• Older handheld system cartridges aren’t the only ones frequently faked, collectors have to watch out for fake NES, SNES and Nintendo 64 reproduction cartridges as well. Sometimes the bootleggers even reprint the game’s manual to go with it.
• The Retro Future and Retro Dodo often unbox cheap knockoff game consoles on video.
• Naturally, the success of Among Us has led to plenty of knockoffs — including Pretend, which is basically Among Us set in an office building. Oh, and it mines your computer for bitcoin.
• In-universe example from Alien: Isolation. Working Joes are primitive androids produced by Seegson as a "low cost" alternative to Weyland-Yutani androids. The W-Y androids are practically indistinguishable from humans even with close inspection (in fact some players might even be fooled by Samuels' initial appearance into thinking he is human); the Working Joes look like crash test dummies with plastic skin, they cannot move faster than a brisk walking pace and have rather poor sensors (which is fortunate for Amanda), and they are stupid enough to walk into fires and electrical hazards.
• An In-Universe example in LISA: The Pointless would be the entire fashion company of Kung, which exclusively dedicated itself to imitating the clothing of a legitimate fashion company known as King (which post-Flash is the attire of the Gold Diamonds). Then Kung created the Infinity Jerseys, which were meant to be a knockoff of a product that never came to fruition (and more ominously seems to be connected to a Hate Plague and the rise of a murder cult known as the Infinity Franchise).
• In the Myst series, Gehn's Descriptive Books are regarded as this In-universe, as he never learned the Art of writing Ages properly, treating it as a science instead of an art. Riven is set within the titular Age that was written by Gehn, and it is already falling apart at the seams when Atrus sends the Player Character inside to imprison Gehn in a Trap Book and rescue Atrus' wife Catherine while Atrus makes edits to the Riven Descriptive Book to keep it going until the Player Character is done with their mission.

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