What are your game's influences?

[Hiro_Antagonist]

I thought this might not only be interesting, but quite topical, given recent threads...

What are your game's influences? These could affect anything from core design to a peripheral mechanic to aesthetic qualities.

For example, my game (Land of Legends) has the following influences:

-Advance Wars 1&2:
Advance Wars was my biggest single modern influence -- it brought geeky turn-based gameplay to the masses with its cartoonish take on warfare. Advance Wars' biggest influence on LOL was the idea of taking Empire-type gameplay and polishing it up and making it highly usable for a wider audience.

-Empire:
This is the granddaddy of a very specific class of turn-based strategy game, and many have followed in its footsteps (including Advance Wars). The entire genre of square-grid, one-unit-per cell, build-units-at-cities, turn-based strategy was born here.

-Master of Magic:
I always liked the way this game handled Units and Abilities, and I used much of the philosophies I derived from this game (and its spiritual successor, Age of Wonders) in Land of Legends.

What about your game(s)? What's inspired and influenced them? What qualities of what games influence your designs?

-Hiro_Antagonist

[James C. Smith]

Some of mine are rather obvious.
Ricochet (http://www.ricochetlostworlds.com) was mostly influenced by Arkanoid and to a lesser extend DX Ball and every other breakout game ever made

Big Kahuna Reef (http://www.bigkahunareef.com) was mostly influenced by Jewel Quest and every other match 3 game ever made plus a hint of Bounder Dash and Feeding Frenzy.

Most people think Swarm (http://www.reflexive.com/index.php?CID=4381&CAT=Search&START=1&END=10&SORT=Lottery&FLEXSTATE=Action&PAGE=game_detail&SEARCH=swarm&AID=30) was influenced by Asteroids but it is actually a clone of Crystal Quest which looks nothing like asteroids.

Wik (http://www.wikgame.com) started out as a clone of the game play mechanic from Missile Command but in the and that was changed a lot.

Star Trek Away Team (http://www.avault.com/reviews/review_temp.asp?game=awayteam) was a clone of Commandos with a STNG theme

Lionheart ( http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/lionheart/) started out to be a Diablo game and was changed along the way to be more like Fallout and Icewindale. The game was really hurt by the few Diablo element still left in the game when it was finished.

Zax the Alien Hunter (http://www.zax-game.com) didn't really have any one strong influence.

[Coyote]

Void War's (http://www.voidwar.com) was actually based most heavily SpaceWar, Space Duel, and Star Control. Of course, my love of modern 3D space combat "sims" figured into it as well.

It also borrowed a bit from my experience doing the first Twisted Metal (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00000I1C0/002-1816426-9672024?v=glance) game. I can't tell you all of Twisted Metal's influences, but I know we were influenced by - believe it or not - FIGHTING GAMES that were vey hot in 1994. Street Fighter in Vehicles!

My current project also borrowed from a popular early-80's game, but it's mutated quite a bit in the last four weeks. Rapid Prototyping rocks!

[ggambett]

Betty's Beer Bar (http://www.mysterystudio.com/bettysbeerbar.php) is very loosely inspired in the old classic Tapper.

[Sirrus]

Betty's Beer Bar (http://www.mysterystudio.com/bettysbeerbar.php) is very loosely inspired in the old classic Tapper.

Tapper was nice - have it on one of the PS2 bundles...

Obviously Harvest Moon and Dope Wars were influences on Dope Farmer.
As for Tokyo War, Shadowrun was a huge influence.

[princec]

Alien Flux was wholly ripped off from XAP, a game I conjured up about 12 years ago, which was itself wholly ripped off from Defender.

Super Dudester started off being Ancipital for People Without Joysticks but ended up being far more mainstream.

Puppytron 2084 is pretty obviously based on Robotron, and in my completely unhumble opinion blows that pale pretender Crimsonland into the weeds :P (hehe) I only gloat coz it took about 2 weeks to code.

CAs :)

[SteveZ]

Cactus Bruce and the Corporate Monkeys (http://www.blueteagames.com) was influenced by Jardinains, Gold Miner, George Carlin's standups, and (according to one game reviewer) getting high.

