Clones in Video Games 

Fun fact: in Japanese Pong, the Left paddle is a clone of the original Right paddle

I love how in pokemon, there always seems to be some sort of pika-clone. Then in sun/moon the decided "let's scare some kids"

Actually, Tails in Sonic 2 had a smaller hit box than Sonic + he can’t have a super form

Shadow is a literal clone but also not because sonic was born after him and shadow was copied from a mural prophecy of sonic ? Nuts lore

my favorite clone character is fukua from skullgirls, she was initially shown off as a joke character but people actually liked her so they ended up putting her in the game seriously, she reuses a lot of filia's animations but has a handful of new ones and even uses some of filia's scrapped animations, and she also plays entirely differently with an entierly unique set of specials and supers and the ability to create clones of herself, she's basically a whole new character created by reusing and repurposing another character's sprites

Clones can also grow over time. DMC3 Vergi's moveset was somewhat derivative of Dante, but DMC4 revamped him so much that the two played incredibly distinctly, and by the time of DMC5, neither really resembles the other whatsoever, and their playstyles are incredibly different. Raiden in MGS2 plays literally exactly how Solid Snake does, and so does Big Boss in MGS3... but as of MGSV and MGR, Big Boss and Raiden are completely unique to Solid Snake.

In Sonic The Hedgehog 2 and 3, Tails is slightly shorter than Sonic (and Knuckles in S3&K) and wouldn't get crushed to death by certain reappearing ceiling spike traps in narrow tunnels. That and he also can't turn Super from collecting the 7 Chaos Emeralds or play the Doomsday Zone (at least without the Level Select cheat).

Pichu being a Pikachu clone is a common misconception. (Idk how tbh) Pikachu’s real clone in gen 2 is Marill

Its funny because during this older age of gaming with "clones"....even the evil "clones" had such an aura of mystery behind them for the most part.

It's really refreshing when a RU-vidr talks about a variety of games and genres and ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT WITH EACH of THEM👏👏

What's easy to dismiss as laziness is usually some sort of constraint: time, money, memory, etc. It would be great to live in a universe where developers had all the time, money, and technical specs they needed to bring their imaginations to life, but reality is a different story, and clones are an effective way to optimize.

Sometimes those pallete swaps are really gorgeous too!!

I see Kiro, I click

1:53 right as you said skins, I got a ad for a skin care product.😂

For those confused, the Smash fandom tends to call derivatives as "semi-clones"; both names essentially have the same meaning, something you can tell was cloned but that also still clearly went through plenty of changes on its own. As for me, I don't consider Mimikyu a Pikachu clone at all; it was intended as a twist on the Pikachu clone pattern to begin with. It's a spinoff, but that's kinda why I groan whenever people put it up as their "favorite Pikachu clone"... because when I see it, I hardly see a clone any more, it's its own thing. (The main reason I dislike it is simply because it's always put in the ballpark of those actual derivatives, giving them no chance to shine at all by overshadowing them)

Something I think would have been interesting to address here would be rival characters such as Virgil because the whole thing with them is that your fighting something that's basically you

I’m pretty we can all agree that Luigi is the most famous palette swap in all of video game history.

"Clones in video games" Me instantly thinking about Pizza Tower:

I think KOF99 - KOF2001 sums up "clones" perfectly well, where you have literal clones of the series protagonist Kyo Kusanagi (Kyo1 and Kyo2, who were excuses to keep his old fighting style on the roster), derivatives like K' (Not really a clone, but has some elements of Kyo in him) and I... guess ascended with K9999? (While story-wise another Kyo clone, furthest thing from it. In fact, he's a literal Tetsuo-from-Akira clone, right down to the voice actor and crazy arm thing.) Probably not the best example, but yeah. This awesome video had me thinking.

