Not-So-Cheap Imitation

10 Following

• A Taiwanese bootleg of the Perfect Sessions Boxed Set for Cowboy Bebop exists that packages the series and 2001 movie — which is not actually included in the legitimate set — on three DVDs rather than the standard six. Apart from bitrate problems during particularly cluttered shots (e.g. the hyperspace sequences) and using a digipak instead of several keep cases in a box, the set is astonishingly close in quality to a legitimate product, to the point where it's commonly sold even on sites like Amazon as if it were genuine, with both buyers and sellers being none the wiser.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was heavily influenced by Fist of the North Star, especially in its early arcs. While JoJo was a niche series for a while, it exploded in popularity worldwide upon its 2012 anime adaptation, whereas Fist of the North Star is at best a Cult Classic outside Japan.
• Love Live! shares some of similarities with The iDOLM@STER (which debuted 5 years earlier) such as the existence of rival idols despite shifting the focus from professional idols to school idols. However, LL has become more popular overseas and has become the top of mind when one hear the word "idol anime" while iM@S is considered niche at best (although the fanbase is still big in Japan and other Asian countries). This can be attributed to Love Live! medium such as shows and video games enjoy wider distribution while most of iM@S medium (mainly the video games including the mainline games and the rhythm game spin-offs) are restricted to Japan only.
• The Summer You Were There has quite a few similarities with Your Lie in April, as in each one, the depressed protagonist is inspired to take up their art again with the help of a Love Interest named Kaori, who eventually dies of a terminal illness and confesses her feelings in a letter after her death. Despite this, The Summer You Were There has a sizable fanbase in its own right and is significantly less contentious than Your Lie in April, in large part because the former's Kaori Asaka is significantly nicer, less manipulative and more genuinely selfless than Kaori Miyazono.

• Deadpool started as a ripoff of the Teen Titans character Deathstroke. In his early appearances, he was more of a standard mercenary character, with his only notable quirk being that he talked a lot. However, when he was later retooled into the Fourth-Wall Shattering nutcase we all know today, he soon eclipsed Deathstroke in popularity, eventually getting his own film series.
• Despite being a Legacy Character and only lasting two years before Winslow Schott returned to reclaim the identity and kill him, Jack Nimball is arguably the most famous incarnation of the Superman villain, the Toyman, being the Toyman who was part of the original Legion of Doom in Challenge of the Superfriends, as well as appearing in things like JLA Adventures: Trapped In Time and Batwheels, as well as having an expy in the form of Canon Foreigner Fun Haus from Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started off as a parody of the Darker and Edgier comics of the 1980s, most notably Daredevil, New Mutants, and Ronin. However, when the cartoon came out, the Ninja Turtles exploded into pop culture icons. For reference, it would take far longer for Daredevil to reach a level of media fame comparable to the Turtles, with his 2003 movie not helping his popularity and only later becoming more critically acclaimed by wider audiences when he got his own Netflix series.
  • Many have compared its miniseries The Last Ronin specifically to Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and both Eastman and Laird have made no secret about the Mirage comics being inspired by the works of Frank Miller, but it's become a beloved comic in its own right, and it does enough different with the concept to have a separate identity.

• Even though The Legend of Lucky Pie is an obvious knockoff of Adventure Time, more than a good number of people have stated that it's pretty good. Even Steve Wolfhard, a member of the actual Adventure Time's production crew, called it "adorable".

• The first Madagascar movie was developed by DreamWorks Animation to compete with the then-upcoming The Wild (which was distributed by Disney), as both movies star groups of animals escaping from a zoo and ending up in Africa. However, while The Wild did poorly at the box office — in part because Madagascar came out almost a year prior — and fell into obscurity, to the point where it's only known by hardcore Disney buffs nowadays, Madagascar got better reviews, did better at the box office, and spawned a successful franchise with four movies and multiple spin-offs.

• Godzilla (1954) was in large part meant to cash-in on the success of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms in America, and the overall plot follows many of the same story beats. Ray Harryhausen (the effects director behind The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) even held a dislike against Godzilla due to considering it an inferior rip-off (mostly due to disliking the cheaper People in Rubber Suits technique used). However, Gojira is now widely considered superior to its primary inspiration due to its more unique monster, deeper themes, and more compelling human characters. While The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is now obscure beyond the niche audience of B-Movie and kaiju fans (and even then primarily because it inspired Godzilla), Godzilla would spawn a multibillion-dollar franchise that would endure for many decades and turned the character into a household name.

