7 Video Game Franchises That You Didn’t Know Are Spin-Offs
When the student becomes the master.
Most of the time, it's clear when a video game is a spin-off. The selling point of most of them is that they are side stories in a gaming world which you already love.
Spin-offs will often cling to that pre-existing franchise so it makes forgetting the series' origin pretty hard. It's impossible to look at something like Mario Kart and forget that it's a Mario game, for example.
Would you even remember Mario Kart if it didn't feature Mario and friends? Attaching a new idea to a pre-existing franchise is a good way to make a game popular, making spin-offs a safe way to try out new ideas. Think about how less popular something like Pokémon Go would be without the Pokémon branding.
Sometimes though they become so popular that they quickly overshadow the franchise that they came from.
It's like introducing a mate to your other friends and then they all start hanging out together and stop inviting you. Y'know, something that happens to all of us, right?
Anyway, it's not that every game on this list has done that. Spin-offs sometimes don't completely overshadow their influence but instead, thrive alongside them as their own thing.
7. The Mana Series Is A Final Fantasy Spin-Off
The Mana series is one of the more iconic JRPG series yet it's easy to forget that it was once a part of an even more iconic JRPG series, Final Fantasy.
The series started as Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden, with Seiken Densetsu being the Japanese name of the Mana series.
The game lost the Seiken Densetsu / Mana title when it was released in America, being known as Final Fantasy Adventure over there. For Europe, the game was called Mystic Quest as Final Fantasy wasn't really a thing there at that time.
So yeah, it makes sense as to why nobody remembers that the Mana series is a Final Fantasy spin-off. Many Americans likely played Final Fantasy Adventure and didn’t even associate it with the Mana games. And many Europeans likely looked at Final Fantasy, Mystic Quest, and the Mana series as three separate entities, just with some similarities.
The Mana series quickly gained its own identity which further disassociated it with Final Fantasy. After the first game, the series was allowed to stand on its own feet and quickly dropped the Final Fantasy elements.