Man, so many notable clones, and I'm probably only scratching the surface with this list of ones I know about: - Mario: Wario, Shadow Mario, Bowser Memory M, Dreamy Mario - Luigi: Waluigi, Mr. L, Bowser Memory L - Peach: Daisy, Princess Shroob - Bowser: Dry Bowser, Midbus, Dark Bowser - Toads: Shroobs - Yoshi: Boshi, Yoob - Wario: Shake King - Link: Dark Link, Ravio - Zelda: Hilda - Samus: Dark Samus, SA-X, Raven Beak - Captain Falcon: Blood Falcon - Popo (Ice Climber): Nana - Chrom: Lucina - Robin: Grima, Morgan - Corrin: Kana - Alear: Past Alear - Pit: Dark Pit, Pit's Body - Palutena: Pseudo-Palutena - Snake: Liquid Snake, Big Boss, Venom Snake - Raiden: Raikov, Sam - Sonic: Mecha Sonic, Metal Sonic, Shadow, Silver, Classic Sonic - Olimar: Louie, President, Alph, Brittany, Charlie - Mega Man: Proto Man, Quint, Bass, Mega Man? - X: Copy X - Zero: Omega - PAC-MAN: Toc-Man - Shulk: Zanza, Malos - Melia: "Queen of Keves" - Nia: "Queen of Agnus" - Noah: N - Mio: M - Ryu: Ken/Violent Ken, Akuma/Oni, Sean, Sakura, Dan, Gouken, Evil Ryu/Kage - Guile: Nash - Cammy: Juri, Juli, Decapre (all of the Dolls, really) - Scorpion: Sub-Zero, Reptile, Noob Saibot, Smoke, Ermac, Tremor, Rain - Kitana: Mileena, Jade, Tanya - Sektor: Cyrax, Cyber Sub-Zero, Cyber Smoke - Johnny Cage & Sonya Blade: Cassie Cage - Goro: Kintaro, Sheeva - Sol Badguy: Holy Order Sol - Ky Kiske: Robo-Ky - Nu-13: Lamba-11 - Kazuya: Devil, Angel, Jin (well, in Tekken 3) - Nina: Anna - King: Armor King - Kuma: Panda - Filia: Fukua - Ms. Fortune: Robo-Fortune - Cloud: Zack - Yuna: Isaaru, Belgemine - Tidus: Shuyin - Dante: Vergil - Viewtiful Joe: Silvia, Alastor, Captain Blue - Bayonetta: Joy, Jeanne, Rosa - Wonder-Red: Vorkken - Legionis: Akira Howard, Raven Corps - Inklings: Octolings - Joker: Akane's Joker - Spring Man: Springtron - Steve: Zombie - Sora: Anti-Sora, Roxas, Xion, Vanitas, Data-Sora, Sora's Heartless - Riku: Riku-Ansem, Riku Replica, Data-Riku - Roxas: Data-Roxas - Aqua: Phantom Aqua, Anti-Aqua - Terra: Terra-Xehanort, Lingering Will - Ventus: Armored Ventus Nightmare, Ventus-Vanitas - Shovel Knight: Black Knight, Polar Knight - Plague Knight: Plague of Shadows - Dummy: Mad Dummy - Toriel: Asgore - Papyrus: Sans - Jimmy (Double Dragon): Billy ...Drat, running out of room.

Tails has gameplay differences in Sonic 2. He has a shorter collision box meaning he won't get crushed in some places where Sonic will. Tails also does not have a Super in Sonic 2.

Mimikyu seems more like a subversion than a true clone. It references Pikachu with it's design, but the facade of looking like Pikachu is as skin deep as it gets, with what's underneath being entirely different. Both literally in the sense that the Pokemon is literally wearing a costume, and figuratively in the sense that it plays so completely differently to Pikachu that considering them even slightly the same thing is ridiculous. I also wouldn't call Zero in the MMX series a clone at all really. He has a unique design and playstyle entirely to both the original Rock/Mega Man, and X, and his personality is unique as well. If we're going to start calling him a clone, we might as well just start calling every character a clone.

Tatsumaki (竜巻) is Japanese for "Tornado". Shoryuken (昇龍拳) means "Rising Dragon Fist".

I always thought it was really weird how Ganondorf was a clone of Captain Falcon in Smash Bros since as characters really aren’t similar at all

I think that, Clones are important to video games. They are mostly useful as the player 2 option, and even when not allows the players more freedom between characters to choose. If it is a Sonic Adventure 2 kind of situation, it allows more personalities to be explored and perhaps some slight gameplay changes, those being Sonic, Eggman and Knuckles being the most advanced gameplay styles due to having the most stages. But where clones fail the most is in Fighting Games when they take up a new slot. The 3 Link's for example, yeah I would not see either of the small Links as a clone of Adult Link, more of a spinoff. Tho, I would count Toon Link as a clone, aka Echo, of Young Link. In Fighting Games, clones should be held to a Minimum, and when added in still give enough changes. Like turning strong solohits into weaker multihits that, if done right do more damage but when wrong less. Make the gameplay Unique enough that you can have a preverence