• Coca-Cola attempted to invoke this trope with the New Coke. During The '80s, Pepsi was out-selling Coca-Cola, despite the former being introduced a decade later. In order to compete, the recipe for Coke was changed so that it would taste more like Pepsi, but that was about as effective as you might think. By pure irony, Coca-Cola sales skyrocketed when they brought back the original recipe.
• Monster Energy was essentially made to capitalize on the market that Red Bull had helped create. In fact, prior to Monster, the company, then known as Hansen's, made a drink that was essentially an imitation of Red Bull. However, they made a new drink that had its own unique identity and taste (as well as gradually introducing numerous variants of the taste unlike Red Bull), to the point that Hansen's renamed their company after the product, and is a serious challenger to Red Bull; as of this writing, they're in second place in overall sales, behind only Red Bull, and it's not uncommon to see many areas where Monster is the more popular product.
• Nabisco's Oreos were introduced in 1912, a few years after Sunshine Bakery introduced its chocolate sandwich cookie, Hydrox. However, after successfully rebranding itself as a more premium offering in the 1950s, Oreo overtook Hydrox in popularity, and became so dominant that the latter were eventually viewed by the public as the inferior imitation. The creator of the Oreo was likely overjoyed by this for a rather personal reason: the creator of Hydrox was his brother.
• While Vitamix blenders are considered the gold standard of professional kitchens, company founder William Barnard essentially copied existing blenders that were already on the market from Waring and Hamilton Beach, but with more powerful motors and durable metal components.

• The Hunger Games' plot was very similar to the one of Battle Royale. Whether they fell short, reached an equal level or surpassed it, is heavily debated between the fandoms.

• Stranger Things was heavily influenced by the works of Stephen King, particularly It. In fact, this was because the Duffer Brothers were originally going to direct It (2017). Not wanting to let their vision go to waste, they reworked the concept into their own. While the 2017 It movie was highly successful, Stranger Things ended up being a huge Killer App for Netflix.
  • This influence was so strong that the 2017 It faced a lot of comparisons to Stranger Things upon its release (and it didn't help that the two productions shared an actor).
• Weeds is a dark comedy series about a recently widowed suburban mom who becomes a drug dealer to support her family. If this plot sounds familiar, it's because you immediately thought of Breaking Bad, which is a crime drama with the same plot, except with a cancer-stricken suburban dad. While Weeds is considered a good show in its own right, by the end of its run, Breaking Bad was hailed as one of the greatest shows of all time. Apparently, Vince Gilligan was unaware of Weeds when he pitched Breaking Bad, and admitted that had he been aware of it, he wouldn't have pitched it in the first place.

• The Ultra Rare Trax series of Beatles bootleg compilations became somewhat historically important specifically because of its quality, showing that remastering, when done right, could produce high-quality bootleg and official releases that could surpass the original LP copies.
• David Bowie:
  • A bootleg LP of The Man Who Sold the World floated around in the mid 70's that almost perfectly replicated the packaging of the original US release, aside from the speech bubble on the back being slightly too low. The audio is noticeably poorer quality, being sourced from a legitimate LP dubbed to tape then back to vinyl, but the bootleg was convincing enough to appear in bargain bins in mainstream brick-and-mortar retailers.
  • A number of other bootlegs exist for Bowie live shows and singles compilations that put an almost professional level of quality into the audio and packaging. One particular bootleg of a 1972 show in Santa Monica (appropriately dubbed Santa Monica '72) was so well-done that EMI eventually released it as a legitimate product in 2008, retitled Live Santa Monica '72.
• The Dark Side of the Moo is a notable bootleg Pink Floyd compilation released in 1982 while the band were on hiatus. The bootleg has earned considerable acclaim from mainstream critics and for a while was one of the most accessible ways to get a hold of certain poorly distributed singles and the studio version of "Astronomy Domine" in the US (as it was not included on the American release of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn). According to its anonymous creator, The Dark Side of the Moo was popular enough to continue selling well into the mid-1990's, long after vinyl as a medium went dormant pre-2007.
• Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain admitted to being heavily influenced by The Pixies, even mentioning in an interview that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was his attempt at writing a song like theirs. Today, Nirvana are one of the most renowned bands of all time, whereas The Pixies — while not exactly obscure — are considerably less famous.
• Prince's untitled black album was a popular source of bootlegs since its planned 1987 release got cancelled. Because a number of LP and CD copies from the planned 1987 run still survive today, they've been a common source for sufficient-quality audio on these bootlegs, and the album having an all-black cover makes it easy to imitate the original packaging. Even after Warner (Bros.) Records finally gave the black album an official release in 1994, high-quality bootlegs still circulate here and there.
• While the Autechre influence of Venetian Snares's Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding is obvious even at a glance, not for nothing did critics call it "the best recording Autechre never made, and... better even than most of the ones Autechre have made."

