5 Insanely Successful Video Games That Were Total Ripoffs. No video game is completely original; Mortal Kombat was inspired by Street Fighter II, Halo was inspired by Half-Life and the Super Mario franchise was inspired by massive amounts of hallucinogens. But then there are some beloved games that weren't so much "inspired by" other games as they were "the exact game, with a minor paint job. " Those knockoffs then went on to make millions of dollars. #5.
Angry Birds Is a Knockoff of a Free Browser Game Via Wired Chances are that everyone reading this has by now played or seen someone else play Angry Birds at least once, or most likely several dozens of times. The iPhone time-waster is simply the most popular game ever made. It's the video game version of Flavor Flav. On the other hand, you probably haven't heard of Crush the Castle, an online Flash game that was released a mere eight months before Angry Birds and bears more than a few ... similarities.
Via Addictinggames.com"It was hardcore back in the day. The one that splits into three parts ... The 6 Most Mind-Blowing (and Pointless) Gaming Achievements. We've told you before about the guy who managed to get a perfect score at Pac-Man by playing the same level over 200 times for six hours. You didn't think that was the most extreme example of video game dedication we could find, did you? For you see, real dedication means going past hard mode and thinking way, way outside the box, like ... #6. Building Mind-Bogglingly Huge Objects Inside Games Via Ariablarg.tv Most of you know Minecraft as the last game your friend started playing before he disappeared for a few months.
Via YouTubeWe're sure that at least one court is using this as evidence in an insanity plea. But you had to know that a game built specifically for obsessive people with lots of spare time would quickly top even that -- in complexity, if not size. Which is to say, EACH FUCKING PIXEL IS A BRICK. Since they're stop-motion films, that means each individual frame of gameplay was painstakingly recreated. Via Hans LemursonOur entire solar system lives within the tip of that torch. 6 Reasons It Is Impossible to Quit 'World of Warcraft' About a year ago, I made the statement, "If you ever see me reopen my World of Warcraft account, it means I probably got fired from my job.
" Eight months later, I was giving Blizzard my credit card info for the sixth time since its 2004 release. Blizzard had ensnared me with another expansion (though I still have my job, so far). I'm not the only one -- friends who play with me have come back just as often, and each time it just confuses the shit out of the people in our lives who don't play. So for everyone out there quietly judging us and wondering how we can continually come back to this time-sucking black hole that swallows lives by the millions, let me offer some answers: #6. Getty The Short Answer: The same reason you can stay with the same boyfriend or girlfriend long after you've stopped fantasizing about setting them on fire and moved on to the planning stage.
Getty"Just bide your time, man. No, Seriously ... When World of Warcraft first came out, it was pretty basic. So, honestly? 5 Iconic Characters You Didn't Know Were Rip-Offs. Ah, who can forget that world-changing childhood moment when you first picked up a comic book featuring a truly unique superhero character? Not comic book creators, apparently -- because it turns out they straight-up jacked many of the heroes you know and love from earlier works.
And no, we're not about to list the knockoff brainchildren of Rob Liefeld. We're talking A-listers, like ... #5. Captain America arose during World War II as an inspiration for John Q. "This looks as ridiculous as it does awesome! " Cap is so well known, in fact, that no one else can successfully pull off the stars-and-bars look anymore -- if they try, they may as well just print "RIPOFF" across their chest in place of the big white star. Except ... It turns out ol' Cap actually showed up a little late to the Stars 'n' Stripes toga party. Comicvine.comThus making him the perfect 1940s father. goodcomics.comApparently Adolf's only weakness is a telegraphed haymaker. #4. . #3. Iwasabronzeageboy.comWar death. 7 Video Game Easter Eggs Designed to Screw With Your Head. Video game Easter eggs come in a variety of flavors. Some are meant to amuse the player, some are meant to creep the hell out of the player and some ... some have no discernible purpose other than making the player go what the actual fuck?
