always thinking about the concept of a "clone" in videogame discussions. partially because i've been walking around for about a decade thinking about the claim that there was a "flood" of "doom clones" after 1993, a phenomenon that, as far as i can tell, simply did not occur - but was so anticipated, given recent history, that pundits simply imagined it into existence. every time a new game came out, for almost 20 years - preceding the careers of many of these writers - it was followed by a flood of "unabashed clones," so it was simply assumed that this would happen with doom as well.
watching jeff gerstmann play balloon fight, and he opens by asserting that it's a joust clone. can't argue with this, it's definitely a joust clone. the question is, do we apply this term to any other form of art?
in a sense we do so - movie reviews have always been willing to say something is "like a mix between [movie a] and [movie b]," but it's interesting that in the videogame industry, specifically, we'll point at a specific title and say "that game invented a genre, and now everything based on its mechanics will stand in its shadow and get an asterisk next to their names unless they cross some unspecified and unknowable threshold."
Symphony of the Night, by virtue of coming out a decade after Super Mario Bros., avoided being called a Mario Clone, but it's wild to think that it was only the time factor that guaranteed that, since there's no amount of altered or superseded mechanics that quantifiably lifts the velvet rope and allows a game to pass into the hall of Original Works. and i feel like we just don't apply that level of criticism to much else.