• Auldey's clones of Tamiya Mini 4WD cars are noted to be of markedly better quality than the shoddier yet cheaper Tamiya copies from the likes of Jiada, Gokey and Heipao among countless others. As of 2003, they started making original models not based on Tamiya's.
• CT Toys, a rather new manufacturer of bootleg toys, has made knockoffs of several Marvel Comics (mostly Spider-Man and Spider-Man related) figures from S.H.Figuarts, Mafex, and Amazing Yamaguchi. All of them have been very solid and well-received by fans and collectors (with some even preferring them over the official releases) for their accuracy, quality of plastic, accessories (with some like Andrew Garfield No Way Home and Spider-Man 2099 coming with accessories the official ones don't come with), articulation, cheap price, scale and availability.
  • Their Spider-Man 2099 in particular has been very well-received for the overall high quality and for considered being way better than the official figure, due to the official having a very bad unmasked face, having a terrible ab crunch (which can be fixed with mods), coming with a very oversized and useless plastic cape (he only wore the cape in the movie in one small scene), having bad QC issues, being massively overpriced at $130 and being way too tall, which the CT figure fixes all of these problems, such as it coming with 2 really fantastic alternate heads, ditching the cape, having lesser QC issues, fixing the ab crunch, scaling the figure down and the price is very cheap (about $25-40), in fact some collectors sold the official 2099 and kept the CT in their collection.
  • Their Brown suit Wolverine has received high praise all over action figure forums and social media websites such as Reddit, due to how good the quality of the figure is and how cheap the figure costs (as the official is no longer in stock and you have to pay a high price from scalpers if you want it), and the fact that it has many points of articulation (even more than that of the official, as it adds some articulation the official doesn't have, like swivels at the boots).
  • Their copy of Mafex's Amazing Spider-Man 1 figure has been very well-recieved and considered an improvement over the official. The official, due to being an older figure, suffers from fragile joints, a large size, poor paint apps and the figure has never been re-released so he goes for high prices on the secondhand market. CT Toys' clone however has better paint apps, scales down the size to fit in with other figures, joints are less fragile and costs $20.
  • Some collectors consider them even better than the official Marvel Legends figure line, due to the CT figures costing about the same price as a Marvel Legends figure (A lot of the times even less), and yet they often have more articulation, detail and accessories than Marvel Legends (especially in the cases of Spider-Man 2099 and Tobey Maguire), despite CT figures being counterfeits.
• There are many LEGO like knockoffs that have found a niche in the market by offering brick set themes that LEGO wouldn't approve, such as modern military vehicles and The Walking Dead.
• There are numerous companies which produce their own version of the Rubik's Cube and more often than not improve upon the mechanism used by Rubik's themselves. These "knockoffs" often turn faster and more smoothly than Rubik's brand cubes and sometimes include magnets for additional stability. It's gotten to the point that, among the speedcubing community, Rubik's brand cubes are considered to be among the lowest quality of cubes, with their only real advantages being their widespread availability and name recognition.
• Various knockoff Spider-Man action figures have been noticeably good quality, some even being superior to the originals.
  • The knockoff versions of the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Sen-Ti-Nel SV-Action Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man Noir and Peter B. Parker have been rather well-received due to their articulation functioning very well especially for bootlegs, all the accessories working with the figures, decent paint jobs for knockoff figures, not falling apart when you open them and costing less than the authentic versions. Heck, some of the knockoffs of Peter B. Parker even comes with his coat and sweatpants, which the authentic one doesn't have and they are even made out of fabric, so they don't hinder the articulation.
  • The knockoff of the Marvel Legends Retro Spider-Man has also been decently received due to it having better leg articulation than the original, and for it being cheaper and easier to find than the original version.
  • The knockoff of the S.H.Figuarts PlayStation 4 Spider-Man has been well-received due to it having better articulation than the original, such as fully movable arms and a wider leg range, and the cheap price of the figure.
  • Another great knockoff Spider-Man figure is a Marvel Legends Spider-Man: Far From Home figure using the Pizza Spidey body mold. That knockoff has been praised for coming with more accessories than the original, having better articulation and even having all the web lines painted in, which the original lacks.
  • The knockoff version of the Marvel Legends figure of Venom from the movie has also been praised for it coming with more accessories than the original figure and for it being relatively cheap.
• There has been some praise and high ratings over this unofficial plush toy of King Koopa from the old Super Mario cartoons.
• Transformers toys are subject to considerable bootlegging, and while most are rather inferior, with low-quality plastic and primitive construction, some toys are notably superior to even official merchandise of the same size. On top of that, there is a thriving community of third-party toymakers who fill in the gaps where Hasbro won't, either by creating toy versions of very obscure characters, or more elaborate and more complex versions of official Transformers toys — the only things they lack are the names on the packages and the faction sigil decals.