These are the latter kind. #7. Silent Hill 2: The Dog Ending Via Covergalaxy.com The Silent Hill franchise is generally recognized as one of the most terrifying game series ever produced. So these games are pretty freaky to begin with, but somehow, a secret ending for Silent Hill 2 managed to make the entire franchise even weirder. It may take you as many as three playthroughs to get this right, but it's totally worth it, because once you open the door, you'll find ... ... a dog in a headset, mucking around at a control panel. "Now it all makes sense! " Realizing that the search for his wife has all been for naught and he's been a puppet of a freaking dog all this time, James falls to his knees for the small comfort of said dog licking his face. #6. . #5.
. #4. 6 Reasons 'Resident Evil' Movies Are Better than the Games. Gamers are naturally suspicious of Hollywood, which processes source material with all the care of a digestive system. And with similar results. But the Resident Evil movies are the most successful video game movie series ever made, four films earning almost half a billion dollars. Remember that the next time you hear about education funding being cut, because the facts are probably related. Constantin FilmKicking an infected zombie is an exactly equal mix of badass and dumbass. Some gamers complain about the movies, which is proof that some gamers can whine about anything, even a company spending hundreds of millions of dollars hiring a supermodel to act out their most ridiculous fantasies. . #6. In 1996, the Resident Evil games and their fans surrendered any right to criticize any moving image with the worst intro movie ever made: Back then, people were still excited about full-motion video, and you'd swear that Resident Evil was trying to warn them that it would never get better.
Capcom. The 6 Craziest Ways Creators Hid Themselves in Video Games. When we're playing video games, we don't really think much about the people who make them. If you hate a movie, you may say, "Curse you, Michael Bay! " and if you hate a book, you'll probably think, "Why did I buy Steve-O's autobiography again? " But if you hate a game, it's usually the company that published it that gets the blame. And they get the credit if it's great. So maybe it's no surprise that game developers come up with devious and quite frankly insane ways to insert their faces in hidden spots of the game. . #6. Via Aidanmoher.com God of War for PlayStation 2 follows a Spartan named Kratos who murders his way up the ladder until he can literally become the God of War, ending the game by climbing up Mount Olympus to assume the throne of Ares.
As you walk to the throne at the end of the game, you may notice two statues standing on each side, but they appear to be nothing but part of the scenery: If you hit them, nothing happens. Much like Kratos himself. . #5. Via Doomworld.com #4. 5 Halloween Parties Too Badass to Be Real (That Totally Are) Let's face it, Halloween will never be as cool as it was when you were a kid. Yes, as an adult you get the joy of slutty costumes and spending the evening drunk, but it's just not the same. Haunted houses aren't scary, costumes are lame and the parties are just cardboard decorations and people weeping quietly (your experiences there may vary). Well, it turns out you just need to know where to go.
There are some places where the true spirit of Halloween lives on in grand fashion ... #5. Eastern State Penitentiary's Badass Haunted House easternstate First, let's talk about the Halloween staple, the haunted house. Now allow Pennsylvania to prove you wrong with Terror Behind the Walls. WalkwithyoungOnce you enter, you can never leave (except through the gift shop). Built in 1829, the ESP had a reputation as a pretty nightmarish place when it was operational -- a visiting Charles Dickens described it as "worse than any torture of the body. " thejamisonianAnd maybe a dental dam. A haunted one. #4. 23 Instructional Signs That Must Exist in Video Game Worlds. 6 Moments That Make Video Games Worth It. Why do we play video games? It has to look like the world's stupidest hobby to somebody who isn't into it, and I don't think the answer I used to give ("Leave me alone, Mom!
GOD! ") really holds up anymore. Well, let me give it another try. Because every time a particularly trashy or embarrassing video game appears, I feel the need to defend the medium as worthwhile. Anyway, as a writer I am known for two things: complaining about the video game industry and huge sentient insects that burrow into people's heads and take over their minds.
