CREDIT: ID SOFTWARE, APOGEE SOFTWARE
You may remember playing Wolfenstein 3D on an old floppy disk in the 90s. Along with Doom, this game would inspire many copy-cats.

Last week, we took a look at some of gaming’s biggest rip-offs, be it the theft of ideas or simply swiping game assets with a good old five-finger discount. Ending this two-part series are some even weirder and even more rip-off-y rip-offs.

Pac-Man’s weirdest clone… a virus

Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man… you could fill an entire list of official Pac-Man titles, and a book of the countless Pac-Man rip-offs. It’s a classic maze/chase formula that’s been imitated with no significant innovation. So what makes this particular entry so special? The fact that it’s a virus – probably. No, the game isn’t a Pac-Man clone that’s secretly got a virus in it… the virus is the game. If you were an unfortunate DOS user who ran into Virus.Espacio. 8444, your computer was completely taken over by an impromptu game of Pac-Man. Although not particularly malevolent, with a simple ctrl+alt+delete allowing you to jump out of the program, it’s still quite an interesting choice to have a game programmed as a virus executable rather than… a game.

Payback (Amiga, 1999)

The Amiga is a sadly forgotten piece of PC gaming history that was instrumental in making smooth, good-looking games on home computers a reality. By the late ‘90s, the sheer explosive monopoly of Windows- based PCs meant the death knell for Amiga, and all software for it jumped ship or cancelled out. Among those cancellations was the Amiga port for Grand Theft Auto. Naturally, the snub angered many enthusiasts of the system, which led to the creation of Payback, a GTA clone that made itself superior to the original in every way; and even ripping off a few sound effects along the way. Not particularly original but hugely entertaining, the game found its way to the Gameboy Advance, proving to be a very technically impressive port. If you still want the opportunity to play this little oddball, it can be easily purchased on the Apple App/Google Play store today.

Doom/Wolfenstein clones (early to late ‘90s)

I’m probably cheating with this entry, but whatcha gonna do? The success of these FPS granddads that need no introduction unleashed a wave of games to quench the blood thirst of the 486-PC gaming crowd… and they weren’t very good. Sure, a handful of decent titles – Star Wars: Dark Forces receiving accolade for presenting a cool and unusual side of the universe – made their way out, but they were byand- large mediocre paint-by-numbers imitations. Some titles tried to do things different by including RPG elements (Isle of the Dead, a rather terrible Wolfenstein 3D clone surprisingly reminiscent of Dead Island), but the glut of terrible titles only paved way for revolutionaries like Quake and Duke Nukem 3D, which we’re all thankful for.