"it can definitely suck when a clone takes up a spot in the roster of your favorite game instead of someone cool and new" See, this right here is the problem with the way people treat clone characters. There's no set number of characters in a roster when the game is being developed. If there's more or less characters then the character select screen will be changed accordingly. There's no "taking up a spot" or being in the game "instead of" another character, the truth is, if that clone character wasn't in the game, there would just be one less character. Clones are easier to develop and that's their whole point. The development team might not have the time or resources to make more fully fledged characters, so adding clones is just a bonus. Copy paste an existing character, make a few changes, and now there's an extra character. If that's all the devs had time to do before the game released, how are they supposed to make an entirely unique character instead in that same time? It's either throw in a clone or ship the game with one less character, and personally I'll take that extra bonus character

Billy and Jimmy from Double Dragon. Bill and Lance from Contra. So many palette swaps that became distinct characters.

I'd argue Miss Pac-Man was probably the first clone character. I don't think you can call the pong paddle a character

It annoys me when people say they should get rid of lucina because she is the exact same as marth. But Marths tipper changes the way the player has to play him giving himself his own identity

1:06 The NES could only display 3 colors per pallet, 4 pallets per screen. Because of the pallets that the world is using at that point, the the brown Goomba wouldn’t work with the color pallets being used so he would switch with the pallet of the level. Underground uses blues, so blue Goomba. Overworld has brown so Goomba is brown. Castle has grays so Goomba is gray.

This was a great video, and I love the way you categorize everything and how comprehensive and concise it feels. However, correction on clones “taking up a spot of someone new”: that’s pretty much never true. Clone characters take way fewer resources to develop than brand new characters. This is because they’re using the design and programming work of an already completed character as a base and changing parameters on their attributes and moves, which is substantially easier, faster, and cheaper than making a brand new character. So the work that went into making Ken or Chrom, for example, was not work that could have instead gone into making a character like Waluigi unless Waluigi himself would ALSO be an echo. Aside from that one thing, great video as usual. EDIT: Guys, I’m not complaining about Echo Fighters, my secondary is Dark Pit! It’s like Sakurai said, “imagine clones are like a free dessert on top of your meal” (paraphrasing here). I don’t even care about Waluigi, I just know he’s a popular pick.

Fun fact: sonic sprite in sonic 3 was the base of knuckles’ sprite

I do not trust clones. It is a personal rule of mine.

Technically Pichu isn't a Pikachu clone because it's a pre-evolution of Pikachu Everything starting with Gen 3 was a definite Pikachu clone

Kiro! So glad I found your channel! The descriptions of your topic are always well thought out and interesting.

Katana ZERO has a chapter where you could play as a different character, who replaces the ability to throw items with an instant travel slash. It's a small change in gameplay, but really sells the sheer power of the character. he is also the hottest man in the game.

I kind of like how Ganondorf has sort of went from a Falcon clone to a hard hitting brute. Like his neutral B is a powerful backhand punch and his side B is him pretty much picking an opponent by the neck and seemingly crushing their throat pipe. That sort of suits Ganondorf in my eyes. He's like a brooding dictator who will neutralise a threat personally if anyone dare oppose him. A sort of Darth Vader type. You don't cross him. Very intimidating. He'll only his weapon against certain opponents either to face off one-to-one or to finish them off. I might be overthinking this...

Misnomer: Clone characters do not take up a 'slot' on the roster because their development time is drastically decreased due to having base materials and a finished model to work of off. Smart devs will create them in parallel to cull even more busywork out of the process. Please stop saying clones take up slots, friends. They don't.

I wanna make a game where it's about one man fighting different versions of himself from the multiverse, and they're all gameplay clones of eachother.

