'Chronos Twin' - sprite theft

[Fabrizo]

A few months back (maybe 7 or 8) I was reading up on GBA and finding out what games were still in the works for it that were promising. One of the games I came across was called 'Chronos Twin', which has the screen split in two and allows the player to control the on screen character at two time periods at once. Unfortunatly their wasn't much info available at the time, so I wrote the game down with the intention of checking up on its progress and hopefully getting a release date some time later.

Well, today was the day I finaly checked back up on it, and what I found was the game may never end up comming out. Obviously this in itself wasn't too surprising (these boards wouldn't exist if this kind of thing wasn't common), but the possible reason for it being in limbo is what is interesting.

Take a look at the following images:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v200/capcomguy/example1.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v200/capcomguy/example2.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v200/capcomguy/example3.png

As you can see, the game (which is developed by a company known as 'EnjoyUp') has directly ripped sprites from various Capcom games. I very rarly see plagerism of this degree in commercial games, and found it interesting/shocking to see it occure in one of the games I had been somewhat anticipating.

Are their any other good examples of commercial games doing something like this that you guys can think of? Companies re-using old sprite work from their own games is fairly common, but what companies using other ones work?

[Mr. Casual]

I dunno. Light Fantasy 1 and 2 might fit in this category.

[Paulo]

The collums look different to me. Look at how the design on the other one at the bottom is different!

[Yakumo]

the bottom design of the columns is the same, just that in magic Sword you can't see the bottom but if you rip the sprite you can since theres nothing covering it.

that's a very intersting read. I really do wonder how many others are like that. I kwo that Under Cover Kei AD on the Dreamcast has the Title music ripped from a Quincey Jones track that also features on Kill Bill. You know the one, the song with the sirens at the begining. Just that on Under cover it turns in to a type of dance effort.

Yakumo

[XerdoPwerko]

I know about a No Doubt music video that is a complete "rip" of a scene from the anime "Kite" - but I wouldn't consider it plagiarism.
There's also Turkish Star Wars - which IS a lot of weird plagiarism and cheapness.
But I've never heard of videogame plagiarism in terms of graphics.

I sort of remember an RPG on the PSX or PS2 that had a song that was exactly the same as one from an older RPG, but I can't recall which or where. I fond that odd, back when I played it.

[Zilog Jones]

I kwo that Under Cover Kei AD on the Dreamcast has the Title music ripped from a Quincey Jones track that also features on Kill Bill. You know the one, the song with the sirens at the begining. Just that on Under cover it turns in to a type of dance effort.
That's the theme tune to Ironside (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironside_(TV_series)).

Ripping off stuff seemed to be pretty common back in the old days - the early Sega arcade game Pengo originally played Hot Butter's Popcorn as the BGM, though later versions and console ports had different music. I think some other early Sega games had unlicensed songs in them too. The arcade version of Crazy Climber had some really dodgy knock-off of the Doraemon opening song on the 2nd or 3rd stage (I forget which one) too. Can't really think of anything else...

[hl718]

Don't discount the possibility of artist teams moving from company to company (possibly they left to form their own) or the possiblity of Capcom contracting out some of its work to another developer. An artist would be likely to reuse some of his or her own work as would a developer. That said, straight out sprite theft is always a possiblity. ;)

-hl718

[koolkid13]

Hey wait a minute... I saw these pictures on gamefaqs 18 months ago... Talk about plagerism (sorry If Im incorrect, I didnt see anything in your post that mentioned who made these)

[Fabrizo]

I never said I made them, in fact im not sure who did. I found the links to them on the ign message boards for 'Chronos Twin', and posted them here. Sorry if I somehow misled you into believing I was the one who created them though, that was not my intention.