The Ys series ends at The Dwan Of Ys for me. Everything else are just offshoots.
Even if Hudson had programmed all of their Wonderboy'ish games themselves instead of Escape/Westone/whoever, they were still licensed and used the original source materials.
They wouldn't have gotten away with Neutopia if it had the same world map and dungeons as Zelda. There's a big difference between rip offs and ports.
The SNES AI's were similar in style to the original, but were totally rebalanced. The later NES AI's wound up closer to Super Mario World.
There's nothing wrong with licensed games, even when they use another games' formula, as long as they're good. Hudson still used few licenses during the PCE's lifetime compared to the number of games staring original Hudson characters.
I understand what you're saying (and I don't disagree with you
); I guess I'm using "clone" in a different sense
. Instead of thinking of "clone" in a legal manner, think of clone in a "creative" sense.
In the case of WB1 -> AI1 vs. Zelda -> Neutopia, I consider the latter as "clones", since the latter is clearly capitalizing on the successful, established formula of the former. In this sense, a company can clone a franchise they themselves started. I'm talking about the gameplay formula, level designs, etc.
Let me explain: If Nintendo jointly produced
Super JJ & Jeff Bros. for TG-16, I'd still call it a SMB clone, even though Nintendo themselves were involved. Otherwise, they could have simply used Mario & Luigi and called it
Turbo Mario Bros..
The modern equivalent to this, I suppose, would occur when several games use the same "engine".
So, I would argue that WB1, AI1 and JJ & Jeff all use the same game engine, but that sounds funny!
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I think we agree that licenses, in and of themselves aren't a problem as long as the core game is decent.