Cool video I recently found your channel and l really like these video game talks keep up the good work

One of my favorite clones in video games is Bass Forte Wily to Rock 'Mega Man' Light. Unlike X and Zero in the X saga, Bass is more of a frenemy rival to Rock in the Classic saga; sometimes an enemy that wishes to destroy him to assert himself as the strongest, but often working alongside him for the same goal. He also respects humans like Rock does, as they are responsible for Robot Masters existing, and aren't revivable like they are. Though he has an almost-comical superiority complex, Bass unites with Rock over both their allegiance with humans and their conflict with the villains(mainly Dr. Wily, as well as secondary ones like King). He's less moral-driven than Rock is, but he isn't heartless either. I've heard similar things with Dark Pit in Kid Icarus Uprising, though I'm more familiar with Mega Man over Kid Icarus, so I'm going with familiarity.

I wonder what the Kiro Talks clone looks like

Playing Master Duel and alt-tabbing to seeing you talk about Master Duel was surreal. Fantastic video as well!

My favourite video game clones are Mileena and Dark Pit!

People should see this quality videos if they’re haven’t found out yet this channel

I was surprised how such a small video could easily define clones in gaming, but you did it.

Here are some more clones: 1. That red Sonic as well as the yellow Sonic from the unused SEGA Sonic Bros. Game 2. Mighty in knuckles chaotic being a slightly redesigned version of Sonic from the prototypes 3. Golden Freddy 4. All of the phantom animatronics 5. Dark pit 6. All different colors of the original Toad 7. Metal Sonic isn't a copy as in a pallet swap, but he's a robot clone made by Eggman 8. Bowser Jr. Is identical to Baby Bowser 9. Kamek looks exactly like every other Majikoopa 10. Repeaters are slightly altered peashooters 12. Copy robot is identical to Mega Man in the original Mega man 13. "Evil Sonic" also known as Surge is a slightly altered Sonic 14. Minecraft Zombies are Steve with some changes 15. Mooshrooms are pallet swaps of cows but with slight changes

Very nice overview! I like how you mentioned several characters that started as clones and then later became their own thing. There's also a case where kinda the opposite happened. In the Crash Bandicoot games, Coco Bandicoot had her playable debut in the third game, but she was only available for special vehicle segments. The first game where you could play as her properly however, I'd argue she was a semiclone/derivative of Crash, as her moveset was fairly different. She generally felt inferior to Crash, but she had her own levels which helped me appreciate their differences more. Then when the original three games were remade, as well as in the lrecent Crash 4, she is pretty much a reskin of Crash as she plays the exact same and can be played in pretty much every level. From what I remember though, this was generally reacted to positively, as it was probably a better fit for that kind of game to give us characters with identical gameplay. Crash 4 did add other playable characters that played very differently, but those again had levels specifically designed around them. Whilst Crash and Coco were the interchangable default protagonist for every standard level.

Me looking at the "echo drivers" in mk8 deluxe

Ya know, luigi should have eletric power

Dude just hit all my interests with these explanations

Luigi's "L" looking funky in that thumbnail

I don't know if the goomba is a great example of clones since I'm like 99% sure that blue goomba isn't supposed to be a new enemy, just the regular gooma in darker lighting

Mario Bros was that tight on space that it not only didn't have space for a change of space for the sprite, they don't have space for another pallete of collor so they reciucle the Koopa(turles) pallete, they continued doint it at least on Super Mario Bros and Lost levels(original release in Japan).

Great video! I've always been a sucker for clones/derivatives for some reason, from Shadow to Princess Daisy to Falco in Melee I always seem to choose them over the original.

Imagine making a video about clones in video games and not bringing up Yo-Kai Watch and all its Jibanyan variants that play uniquely including the one you can customize yourself with Originyan.

Kingdom hearts, where there is only two characters and the rest is either Sora or Xehanorth

The musou series live and die by its original characters, a game like hyrule warriors is always fresh with different characters while fire emblem warriors had you pay for DLC that were clones of the same characters in the base game.

Mario is a Luigi clone. *Change my mind.*

On the subject of color palettes, the NES and SNES literally were palette-based. Pixels on sprites didn't have their own colors, they had a number that pointed to a color in the palette. If the palette changed, so did the colors of the sprites that used it. As a result, blue goombas were casualties of changing the color palette to a cave theme. This was actually used in interesting ways, for example, the backgrounds in Earthbound fight screens often used a cycling color palette for interesting effects.