• DICE Studios created Battlefield 1942 in 2002, a well-received game featuring large-scale combat, the option to use vehicles and planes, and so on, all to capture command points to control the battlefield. The game was far from a flop, but then along came Pandemic Studios and Lucas Arts, who took the same concept, slapped a Star Wars skin on it, and named it Star Wars: Battlefront, which completely eclipsed 1942 in popularity. DICE did go on to grow Battlefield into a shooter that rivaled Halo and Call of Duty for several years as well. And when Electronic Arts acquired the Battlefront license, everything came full circle, as DICE were the studio chosen to develop Star Wars Battlefront (2015) and its sequel.
• Burnout was heavily inspired by and modeled after Konami's Thrill Drive, an arcade game which sees the player racing against the opponents while trying not to crash into traffic. Thanks to the sequel escalation, combined with derivative differentiation, in the third installment, the series started gaining recognition. While there are currently no new games from the two series, the "Burnout" series has become an iconic, memorable racing game among the racing game community, while "Thrill Drive" falls into obscurity.
• Blizzard Entertainment has three such properties that can be considered this: taking the original ideas, sanding down the flaws for smoother gameplay, adding a certain flair and making it their own.
  • They came up with Warcraft because Games Workshop didn't give them the Warhammer Fantasy license they wanted.
  • World of Warcraft is one to EverQuest.
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is essentially a digital version of Magic: The Gathering.
  • Overwatch is one to Team Fortress 2.
• Boom Arena, for being a Clash Royale ripoff with silly-looking graphics, is considered much better than the now-fallen latter, thanks to a lack of microtransactions, actually balanced gameplay thanks to the absence of card levels (to the point where the game aims for "perfect balance where no card is overpowered"), and fairer matchmaking based on a player's skill rather than card level.
• Crash Bandicoot was greenlit by Naughty Dog and Universal Interactive Studios because the developer wanted to create an animal character platformer after seeing Donkey Kong Country and Sonic the Hedgehog (hence the codename "Sonic's Ass Game") and the publisher picked up because the PlayStation console lacked a similar mascot. However, thanks to Naughty Dog's seasoned developers and Universal's marketing, the first game turned out to be a respectful 3D platformer and mega hit in both US and Japan, selling over 6 million copies. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped only continued to replicate that success, and the trilogy has since been regarded as some of the best games of that console generation.
• Dragon Ball FighterZ follows the success of tag-team Fighting Games like the Marvel vs. Capcom series (and in particular, the third game, some of the mechanics of which are also used in DBFZ), but is also critically acclaimed, has 2+ million sales and is often deemed as a new contender against the MVC series, especially in the wake of the disappointments aimed at Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite's problems.
• Final Fantasy started out life as basically "Dungeons & Dragons for the NES", borrowing a lot of mechanics and monsters from it. It has since become one of the highest-grossing video game franchises in the world, with endless sequels, spinoffs, rereleases, and adaptations to non-game media.
• Fortnite, shortly after its release, added a free-to-play Battle Royale mode as a response to the popularity of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. However, not only did the Battle Royale mode boost downloads for Fortnite and become so popular as to overshadow the title's original Save the World campaign, but it even surpassed PUBG in popularity to become the face of the Battle Royale Game genre as a whole, much to Blue Hole's dismay. Being free-to-play was seen as a major factor in this, as well as the game being more polished than PUBG was at the time and having an artstyle that gave it more of a broader appeal (especially towards younger audiences). And this was before it started doing tie-in promotions with countless franchises like Marvel Comics and Star Wars.
