10 Video Games That Blatantly Ripped Off Iconic Franchises

Video games are constantly being compared to one another. Sonic's a faster Mario, Battlefield is a more realistic Call of Duty. The comparisons never end. Sometimes they foster rivalries that help both sides thrive. Other times a game is actually just a shameless clone of the other and lawyers get involved...

The more successful that something is, the more likely it is that it'll get copied. Think about how many first-person shooters showed up after Call of Duty took off. A certain genre that involves 100 players is reenacting that same situation now.

If you want to see what an undebatable rip-off looks like, just search up the Chinese version of practically any game out there. Final Combat is just Team Fortress 2 with different names, Overwatch has multiple Chinese rip-offs (and just rip-offs in general) like Hero Mission and League of Titans.

What we're about to go over are some of gaming's most infamous (and successful) rip-offs. The ones that are famous enough to have reputations beyond just being copycats. Some of them will be good, some will be bad, but all of them will be unoriginal.

The Game: Once upon a time, Sony decided they wanted all of their most iconic characters to do battle. In 2009, they began development on a game that would pit Kratos, Nathan Drake, Fat Princess and more all against each other in one epic brawl.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale was released on 20 November 2012 for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. It was a crossover fighting game that revolved around beating blue orbs out of your opponents and then collecting them. Doing so would build up a super meter. Each character's super move got three levels, with each level being more useful than the last. They were the only moves that could kill opponents, so they were pretty important.

The Game It Ripped Off: Super Smash Bros.

PlayStation All-Stars was essentially Sony's version of Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. The series' massive success was no doubt why Sony wanted a title like it for themselves. Development even began one year after Nintendo released Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii.

PS All-Stars suffered from many issues. Its single-player campaign was low-budget and lackluster in comparison to Brawl's Adventure Mode. Its reliance on using super moves to kill opponents wasn't popular either. The game received mixed to positive reviews and relatively low sales. At least four DLC characters were planned, but only two were released. The other two were canceled due to the first two not selling well.

PlayStation All-Stars' servers were shut down on 31 January 2019. The game never had a sequel. It wasn't an awful game, but it failed the second that it tried to replicate such a successful and beloved title.