Spiral Knights Inspiration, IE, games SK stole from.

Just thinking of that /flex I mentioned in the drawing forum.

Anybody played "Cave Story"? It's where they took the names Spur and Polaris from.
(I'd highly recommend it - It's a free indie game, platformer, very, very good A+++)

How about Bomberman, and most obviously Sonic the Hedgehog (SEGA afterall : P )

Any other notable rip offs?

well the gameplay itself is very reminiscent of the first Four Swords version from the LoZ series. Like, the one the one that came as an add-on for buying the GBA port of A Link to the Past. granted, the puzzles are more of "find/activate this switch" rather than use this item to do this or that" but the general premise of 4-P co-op and a focus on combat seem pretty close to me.

Also, the Gear synth-ing was stolen from another game as well. Dark Cloud comes to mind, but I swear there was another game with a weapon/armor system closer to the one SK uses...

There's a different between ripping off and referencing. When i think Bomberman that's a gameplay mechanic they took so ripoff seems appropriate. But I'd say Polaris and Spur may have been references. Actually since Spur is a sword and not a gun that may have been mere coincidence. Polaris is also the name of the (current) North Star so it's possible that too was by accident. As far as Sonic that's a bit of a Cameo since Sonic is Sega's IP and they own Spiral Knights after all. But onto substancial issues. I can't really say much comes to mind but one described it as a mix between Zelda (think the 2D Zelda back in the days when it was challenging) and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. And now that I think about it the swirls in some armor pieces as well as the armor design in general do bring to mind Crystal Chronicles for some reason. But other than that nothing really comes to mind. Maybe if I looked over the emote list I'd find another reference or two but I don't want to do that now.

I have cavestory- great game indeed, but entirely different in game play. like nith said, a ripoff is an intentional theft of another idea without any homage to the source, maybe in hopes no one remembers the original- bomber man is classic, and free any way- for future reference, ripoff would be something like pirates of the Caribbean stealing a plethora of plot points and ideas from the Secret of monkey island, or a show like powerRangers and transformers straight up copy/paste-ing characters from different japanese tv series into one mishmash in the western world, preventing the original from making a profit on it's own toys here, because some one else copyrighted their stuff first.
in fact, just here.
http://www.cracked.com/article_19443_7-classic-movies-you-didnt-know-were-rip-offs_p2.html

Mere similarities, such as early pokemon vs digimon aren't quite the same as rip-offs, since closer inspection shows they both originated very differently and about the same time, pokemon a year ahead with a massive budget, and digimon as an after thought that was simply done well with a bottom tier budget, and just kept receiving extensions.
if you can't tell how one thing draws from another, ripoff isn't the word you want to be throwing around...

Well, thanks everybody for the fascinating lesson.

But... doesn't really add to the discussion I was hoping for. So, maybe loosen up a bit with the semantics?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/01/08

Here's a picture that SK tweeted: http://www.reddit.com/tb/q7ibk

i guess i kind of derailed for a moment; thought this topic was about aspects that were ripped out of other games, not just reminiscent of other things... in that regard, the intro level reminded me of the preliminary run to canyon hamlet from shiren the wanderer.

They can be important. Rip-off implies theft which is bad and with enough evidence can lead to lawsuit. But forgetting that for a second... I still can't really pinpoint any one thing it stole borrowed from exclusively. It has some 2D Zelda aspects but it's a lot less puzzle focused and lacks a variety of gear in favor of letting players build a personal weapon arsenal. As a said before Crystal Chronicles comes to mind but that may just be because of the 4-player co-op and for some reason select armor pieces remind me of it. And 4-person co-op is so well established that mentioning it as a reason for drawing from a game seems silly. Lockdown reminds me of the classic "King of the Hill" style game but again that's too well established to mention. So in the end all I can really say is a more action-y Zelda with design that reminds me of Crystal Chronicles for some reason.

i think they stole and added onto some of the music from the flash game sonny

Was lookin' up Cave Story...

And I dunno how I made this confusion, but Polaris isn't in the game. It's called the Polar Star.
Though it's in game description says it 'bears the mark of Polaris'.

to be honest, i don't think that the name matters so much- at full power, i just thought of as "PWEWISHHH"

Anybody up for a little race?

http://www.whirled.com/#games-d_44
(I actually can't... every boost makes the game unplayably choppy...)

Jelly skulls look like the Vana ghost skulls kinda.
Maybe we'll see those hulks introduced later.

That reminds me.. Frickin' SK pissed me off. The final prize wheel in Vana gave me a scrap metal.

5 cr? Sure.
Watch a mirrored lockbox roll by with a big troll face? Sure.
Give me that Pill I needed 5 minutes ago? Sure.
Scrap Metal? That mashes my taters.

Razwog: Mission 1-4... wonder if you can access it anyway... try it tomorrow.. bed now.

that seems kinda cool. the games are related?

Yeah... "Whirled", "Spiral"

Parent company = 3 rings.

Silloe wrote:Yeah... "Whirled", "Spiral"

Parent company = 3 rings.

Whirled is more of a pun about it being a virtual world I think. But that aside... the game was developed by Zefyr of Three Rings so it's possible that ideas were taken over to Spiral Knights. I don't know how active Zefyr is in the development of SK so I wouldn't exactly expect any more of his ideas to leak over into SK. You could probably find more SK inspiration if you look at other games made by the Three Rings Staff on Whirled. Though I don't know how easily you could navigate to find games made by Three Rings Staffers.

Did you play the game?

Silloe wrote:Did you play the game?

I actually played the racing game you linked to, but I didn't want to sign up so I didn't do anything else with the site. it was fairly competent actually; I didn't get choppiness until I played the final track of the final cup (time trial is somehow still mildly entertaining as a time-killer)

Silloe wrote:Did you play the game?

\
I actually played the game some time ago. Though it was a while and I can't say I remember much of the game itself. Maybe I'll try it again just to see if I recognize anything.