Knock-offs of movie licenses

[PeteProdge]

It's one thing to have 'Alien Invaders', 'Gobble Man' and 'Barrel Kong' as heavy hints for what your knock-offs are trying to be an imitation of from the arcade, but then there's the lesser phenomenon of software houses sticking out games that are heavily 'influenced' by hit movies.

Let's take System 3's Tusker for example...



I guess that fedora-wearing explorer is, er, keeping up with the Joneses, if you know what I mean.

And then here's Gremlin with Techno Cop which... well... you can tell by the name, can't you?


Okay, not all movie knockoff games were designed to feel like the official game and that's certainly true in this case, with Techno Cop not really playing like Ocean's Robocop, it's more like Road Blasters for the most part.

Anyway, what other obvious examples have been made for the Speccy?

[blucey]

Rebelstar II is pretty heavily based on Aliens while also being better than every officially licensed Aliens game.

[PeteProdge]

Rebelstar II is pretty heavily based on Aliens while also being better than every officially licensed Aliens game.

Spot on, on both counts! Never realised the similarity until reading this, but yes, absolutely knocks spots off any officially licensed Aliens game.

[p13z]

Pretty famous example:
Death Star Interceptor

Which pulled off some kind of official licence of the movie soundtrack trick.

[HEXdidnt]

Funny thing about Tusker: in most versions, the player sprite does look very Indiana Jones-ish... but the portrait on the Speccy version's panel looks more like Baden-Powell, while the sprite isn't even wearing a hat.

[Ralf]

So you mean games which are heavily inspired by some movie, yet they aren't official license of it.

Well, speaking of Indiana Jones, we have a game called Lost Caves. Or even Lost Caves and the Tomb of Doom

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... Lost_Caves



The inspiration is obvious here, although never mention explicitly.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

El Misterio del Nilo/Mystery of the Nile:



The guy to the left is suppossed to be Michael Douglas

[TheMartian]

I guess you're missing one of the biggest ever:

La Abadía del Crimen.

The PC avatars have a great resemblance to Sean Connery and Christian Slater.

[Stu]

Which pulled off some kind of official licence of the movie soundtrack trick.

See also CRL’s Blade Runner, “a video game interpretation of the film score by Vangelis”.

[catmeows]

Zombi - Dawn of the dead

I'm suspecting Sabreman is inspired by Indiana Jones. Also Fred of Fred has a fedora and revolver. Honestly, the number of action archeologists/explorers in 8bit games is quite high.

Phantis plays like Star Wars fan fiction.

Astro Marine Corps and After The War are definitely inspired by 80's movies.

Arnold Schwarzeneger's fantasy movies (Conan, Red Sonja) are probably inspiration for few games like Hundra,

And what could be inspirations fór games like "Empire fights back" or "Agent X" ?

[Mpk]

Gryzor's art had subtle references to both Predator and Aliens.
And Aliens vs. Predator, now that I think about it.

[Hank Scorpio]

Hmm...