All Hudson does is rip people off. Neutopia is to Zelda what the original Adventure Island is to the original Wonder Boy. I'm going to be ignorant and assume those are the only two games Hudson ever made to support my argument in the literal sense.
Actually, on a few occasions it was worse than that: Hudson (in Japan) cloned games and then slapped licenses on them. I couldn't find Kaminari's post about this (it might have been a different forum), but he went into detail with a few games (i.e. with the bastardized Wonderboys and Dynastic Hero as a case study, IIRC?)
EDIT: I only found this brief comment from Kaminari, but there's a much better post out there. Somewhere.
Well, they didn't really clone the Wonderboy games, they paid the developer to make them for Hudson just as they had done for Sega.
Just as Decap Attack isn't really a rip off 'Magical Turban Adventure' or whatever it's called(or Psycho Fox) and SMB2/USA isn't really a rip off of 'Magical Turban Adventure' or whatever it's called. 
I was playing along with Joe. You know how he is these days.
Anyway, it was my impression that nearly all of the AI sequels (let's throw JJ & Jeff in there as well, just for fun) were developed by Hudson themselves. So, even if the original NES AI was a joint production (for the sake of argument, let's say Hudson was merely the publisher)... all of the subsequent games still qualify as "clones" inspired by the original Wonderboy 1. Now, there might be some AI titles that deviate from the WB1 formula (i.e. an SNES game that GUTS actually likes... but I've never played it... Super Adventure Island 2, perhaps?).
Bottom line, I've played tons of AI games and I like them (including the Gameboy titles). It would be a sad, sad world if Hudson hadn't kept the spirit of WB1 alive all these years.
I think Hudson did use licensing to sell games (in Japan), but unlike many other companies who use this tactic, Hudson usually had decent games underneath. Perhaps they weren't the most innovative games, but they were usually pretty good. Sure, some may snicker at Keith Courage (Wataru!), but if that was the lowest point, then Hudson has a good track record, IMO.
On a related note: I don't care what Seldane says, I'm grateful that Hudson made Ys IV and Faxanadu. They might not be considered official Falcom canon, but I think they are great.
