8 Video Game Rip-Offs Better Than The Original

8. Angry Birds (Crush The Castle)

Angry Birds, Finland's greatest export since Jean Sibelius, Nokia, and the sauna, had at least one Flash developer steaming, so suspiciously similar was it to one of their browser games.

In Armor's trebuchet-em-up Crush the Castle, the player launches projectiles from a ballista on the left of the screen at a ramshackle tower on the right, with the aim of squashing the knights stationed within. If that sounds a lot like Angry Birds, albeit with a medieval spin, it's because it's the same. Released just eight months later, Rovio's fowl-flinging mobile hit recreated Crush the Castle's gameplay almost one-for-one - up to and including the projectile variants - only swapping incendiaries for incensed chickens, and soldiers for egg-swindling swine. Thieving pigs!

It's as blatant a knock-off as they come, but Angry Birds' infinitely more appealing characters and accessible mobile format made it a superior - and incredibly successful - one. No doubt Armor had some angry words about Angry Birds.