• Friday Night Funkin' seems like another DanceDanceRevolution clone with arrows scrolling up and the four columns having the same left-down-up-right order, but with the style of a 2000s Flash game. However, thanks to the game's storytelling (the creators advertise the game as more of a "playable cartoon" rather than a Rhythm Game) and vibrant cast of characters, it ends up being more popular than DDR in a number of circles, mainly amongst those in their 20s and younger who may not have grown up when DDR was at the peak of its popularity. The game's extensive modding community helps further bolster its popularity, featuring countless custom songs and storylines.
• Geometry Dash was mainly inspired by The Impossible Game, but with more gameplay features and obstacle types that weren't present in the latter game. Throughout the following years, Geometry Dash would end up overtaking The Impossible Game in popularity, thanks to its many updates that introduced more gameplay mechanics and game modes as well as an in-game Level Editor, allowing more variety for gameplay and potential for making visually stunning levels, especially with the large selection of community-made levels.
• Guitar Hero looks an awful lot like Guitar Freaks before it, due to having the same core gameplay: Both games give the player a guitar controller and they must tilt the strum bar while holding down the corresponding fret buttons to hit notes that scroll vertically. But it soon became the catalyst for Rhythm Games as a mainstream genre in the West, featuring a lot of nuances to make the game appeal to a wide range of Western fans such as popular licensed songs, vivid background animations and characters, and full-length songs. While GuitarFreaks is by no means a crappy game, it's clear that both games are designed for different audiences.
• In the Groove is basically just a clone of DanceDanceRevolution, but nonetheless found a lot of success within the American and European rhythm game communities (sadly, no such luck in Japan) due to its higher skill ceiling that was then-unheard of in DDR and quality-of-life features. This may have worked against it, as Konami (which produces DDR games) would later sue Roxor (mainly due to selling kits to convert DDR dedicated cabs to ITG cabs) and acquire the rights to the game, ending it.
• The Last Promise, a video game mod of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, became pretty infamous outside of the fandom for being one of the few non-Pokémon ROM hack bootlegs for the GBA to be mass-produced in China and being sold for dirt cheap online (alongside fellow mods Fire Emblem: Requiem, Fire Emblem: Corrupt Theocracy, and somehow both fan-translations of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade/Sword of Seals separately). This led to a bunch of resellers flooding the second-hand market with the fake yet functioning GBA cartridges and passing them as genuine FE games, sometimes even candidly so due to the carts' decent quality and realistic labels.
• Marvel Rivals is very much inspired by Overwatch and has never made any attempts to hide the fact, which gained it some scorn when it was first announced. That scorn soon gave way to genuine admiration for its fun gameplay, attention to detail in both its gameplay systems and integration of Marvel Comics lore, and thoughtful integration of each character's abilities into a Hero Shooter. After it launched, it topped over 400,000 concurrent players on Steam alone, and amassed over 10 million players within its first 72 hours — many of whom were former Overwatch fans who had grown disenchanted with that game's development.
• Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is pretty infamous as being a mobile-based League of Legends clone, imitating plenty of character designs, game mechanics, and aesthetics, to the point that Riot Games sued Moonton thrice for copyright defamation (once in 2017 that ended with dismissal, a second in the following year alongside Tencent in China that ended with settlement, and again in 2022 TBD). In spite of this and animosity from western audiences, Mobile Legends holds astonishingly strong legs in Southeast Asia, especially in the Phillipines. This is in large part due to cultural preferences towards mobile games (PC gaming is generally seen as too elaborate and resource-heavy)^note Additionally, Mobile Legends in its earlier stages could be run with very low-spec phones, and Southeast Asians are noted to be not-so-well economically, so the game has a greater accessibility for players who couldn't afford high-spec phones; there's a lot of them in Southeast Asia., with Mobile Legends also smoothing and simplifying the gameplay to be less mechanically daunting than the notoriously dense and obtuse League. Even after Riot finally realized that making an official mobile League port was viable and released Wild Rift internationally between 2020-2021, they were years late to the party, and Mobile Legends' preexisting foothold in the region as the MOBA of choice has allowed it to outperform its competition.