. #6. I completely understand why, out of context, the sight of me giggling like a fool while blowing a bad guy into a pile of donor organs can feel as if you're watching the final erosion of human morality right before your eyes. "Teehee! " That's Fallout 3, and what you can't know until you've played one of these games is how hard they make you work to earn that. For hours you scurry around in fear, powerless. . #5. A typewriter save room. . #4. Or this: ... 5 Prejudices That Video Games Can't Seem to Get Over. We've mentioned before that movies still inexplicably revolve around prejudices that we thought we had outgrown decades ago, but that can at least be attributed to the age of the medium. Movies came into their own nearly a century ago; those prejudices are likely just strangely persistent moral throwbacks. But video games are different, because they're ours, right? There's no reason to inherit our grandparents' bigotry because we made these things up: We've set the standards, we've made the rules and we know that being racist, sexist, homophobic jerkholes is wrong ... don't we?
Then how come this stuff is still happening all up in Mario's grill? #5. Sure, there's the occasional obvious racism, like your classic stereotypes -- Barret Wallace in Final Fantasy VII is the only black character, and of course he uses heavy weapons, speaks in broken English and is vaguely homoerotic. Nintendo.wikia.comIt's like what Hitler probably thought Gypsies looked like. Yep. So What's the Deal? #4. . #3. Coming Soon to a Theater Near You (Unfortunately) 6 Glitches That Accidentally Invented Modern Gaming. A Disgruntled Employee Invents the Easter Egg When most people think of the birth of the action RPG genre, they think of The Legend of Zelda. Link had a forebearer, however, in the form of a 1979 Atari 2600 game simply titled Adventure. It worked pretty much the same way as the early Zelda games: Players picked up items to help them move through dungeons, and slew monsters and dragons.
It was a pretty straightforward game, and a relatively popular one at that. Via VideoGameObsession.comIt's because it was so orange. But back in the late 70s and early 80s, Atari was kind of a shitty place to work. Most games were made by just one person, and they didn't even get credit on the box. Robinett decided to exploit the glitch by including a secret item in the game: A small 1x1 pixel square that was the same color as the floor, making it effectively invisible.
Via Gamespot And thus was born the first Easter egg in video game history. Street Fighter Accidentally Invents Combos Via mobygames.com. The 6 Greatest Video Games We'll Never Get to Play. As I briefly touched on in this article, the one thing common to every gamer I know is that they all have at least one revolutionary, brilliant, perfect and heartbreakingly unrealized "I Have a Game" concept: some combination of elements, some untapped property or some new direction for a sequel that just never got made, but would shake the gaming world to the core if it did.
The single greatest tragedy in gaming isn't what that manipulative bitch Peach is doing to poor Mario's heart; it's that, though we will get endless iterations of Call of Battle: Duty Field from now until the heat death of the universe, we'll never see these masterpieces get made. But fuck that noise: This is the Internet.
This is where dreams come true, even (hell, especially) the awful ones. Why can't we have these? Indie games have more of a market than ever, talented designers are increasingly going freelance and Kickstarter and similar programs are disseminating funding outside of the old publisher model. . #6. 5 Geek Fantasies You Won't Believe You Can Buy. Fantasy camps have existed for sports lovers for decades -- middle-aged guys can, for a price, play basketball or baseball alongside Hall of Famers and live out all of their jock fantasies that never came true. But there has never been an equivalent for the sci-fi geek or rabid movie lover. Why the hell can't we pay to, say, experience a real zombie apocalypse, or become a spy?
Well, it turns out you totally can. Start saving up so you can ... #5. Zedevents The Fantasy: On some level we all know that an undead takeover of the planet would be a terrible thing, but at the same time, we're also secretly rooting for it. The Reality: Just outside of London lies an abandoned mall that offers zombie enthusiasts a dream come true.
ZedeventsIt's difficult to get a gun in England, making this whole zombie scenario very unrealistic. The experience starts with a training session, where participants are given Airsoft guns and taught the basics of survival and combat in the mall. . #4. . #3.