[lakibuk]

Bound Around is based on the old C64 game Crillion. It first appeared as type-in listing in a german magazine called "Happy Computer". I also mixed in some elements from Solomon's Key and Boulder Dash.
PC Remake of Crillion:
http://www.geocities.com/cnennewitz/

[Lerc]

My first PC game was Minesweeper, except you started with a small disk where you could uncover without risk. You played multiple levels trying for a higher score rather than time based. It was for DOS. That was my sole purpose for writing it. A friend kept on bugging me for a DOS version because she didn't have windows.

After that I wrote 'Pedes. It was more or less a clone of an apple II game called Serpentine. I'm not sure how much the game play is cloned since I only saw Serpentine once and I knew I was making a game based on an old game but I couldn't remember the name of the game or what computer it was for. Visually they are very similar. I believe that the gameplay is mostly the same, maybe with subtle differences. It wasn't untill years later that I found out what game it was that I had cloned.
Serpentine screenshot (http://apple2.mobygames.com/game/shots/p,31/gameId,15054/gameShotId,86706/)
'Pedes screenshot (http://www.screamingduck.com/Cruft/pedes2.gif)

Next up was Glook which was Defender, pure and simple. This was back before emulation was the in thing. I wanted a Defender I could play for myself. It rocked. It had good code (plugin virtual-retrace interrupt modules). It had easter eggs (a key combo turned all of the men at the bottom into hippies, the Aliens would get stoned if they tried to pick them up. Stoned aliens would fire stoned bullets). It had keys I could use (I hated the reverse/thrust model, mine just used cursor keys)
Still it was defender at heart.
Glook screenshot 1 (http://www.screamingduck.com/Cruft/glook1.gif)
Glook screenshot 2 (http://www.screamingduck.com/Cruft/glook2.gif)
Glook screenshot 3 (http://www.screamingduck.com/Cruft/glook3.gif)
Glook screenshot 4 (http://www.screamingduck.com/Cruft/glook4.gif)
Glook screenshot 5 (http://www.screamingduck.com/Cruft/glook5.gif)
Glook screenshot 6 (http://www.screamingduck.com/Cruft/glook6.gif)

My first for-actual-real-money game was originally intended to not be a clone at all, but an officially sanctioned remake. Fitznik started out life as Paganitzu Revisited. For various reasons, that didn't work out. In the change to Fitznik (it was called FlipNip in between) The game was turned from an action-puzzler to a straight puzzler. The puzzles were made much harder. A lot of changes were made to suit the puzzle mould. In the end, I felt the game had a lot more of my personality put into it.

Drippy is as far as I know, mostly unique from my own Brain. It started as a programming excersise on making Blob shapes. The basic game took a week. It was a year of a Play-leave-tweak cycle before I was happy with it though. There is another game (I forget it's name and google just isn't helping me) that is visually quite similar, mostly because it has blobs that form. I think the gameplay mechanism on how you build the blobs is quite different, and that's where the heart of the game lies. In hindsight I think it has similarities to Klax. I loved playing Drippy, so did about 3 other people. Drippy flopped. This was my attempt at writing something for the casual market. I don't count it as a total failure. I think I have a much better handle on what doesn't work now (seriously)
Drippy screenshot (http://www.screamingduck.com/Cruft/Drippy7.png)

Gus the Grey (if it ever gets finished) has Commander Keen and Mike Wierings Charlie the Duck as influences. I liked the speed of gameplay for Commander Keen as well as the idea of having a bare minimum of firepower, I don't much like platformers where you just blast your way though. Charlie II has a level of completeness to the level design where there is so much stuff squished in it makes for great fun. I'd love to have all that in Gus.

My main active project started out as Space Invaders, plain old Spacies. I wrote it in a weekend to see what Developing in Blitz3d was like. Then I added a Galaga style level, then a bit of Bugatron, and some cows (I felt the question of why do the aliens want them needed to be answered). The game has a life of it's own now. The ship goes left and right at the bottom, it Fires upwards, and all manner of odd stuff happens up above.
It also (I hope) has one of the most memorable nag screens a shareware game can have, I think everyone I've shown it to so far has laughed out loud.

[well didn't I burble on]