• Many people dismissed Palworld as a Shallow Parody of Pokémon with some sarcastically calling it Pokémon Gun, but almost nobody expected this game to be such a success, selling over three million copies in forty hours and having over a million concurrent players. It's well-deserved, too; for an Early-Access Title, it's highly polished and well-made.
• Raiden by Seibu Kaihatsu was effectively released to cash in on the success of Toaplan games, featuring a lot of staple tropes of those games. It ended up being one of the most successful shmup series of the early 90s, becoming a mainstay of many Japanese and American arcades, with many shmup fans who grew up around that time speaking fondly of Raiden II's purple "Toothpaste Laser". Meanwhile, Toaplan went bankrupt in 1994.
• Rally de Africa (and its sequel, Rally de Europe) is a series of obscure rally racing game from Prism Arts. The game itself is a clone of Sega Rally, except that it was released on the PlayStation. It gives the first Sega Rally a run for its money with a larger number of cars and better graphics. It is also a tough game to complete.
• Depending on whom you ask, Stardew Valley is this to Story of Seasons. It started out as a fan-game aimed specifically at Harvest Moon fans but became a Sleeper Hit upon release. This is largely because it has a PC release (thus allowing for modding), because it's on more consoles than the mainly Nintendo Harvest Moon franchise, and because it was under $20. While which series is better is up to debate, Stardew Valley has sold over 5x as much as the best-selling Story of Seasons title.
• StepManiaX, a game similar to In The Groove by several members of its former team (most notably Kyle Ward), also gets this treatment when compared to DDR for its wide variety of songs and play styles available, the fact that it doesn't need an internet connection to run or update player data, and the high build quality of its dance pads. In fact, the dance pads are so popular amongst rhythm game players, even those that want to use them for other dance games (in fact, there are conversion kits to adapt them to the Pump It Up layout, rectangular corner panels and all) that any time a new batch of those pads go on sale, they sell out within a few minutes. Unlike ITG, the dev team went out of their way to negotiate with Konami to ensure SMX would not meet the same fate.
• Following the success of Virtua Fighter, Namco created their own 3D fighter Tekken with the first game came out in 1993. While Virtua Fighter became one of the most important games in video game history, popularizing 3D graphics in video game development, Tekken became a legacy game and a pop culture phenomenon along with other popular fighting game franchises such as Street Fighter. It doesn't help that the last numbered entry of the former (not including the updated releases) was released in 2006 while the latter managed to spawn sequels and another spin-off game years after.
• Touken Ranbu is essentially a genderflipped KanColle clone with Japanese swords and more solid worldbuilding, but it has quickly earned a long-standing status as one of the most highly sought-after titles on the DMM Games website while KanColle has sunk into obscurity. To a slightly lesser extent, fellow KanColle clone Bungo to Alchemist is also doing well.
• Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune. When it was first released, one of the criticisms of it was that "it's just Initial D Arcade Stage, but for people with no skill." It ended up surpassing Initial D as the preferred arcade racing game precisely because of its lower barrier to entry and its critically acclaimed Yuzo Koshiro trance soundtrack, and is one of the most popular arcade racing games today, especially in Southeast Asia. It helps that Maximum Tune has stuck with the same basic formula since the original game with incremental updates and upgrades every new version to keep the game fresh without alienating existing players, while Initial D's popularity started to dwindle after the third iteration due to changing game engines and physics with every new release. In fact, while Wangan continues to get releases in the Asia Pacific and Oceania, Initial D ended up becoming Japan-only after the fourth version of it.
• While Zapper definitely shows the toolmarks of having been planned as a Frogger sequel, it's evident it would've been a damn good one, with several expansions upon the formula the past two games established. And gameplay aside, it manages an aesthetic all its own, with only surface-level similarities to its roots.

