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.

Are you seriously complaining that Kai Magazine took existing images and sprites from other games and even generated the game's background using Artificial Intelligence?
Many of the people commenting here know absolutely NOTHING about games.
Search the internet and you'll see Super Thunder Blade using a movie image in the opening screen. The ending of Golden Axe on the Master System features images from the Conan movie. In International Superstar Soccer Deluxe, they took a photo of Roberto Baggio from the Italian national team and put it in the game on a screen where the players hoist the trophy in celebration of the title. And you're complaining that Kai Magazine is doing the same thing today, which was always, I repeat, ALWAYS done by almost every game developer in the 80s and 90s.
Complaining about this in 2025 is a waste of time.
Go find a bucket of laundry.

@Exerion76 So you'll think all the game developers from the 80s and 90s are trash too, because almost every company that developed games adopted exactly the same practice. What Kai Magazine does today is more of the same as back then. And do you really think you have a reason to complain about that?
Ready joke...

@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
That's not going to change. Either you wait to enjoy the game or you'll spend your whole life complaining.

@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!

@Krokodyl
Welcome to capitalism.
You either play the game, or you'll be brutally devoured. I prefer to play the game. If you prefer to be devoured, keep complaining the same way.

@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.

@Krokodyl And another thing, I don’t see it as exploitation to take one asset here or another there. I see it as exploitation when you copy 100% of someone else’s project and use it as if it were your own. In the end, is that locomotive really going to appear in the game throughout the entire gameplay?
Are the Shinobi horses going to be present throughout the entire gameplay?
It’s a pointless complaint, made just to stir up controversy. What surprises me is how many people actually care about this. If I were an artist who owned an image and a game developer used it in their game, I’d be happy — they’d be promoting my work for free, without me having to invest money. It’s a cycle that ends up being mutually beneficial, because more people will get curious about where the image came from, they’ll research it, and eventually they’ll find my work. In my opinion, those who complain about this kind of use have an egocentric and narrow-minded view of the world, like, ‘Oh, it’s my work and only I can use it, and anyone who wants access must get my authorization.’

Going back to the 80s and 90s, when we didn’t have the internet — no one complained about this kind of practice. Now with the internet, everyone acts tough and complains about useless, meaningless things.

You yourself said that video games are not essential, they’re just a luxury. So if it’s a luxury, why are you complaining about something you say isn’t essential to your life?
You’re contradicting yourself by complaining about something that isn’t essential to you. That’s a contradiction. That’s hypocrisy.

@Exerion76 I don't work at Kai Magazine. I'm a video game lover.
And you're annoying people trying to disrupt other people's projects. You contribute nothing to the gaming community.
Your job is to complain about capitalism, to be activists, and to whine about how cruel the world is to you, because you want to impose your will on others without caring about respecting the will of others.
That's why you're crushed by the system and then cry in the shower. Your behavior is pathetic.

@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.

@Lowdefal
Yeah, this guy is definitely far up Kai's ass.

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

@Lowdefal What's wrong with me creating an account today just to post in this thread? Are you the owner of the site?
If you find it boring, go away. Find something to do that you don't find boring.

@Exerion76 Look for my name on the Kai Magazine website. It should be there...
I don't even know the developers. I live on another continent and have never had any contact with any of them. They'll use false testimony against me, claiming I'm working for them. They'll have to prove it...
I've said it in another message and I'll say it again: I'm just a video game lover who doesn't care about all this nonsense you guys do. I just want to play, not be an activist online.

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...