Gaming has been around for long enough that many people who grew up with it are now part of the industry themselves.
An interesting side effect of this is that fans of certain games have taken it upon themselves to revive their old favorites.
Basically, when games either haven’t had a new entry in a long time or have gone in a direction fans don’t like, these new creators will say “fine, we’ll do it ourselves.”
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The results of this can be hit or miss, but when they hit, they hit surprisingly hard.
Some games, despite ostensibly being copycats, have managed to win quite a few accolades for themselves.
10Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
Like Jet Set Radio With Jetpacks
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
Jet Set Radio is one of Sega’s lesser-used franchises, with the original launching in 2000 and only getting one sequel in 2002.
It was a longing for this immensely stylish skating and graffiti game that gave usBomb Rush Cyberfunk.
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk has a similar style to Jet Set Radio, thanks in large part to its soundtrack by composer Hideki Naganuma.
However, the game incorporates more movement styles like skateboarding and BMX, backed up by jetpacks for easy boosting.
There are also somequality-of-life improvementslike faster, simpler graffiti painting and the ability to just walk and jump normally.
9Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night
Like Castlevania Without The Vampires
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Despite the immense popularity of the Metroidvania genre, there haven’t been any new Castlevania games in this format in ages (or any games at all, really).
This is why Koji Igarashi, assistant director of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, decided to make his own gothic adventure game.
The result wasBloodstained: Ritual of the Night. This game features a similar vibe to its inspiration, taking place in a massive castle full of all manner of spooky beasties.
By slaying monsters and exploring, you unlock new abilities for combat and exploration, graduallyrevealing more of the mapand uncovering secret areas.
8Stardew Valley
Like Story of Seasons With More Stuff To Do
Stardew Valley
Story of Seasons (formerly known as Harvest Moon in the west)still gets semi-regular entries to this day.
However, one could argue that the game that really reinvigorated interest in farming and life simulators was not Story of Seasons, but 2016’sStardew Valley.
Stardew Valley is kind of like a Story of Seasons game cranked up to its logical extreme.
You can raise a farm, build a family, and all that good stuff, but there’s also a greater emphasis on crafting, combat, and interpersonal relationships.
7Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling
Like Paper Mario With Bugs
Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling
It’s no secret that, following the release of Paper Mario: Sticker Star in 2012, the direction of that series has been… contentious, to put it politely.
For those who want the old-school Paper Mario experience, focusing on traditional turn-based battles and surprisingly deep stories, there is an alternative:Bug Fables.
Bug Fables isn’t shy about wearing its influences on its sleeve, with the characters even rendered in similar paper-thin sprites.
The game firmly stakes its own identity and mechanics, though, putting a greater emphasis on team coordination in battle and developing a more dramatic story.
6Freedom Planet
Like Sonic With Dragons
Games have been trying to replicate Sonic’s Blast Processing-powered speedy gameplay for as long as Sonic himself has been around.
In those many years, the game that’s arguably managed to get closest to the feel of classic 2D Sonic games isFreedom Planet.
Freedom Planet gives you that same thrill that comes from holding right on the D-pad and blasting through a level at high speed.
However, it also incorporates more playstyles between multiple playable characters, more varied and complex levels, and even a surprisingly entertaining cinematic story.
5Pizza Tower
Like Wario Land With Pizza
Pizza Tower
WarioWare notwithstanding, Wario doesn’t really get his own games anymore.
This is unfortunate, as the exploration and speed-based gameplay of the WarioLand series were quite fun back in the day.
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Thankfully, WarioLand’s frantic spirit lives on in the grease-soaked halls of Pizza Tower.
Pizza Towerutilizes several mechanics pioneered in WarioLand, such as spontaneous character transformations and having to rush back to the start of the level on a timer.
All of it is finely-tuned to put a greater emphasis on precision and speedrunning, allowing you to chain bouts of manic nonsense together into a chaotic ballet.
4A Hat In Time
Like Super Mario Sunshine But Cuter
A Hat in Time
The3D collect-a-thon platformeris a genre that has drifted in and out of relevance in the last decade or so, but one game that made a big play at reviving it was 2017’s A Hat in Time.
The product of a wildly successful Kickstarter,A Hat in Timeis a silly, cute, and occasionally terrifying 3D game with a big emphasis on platforming and secret hunting.
The game is more inspired by the collect-a-thon genre as a whole rather than any singular game, but if we had to pick the closest analogue, it’d probably be Super Mario Sunshine.
Both games boast a variety of movement and exploration abilities, and both have secret platforming levels with oddly soothing music.
3The Messenger
Like Ninja Gaiden But Sillier
The Messenger
The original NES Ninja Gaiden is a notoriously difficult game, punishing you with repeated deaths for the slightest mistake.
The Messengertakes some of Ninja Gaiden’s concepts and uses them to build a larger, more well-rounded experience.
It starts out as a similar action platformer, but gradually blooms out into a full-on Metroidvania game, encouraging you to use your ninja abilities to explore.
It’s also an exceptionally silly game, as opposed to Ninja Gaiden which kept things mostly serious.
Like Silent Hill With Robots
During its long unofficial hiatus, fans of the Silent Hill series have missed its particular blend of isolationist horror and detail-oriented puzzle solving.
Signalisaims to revive that feeling, albeit on a smaller scale with a top-down, pixel graphic style.
Despite the change in camera angles, Signalis still channels that same sense of foreboding that comes with being trapped in a hostile situation with unknowable horrors.
There are also some less-than-subtle references to its inspirations, such as the glowing red screens you interact with to save your progress.
Like Zelda Without An Instruction Manual
Back in NES days, games didn’t have built-in tutorials. If you wanted to have any semblance of an idea of what you were doing, you had to read the manual cover-to-cover.
This is part of what makes the original Legend of Zelda seem rather obtuse by today’s standards, an aesthetic deliberately invoked byTunic.
Tunic doesn’t tell you anything when you start out, onlygradually revealing its secretsas you uncover the pages of its in-game instruction manual.
In addition to Zelda similarities, though, the game also incorporates a bit of Souls energy with an emphasis on dodging and parrying in high-damage combat.
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