• Most emulators qualify. While emulators that are poorly made and/or early in development are often inferior to the original consoles, it's possible for a well-made emulator to not only flawlessly replicate but surpass the original by adding graphical and/or performance enhancements to games. It's common now for fans to complain that official Updated Rereleases of older games fall short what of what unofficial, fanmade emulators can achieve. One of the most well-known examples is the Dolphin emulator, which emulates Nintendo GameCube and Wii games, and can upscale games or even give them a framerate boost. Sonic Colors, for example, got the 1080p 60 FPS treatment years ahead of the Sonic Colors Ultimate release which achieves that as well.
• The GamBoy [sic], also called the GB Boy Colour ("Game Boy ''Boy'' Colour"?), is an unauthorized replica of the Game Boy Color noted for being a surprisingly accurate imitation of the original. Despite the speaker only using one audio channel (instead of doing a mono mix of both channels), the screen being slightly stretched, and the IR port not being functional, the GB Boy Colour actually has a working backlight — something the legitimate GBC lacked. As such, many still consider it a good budget method of playing Game Boy and Game Boy Color games on "original" hardware without having to jump through hoops to make the screen visible in dim lighting (discounting the Game Boy SP, which did have a frontlight on early models and a backlight on later ones).
• IBM Personal Computer:
  • The PC owes its existence as an open platform and widespread adoption to this trope. Originally, only IBM made the PC, but thanks to fact that they built it almost entirely using off-the-shelf components, it was relatively easy for countless other manufacturers to clone it and build their own computers that were 100% compatible with PC hardware and software, eventually driving IBM out of the PC market entirely.
  • The PCjr, released in 1984, was IBM's attempt to capture the home market, where the IBM PC had struggled due to the machine's low quality graphics and sound. It failed, due to bad marketing from IBM, and the machine's poor compatibility with existing PC hardware and software. Enter RadioShack, who righted the wrongs of the PCjr with the Tandy 1000, a machine that featured the PCjr's improved graphics and sound while maintaining 100% PC compatibility. The new graphics standard, which had the PCjr had introduced, became widely known as "Tandy Graphics" instead. King's Quest, which utilized the new graphics features and had been originally positioned as the PCjr's Killer App, became the Tandy's Killer App instead. The Tandy would finally make the PC successful in the home computer market, paving the way for the PC's dominance in the entire computer industry.
• The Laser 128 by VTech was a highly popular and capable Apple ][ clone, priced at only $479, a fraction of the cost of the original Apple II. It boasted several features, such as 128 KB of dedicated video RAM, more than the original. The system supported RGBI video through a 15-pin D-sub digital video port (designed for the Apple IIc's flat panel display), and it also included 80-column mode, a feature that typically required an add-on card. Users could easily switch between monochrome and colour displays without the need for multiple monitors. Its custom ROM replaced the Apple Monitor ROM and ensured 90% compatibility with Apple II software, made possible through clean-room design to prevent legal issues. Apple sued VTech but ultimately failed in court.
• Nintendo Entertainment System bootlegs:
  • The Dendy Jr. was a notable Taiwanese bootleg of the Famicom that became a sensation in Russia during the 1990's, when the country was still suffering from the fallout of the Soviet Union's dissolution and didn't have enough money to afford importing the genuine product. Despite the dubious nature of the games (illegally) released on it, the Dendy Jr. itself is considered one of the better and more faithful "Famiclones" on the bootleg market, especially by the standards of those made before Nintendo's patents on the Famicom expired.
  • The expiration of the Famicom's patents allowed for a number of higher-quality Famiclones to glut the market, as the system's technical specs could now be legally replicated and utilized to create better-quality alternatives to the original hardware. Some of these better-quality post-patent Famiclones include the Analogue NT and the AVS, both of which are compatible with both NES and Famicom cartridges and peripherals and natively support high-definition HDMI output.
• The Scorpion XVI, shown in English programme Bad Influence, is a clone of the Sega Genesis. Although you could not use a Sega 32X add-on without modifying the console, the Scorpion XVI does work with not only the Sega CD but also out-of-region games. This unfortunately caused a crackdown on the Scorpion XVI.

