Developer Of New €60 Mega Drive / Genesis Game Accused Of Using Stolen Artwork

I'm not surprised at all. One of his previous games used mostly assets from Mercs and nobody seemed to care...

Edit: Reading what I wrote on Discord when I tackled that game on my site, I also mentioned the possible use of AI.

Another scummy developer.
Their games always felt janky, too me.

I wish retro games could go back to being next to worthless so that scumbag companies and grifting youtubers would just buzz off already.

I mean, who are you gonna believe? Them or your lying eyes.

This is what gAI is going to/has already normalize/d.

I posted more evidence on Bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/krokodyl.bsky.social/post/3lvbfze6g622m
including another indie game artwork stolen (The Siege and the Sandfox)
I also found sprites from Metal Slug and Samurai Showdown.
The ending for Secret of the Four Winds also uses stolen assets: Last Blade - Moriya stage and Last Blade 2 - Graveyard stage as well as Far East of Eden: Kabuki Klash (Hudson, 1995).

You can also notice that almost all of the stolen assets are horizontally flipped which makes it harder to notice or to reverse image search.
I should also point out that I found some of the assets myself but a good chunk was actually found by other people and mentioned on forums, social media, youtube comments and whatnot. I merely compiled all of it.

@failaz1986 It was a ***** practice then and it is a ***** practice now.
Especially when using artworks from other indie devs.

I knew there was something fishy about Kai Magazine not selling digital copies of their games!

@Krokodyl Let's assume that with this complaint you manage to get the game stopped from being produced. I ask you: What do you gain from this?
Only your personal satisfaction at the expense of the frustration it will cause both the developers and those waiting to enjoy the game. Imagine if in the 80s and 90s it was common to stop game production for the same reason. We would no longer have epic games, and the history of gaming would be very poor. Think about it.

@failaz1986 Are the epic games where every cutscene uses stolen assets in the room with us?
If your business can only exist with the exploitation of other people's work without compensation then your business should not exist at all.
Video games are a luxury, not a necessity. You're not entitled to any game just because you want it, regardless of how it's made.

That's not great, however ask yourself how many times does this happen? Putting the spotlight on a company is all well and good but I very much doubt in Evercade's growing library this is a one off scandal. 🤔

@failaz1986 I have to agree here. It probably happens all the time with bigger titles past and present.

@Exerion76 Are you kidding??? Metal Dragon is awesome!

@failaz1986

Do you work at Kai?
The amount of damage control your making for them is just pathetic.

@failaz1986 That's some astonishingly strong bad faith in that argument, well done. I don't know though, maybe if you had like ten more examples I would be turned.

@Coalescence Did you mean to praise me or criticize me?

@Krokodyl Thank you for exposing these frauds. You're doing a great service for those that put in the work and create things without resorting to plagiarism and lazy Ai trash.

New account today, only posting in this article, justifying wholesale artistic theft, using tracing from the 80s to excuse doing it decades later.

bad faith account posting bad faith excuses. What a lemon.

@Hexapus
No, he's not. He's just trying to satisfy a personal desire.

This is far from the first game in history to be found tracing art.

As long as there has been games, there has been, yes, even professionals, who have done this.

@KingMike That's what I'm talking about. But these people are trying to stir up controversy with this. These are people who don't like games, but rather enjoy engaging in activism that leads nowhere.

Wow, what a risky move to lift that shot from Kabernari Iron Fortress. Anime studios have been known to be protective of their intellectual property and that anime is pretty recent too.

This is why I don't like these aftermarket Sega Genesis games. A majority of devs that made these made them with stolen assets.

It's true that this used to be extremely common. A startling amount of the assets from the original Duke Nukem (no, the original Duke Nukem) were traced from MegaMan for DOS and from Turrican. The Turrican series ripped off art from heavy metal albums and music from Transformers: The Movie.

But video games as an industry and as an art form were much younger then. It's not normal now. It's not as easily overlooked now. We're all supposed to know better now. It's past. That's not hypocrisy, it's growth. Chris Huelsbeck, who once copied from Vince DiCola has now collaborated with him.

Imagine if Yuzo Koshiro caught this kind of smoke for his SOR tracks

No different from Revenge of Shinobi. Golden Axe. Bloody Wolf. Street Fighter II. A thousand other games. Every hip hop song from the early ‘90s and before.

I'm not sure how to feel about this. Most of the examples don't seem to be stolen wholesale and just copy/pasted into the games. Many were "heavily inspired by," traced over and edited, etc... obviously it's not a GREAT look for someone charging money for games - these aren't casual hobby projects with free downloads - it changes things when you start charging and putting out physical carts.
But many of these inspirations see like just that - heavy inspiration, with alterations made. Several other commenters above noticed parallels with other legitimate games from back in the day.

But my question, why are people noticing NOW? Haven't these games been out for a while now? Games like Metal Dragon etc...

@Honkshot

Well spoken out, i just sign your Post, as i see it exactly the same.
Some seem overdrawn, some just very inspired.

Edit:
Sincerly, the Games are pretty fun, he (is there even a Team?) should just go another Route for the Artwork
and maybe buy Stock Assets or contact an Artist.
Heavily inspired is ok, as ALL the retro inspired Games do that.

Some people have far too much time on their hands and should use it to do something productive instead of trying to drag others down.

And no, I don't work for the developers. I just think it's sad when I see someone try to bring others down over something so inconsequential.

As others have pointed out, video game developers of old constantly borrowed images from elsewhere and the practice only came to a stop when the industry became large enough to be worth suing over.

On top of this, there is the assumption the original assets are wholly original and created in-house whereas they may also have been based around prior art themselves or asset libraries.

Honestly, there's a fine line between plagiarism and inspiration and for most of these examples, I'd argue they're different enough to not be considered plagiarised so anyone sad enough to use their precious time on this Earth wasting it pointing out the similarities in order to demonise an indie developer really does need to get a life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9RYuvPCQUA

I would say this shows very well that taking others Work and using it to do something new is something very common in the World.
It is common since People begun to exchange Goods and Culture before recorded History.
You can see it in ancient Art, just compare Roman, Greek, Punic and Egypt Columns and Temples.
You will see how it shares Art and transforms from one to another between the Neighbours.

@Krokodyl

That super retro boy youtuber is responding to comments about this with 'proof?' and then when they link to your comparisons he's either ignoring them or deleting them.

@Exerion76 Don't forget the scummy SuperRetroBoy youtuber who's shilling AND running bad faith defence for them in his comment section.

@ShyGuy_McJones
This guy?
He shills for every new game, no matter how bad it is. Everything is the greatest ever...
https://youtu.be/zGfshzdwGjM?si=-gbr1F_pC6aj9fDc

@Exerion76 He's obv making commission from the pre-order links that he pins.

@ShyGuy_McJones
There's a "block links" option in the youtube channel settings. Any comments with a URL will be held (they don't show and need manual approval). Most youtube channels have it on to avoid spammers. He's probably not deleting comments with links as much as he's ignoring them.

Wow. Looks like I missed some excitement!