Mimikyu isn’t a pikachu clone

The 4 Evil Ryus are crazy 😂

Never have I thought it'd watch a fighting game video that becomes about Yu-Gi-Oh halfway through

3:56 damn man didn't have to go THAT hard on my boy Dan

How you this consistent keep it real

Honestly I don't have problems with the clones/derivatives themselves, I only dislike them when or they don't make sense (Ganondorf-Capitan Falcon) or when they are too many of the same (4 Marths or the 3 Links). Other than everything is fine as long as you cans we why they are similar and they don't go beyond 2 clones.

A video talking about clones in video games and no mention of Big Boss? No Solid or Liquid, Solidus Snake? Literally the best example of a clone and it gets over looked. Metal Gear franchise one of the most underrated game ever.

Charizard and Typhlosion have the exact same stat spreads

Wouldn't call Pichu a clone, it literally becomes Pikachu. Or Mimikyu, if Mimukyu is then Marill is.

I would argue that pichu wasn't the first pika clone, but marill was

Luigi fits all of these categories

A good example of this is Li'l Judd from Splatoon, that little kitten is a literal clone, knows it, and absolutely *_Hates_* it. It's to the point where the series has been kinda dropping hints that Li'l is gonna do something plot significant. I mean the series has literally said that Li'l is waiting to stab the original Judd in the back.

Subscribed.

Sometimes I rather have a clone character that adds a twist and may even end up being funner than the base character than a new one that may not click with me, as long as there aren't too many clones.

there was always 2 types of kids. the ones who liked the original and the ones who liked the clone

Yugioh also had the Evil Heroes fusions for E-Hero fusions

Injustice 2 is great for this. Cheetah has a vixen clone. Different voicelines, different intro interactions, different super move cutscene, exact same moveset

Everyone needs a player 2

I call this "pulling a Dark Link" most times if it's a dark or shadowy version of a character

Gouken = Old Ryu SF6 Ryu = Other Old Ryu

when you know that someone's favorite character is a clone character

Subbing before this dude blows up

What about Dark Pit!?

random fact: Pac-Man has a clone named “Taxman” and it’s on the Apple II

Hey I love Dan Hibiki! He’s MY Loser Ryu, he may be one man’s trash but he’s my treasure and spirit animal!

So yeah! Best ending ever!

I tend to like clones more anyway it’s like the creators thought how can we make the original COOLER

Gombas palet swap is not as diferent enemy, but more like a gomba in the darkness

Easily the most egregious clone in gaming history is Ganondorf. 17 years and he’s still a captain falcon clone, a character who himself has a completely fabricated moveset and is from a different franchise. No, a sword forward smash isn’t a meaningful, character-definingly significant distinction.

all 8 fire emblem characters in smash basically

Ken and Ryu are actually pretty different, in my opinion. At least today.

Clone Characters....so...Player 2 then?

Another use of clones is with game difficulty. Like how in Resident Evil 1 Chris is basically hard mode and Jill is normal.

I think Metal Sonic, fit on the idea o a "spin off", it go a step futher to be the evil clone of Sonic, he match his skill but is far from a 1 to 1 copy, he hover instead of run, and have a few unique tricks like the shield and energy blast, inclusive have his own Super forms that exploit his Robotic nature rather than be a replica of Super Sonic

I’m kinda disappointed that you didn’t talk about Mortal Kombat in this video

Mimiku is not a pikachu clone. Togedemaru is, but mimiku is more of a lore connected character. Its a clefairy clone is anything.

I guess Isabelle isn’t a clone of Villager. They only share down-smash and dash-attack and and up-air animations. Up-special looks different but functions the same. I’m finally letting go.

Well, as unknown of them being everywhere by me was until now, I do believe they they have a. Chance to become something bigger

I'm surprised you didn't mention clone characters in Mario Kart. That's right there would be the argument against clone characters. There doesn't need to be a metal Mario when there's already a Mario and there doesn't need to be pink gold peach when there's already a peach, not to mention I don't think pink gold peach ever existed before Mario Kart 8 came out. I mean at least metal Mario have been around thanks to the metal cap in Super Mario 64 as well as fighting metal Mario in Super smash Bros single player mode and fighting metal Mario and metal Luigi in melee's adventure mode, but where the hell did pink gold peach come from? They could have put so many other different choices of characters there because the Mario cast is just so broad with so many different characters. Not to mention five different light characters taking up by baby versions of already existing medium size and heavy characters? Pretty ridiculous if you ask me.

LUIGI IS NOT A CLONE HE IS THE SUPERIOR BROTHER!