• Quite a lot of people enjoy Cinema Wins over CinemaSins, with Quinton Reviews being one of many to hold such an opinion and also perfectly articulate the reasons why. He thinks Sins consists of clickbaity videos that focus on having complaints instead of criticism, and disguise nitpicking as film analysis. While he doesn't think Wins is real film analysis either, he appreciates that it celebrates films instead of mocking them and points out neat details that add to the viewing experience.

• Bluey was designed as an Australian version of Peppa Pig (as Bluey creator Joe Brumm was previously a staff member on the latter show). However, it is very well-liked by people outside the primary target audience of preschoolers and many parents will admit to watching it without their kids present; it ended up being more acclaimed and well-liked than Peppa Pig as that show is often considered annoying or too cloying for adults to enjoy. It even made it onto Rolling Stone's "100 Best Sitcoms of All Time List" in 2021, being the only show aimed at preschoolers to do so.
• Many of South Park: Joining the Panderverse's viewers have given the episode accolades for getting actors who actually do a great job imitating the original boys' personalities and speaking patterns, despite the special mostly being a critical parody of that very trope. Special mention goes to the Panderverse versions of Cartman and Butters, whose actresses perfectly carry over the original characters' cadence and general mood.

The counterpoint of Sturgeon's Law, that the 1% of everything that isn't shit is actually quite good, applies just as much to bootlegs as it does to legitimate products. A number of both bootlegged products and legally permissible imitations are noted for their astonishing level of quality, to the point where it's easy to mistake said bootlegs for legitimate products. As for the legally allowed imitations, sometimes they can become a viable competitor to the product they were knocking off and can even eclipse the original in popularity (most famously with Oreos, which started off as a knockoff of Hydrox cookies but have since become far more popular among consumers). The reason for this is that, while creating something entirely new requires a lot of time and effort, imitating something else allows you to focus the same time and energy on polishing your product to perfection. Some examples of highly convincing bootlegs are as follows:

• A number of aftermarket Harley-Davidson crate motors and engine parts such as those from Alan Sputhe and S&S Cycle are of equal if not superior craftsmanship compared to the real deal, sometimes even improving on what Harley did especially with hot-rodded and those so-called "stroker" bikes with larger engine displacements than what Harley usually offers. One such engine part is a gear-driven cam assembly for the Twin Cam, whose chain-drive cam assembly is notorious for being an engineering failure due to the chain tensioners wearing out over time and fouling the oil pump. Harley tried to put a stop to this practice by suing S&S Cycle and Delkron, but by that time, the aftermarket crate motor industry is well entrenched and there's little Harley could do other than file patents for their newer engines.
• Despite the infamy of Shoddy Knockoff Products made in China, copycat firearms made by Norinco and knife designs copied by M-Tech both have a reputation for surprisingly high quality. The former company is a military contractor, which explains why their knockoffs are better made than most.
• Spanish copies of foreign firearms have this reputation. Spain's trademark laws made patents unenforcable for products not manufactured in Spain, encouraging domestic production, but at the same time Spain's gun laws throughout most of the 20th century encouraged manufacturers to actually make quality products and not just grind out a few cheap guns to protect their patents. This led to a surprising variety of very good versions of nearly every firearm under the sun being made in Spain in the 20th century.
• This is almost standard operating procedure for Apple, which rarely brings product categories to market and usually lets other electronics makers try their hand at a product before devising a better engineered and higher quality (not to mention higher-priced) version of their own.
  • The iPod was far from being the first MP3 player, nor was it even the first high-capacity hard drive-based version. The Creative Nomad Jukebox hit the market a year earlier than the iPod, but the iPod overcame many of its shortcomings such as limited battery life and a clunky interface, and also had better industrial design.
  • The iPhone borrowed much of its functionality from other smartphones already on the market, probably most heavily from BlackBerry, so much so that Apple CEO Steve Jobs spent a good portion of the iPhone's announcement keynote comparing it to a BlackBerry and explaining how the iPhone had a more intuitive user interface. BlackBerry Messenger, which allowed BlackBerry devices to send texts to each other over data instead of SMS, also preceded Apple's implementation iMessage by six years.
  • Tablet computers had been sold by Microsoft for nearly a decade when the iPad launched in 2010, which sold much better because of its simpler user interface and operation.
  • Augmented reality headsets had been on the market for years, most notably made by Meta (the parent company of Facebook), before the Vision Pro launched in 2024.
• YouTube Shorts was created after the success of TikTok and is competing against the platform. A 2025 report shows that the daily views in YouTube Shorts has surpassed that of TikTok, years after its launch.
• The Zippo cigarette lighter—manufactured in Bradford, Pennsylvania since 1933—became well-known for its combination of simple, reliable construction and understated stylishness. After World War II some far-East companies such as Penguin of Japan and A.B.C. of Korea started to produce nearly exact copies of the design, which were comparable in quality to the originals (the Zippo design is so simple and idiot-proof that using vastly inferior materials is the only way to construct a knockoff that's noticeably worse in quality). The only real difference is that if you own a genuine Zippo, you can send it back to the factory to be repaired free of charge.
• Skechers shoes and footwear have this reputation. Often knocked by some as copycats and even being subject of several major lawsuits due to patented design, Skechers won the market, eventually going on to become the third largest footwear company, thanks to Skechers models being known for its comfortable insole and foam along with its surprisingly good build quality and durability for many of the (often discounted and lower priced compared to its competitors') models.
• "Homage" watches are watches that closely copy famous brands, but don't claim to be them. A couple of hundred pounds or dollars will buy you a solidly-made watch that isn't the real thing, but looks just as good on your wrist, saves you thousands, and avoids the criminality inherent in buying an outright fake. Chinese companies like San Martin, Pagani and Watchdives have built their businesses around this sort of thing.