And don't get me started on the number of Space Harrier and Outrun clones on the Famicom.Įven copy cat games aside, most successful games saw sequals (and even many unsuccessful ones). Even popular games like Galaxian was themselves a knock off (eg Space Invaders).

Not to mention all the side scrolling shooters, JRPGs that are almost identical from one another, etc. There were hundreds of Pac-Man inspired games (and Pac-Man itself wasn't the first game of that style). When Mario Bros was a hit everyone seemed to jump on the bandwagon to make a Mario clone. The 8-bit and 16-bit era had their fair share of copy cat games. > Modern games, in whatever form, most of the time are just watching yet another x-men remake. But people tend to remember the more impressive titles, in part because they have aged better, but also literally because they had that 'wow' factor. Many of which didn't push the hardware or was less creative about the use of hardware resources.

There was a lot of mediocre titles around too. > and we were creating stuff that were told the hardware wasn't capable of. It was Sega America who allowed any old release to be licensed. And it wasn't just publishers who were known to reject games, Sega Japan were famously strict about the titles they'd allow to be licensed on the Mega Drive. That very much depended on the publisher - just the same as it does now (some publishers will buy any old indie crap and others are more selective). > publishers were keen to take anything that came their way This was even true for the 8-bit era for some genres (like platformers, maze games, etc). > where game genres were yet to be inventedĪctually by the 16-bit era quite a number of genres were already really well defined. It's just the rose tinted glasses one wears when looking back at the games one grew up with and loved. The golden age were the 8 and 16 bit days, where game genres were yet to be invented and publishers were keen to take anything that came their way, and we were creating stuff that were told the hardware wasn't capable of.

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