8 Video Game Rip-Offs Better Than The Original

Gamers separated from 2020's streets of plague have instead been nostalgically wallowing in 2020's Streets of Rage, a long-overdue fourth installment of the series just as good - better, even - than the early-'90s urban brawlers it lovingly recreates. The modern homage is somewhat meta, considering SEGA's original Streets of Rage was in itself a back-alley knock-off of another inner-city puncher, Final Fight.

After SEGA's hardware got the jump on Nintendo, the technically superior Mega Drive quickly earned a reputation as the home of near-perfect arcade conversions. All that changed when, shortly following the 1990 launch of the Super Famicom, Nintendo announced they'd secured the rights to bring Capcom's coin-up smash Final Fight to their system.

Mega Drive owners were crestfallen - but not for long. Rather than submit, SEGA entered a street fight with Nintendo, developing their own version of the game. Released 1991, Bare Knuckle - known as Streets of Rage in the west - was basically Final Fight in a very flimsy disguise; even the protagonist Axel wore the same outfit as rival Cody.

But beyond the immediate similarities, it was so much more than a copy. Streets of Rage couldn't boast the oversized sprites of Capcom's beat-em up, but it made up for them with a super-cool neo-Tokyo aesthetic, underpinned by Yuzo Koshiro's legendary house-trance soundtrack. Attacks were more varied thanks to the slightly ridiculous vault attack, though that was not half as ridiculous as the fantastic, screen-busting special moves that'd see a hail of fire engulf your enemies.

By the time Final Fight was finally ported to SEGA's MegaCD, nobody cared; the sequel to its clone, Streets of Rage 2, had already beat it out the park. Heck, out the city.