A Shoddy Knockoff Product in the form of an entire Video Game. These were most common in the mid 90s, due to the relative ease of spriteswapping before the Video Game 3D Leap.

Though an intent to deceive is usually behind their creation, as is the case with most Shoddy Knockoff Products, an unlicensed game can also come about in open defiance of a console manufacturer's policies. This was particularly common with (but not exclusive to) the Atari 2600 and NES, as Atari and Nintendo had a reputation in the industry at the time for putting exceptionally draconian restrictions on their licensees. Game cartridges that come about this way may have unique mechanisms for circumventing their respective system's antipiracy measures.

The Bootleg Games Wiki is a considerably large catalogue of these. While Sturgeon's Law definitely applies, some bootleg games have made names for themselves, and may have tropes of their own.

See also Game Mod, which many bootlegs are, as well as Fan Game and Fan Sequel, which many bootlegs would dubiously qualify as. (Sometimes fan games and mods are outright stolen and sold as bootlegs.) Compare and contrast Homebrew Video Games, as the line that separates them can be particularly blurry and often comes down to the context in which it was made.

Games under this category include:

• Action 52
• Bible Adventures
• Bible Buffet
• Caltron 6 in 1, a compilation of knockoffs of licensed titles:
  • Magic Carpet 1001 (Cloud Master clone, appears on other multicarts and plug-n-play systems as Aladdin 3)
  • Cosmos Cop (Space Harrier clone)
  • Adam & Eve (Balloon Fight clone)
  • Balloon Monster (Pang clone)
  • Porter (Sokoban clone)
  • Bookyman (Crush Roller/Make Trax clone)
• Cheetahmen II
• Dian Shi Ma Li
• Dizzy series:
  • Treasure Island Dizzy (NES port, released on the multicart Quattro Adventure)
  • The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy (NES)
  • Go! Dizzy Go! (only available on the NES multicart Quattro Arcade)
• Donkey Kong 5: The Journey of Over Time and Space
• Exodus (1991)
• Felix the Cat (BMB) (The Infamous Sega Genesis Bootleg port that included the infamous game over screen where Felix rips his face off, revealing his skull.)
• Felix the Cat by Dragon Co.
• Final Fantasy VII (NES)
• Hell Fighter
• Hong Kong '97
• Kart Fighter
• King of Kings: The Early Years
• King Of Ring (adapted from The Lord of the Rings)
• The Legend of Pikachu
• Little Red Hood
• Menace Beach/Sunday Funday/Miss Peach World
• Mario 4: A Space Odyssey and Mario 3: Around the World
• Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu
• Mole Kart from the Mole's World series
• Pocket All-Star Smash Brothers
• Pocket Monster
• Pokémon Quartz
• Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal
• Raid 2020
• Secret Scout in the Temple of Demise
• Shi Kong Xing Shou
• Somari
• Sonic 3D Blast 5
• Sonic the Hedgehog 4 (SNES)
• Super 3D Noah's Ark
• Super Fighter
• Super Fighter M - All Star (not related to the above Super Fighter)
• Super Mario 3D
• Super Mario World (NES)
• Tasac
• Terrifying 911 (port of Metal Slug for the Game Boy Color with heavily-digitized footage of the World Trade Center attacks in place of the title screen.)
• The Ultimate Stuntman
• Titenic
  • Harry's Legend
• Wally Bear and the NO! Gang

Examples covered on the source material's page^note due to having both a lack of unique tropes and significant Adaptation Displacement

• 7 GRAND DAD, a hack of The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy
• Pokémon Diamond and Jade, a poor translation of Telefang

Non-indexed examples

• Aladdin (Hummer Team), based on Aladdin (Capcom)
  • Aladdin II (Mega Drive)
• Aladdin (Super Game), based on Aladdin (Virgin Games)
  • Aladdin II (Famicom)
• Barver Battle Saga: Tai Kong Zhan Shi (Taiwanese JRPG style game for the Mega Drive. Received an official English translation and release from Piko Interactive in 2018, as Brave Battle Saga.)
• Bee 52
• Bio Hazard (Famicom demake of Resident Evil 1 using assets from Resident Evil Gaiden)
• Bob Bros: The Legend of Time (A stripped-down mobile device asset flip of Super Mario 64)
• Castle of Deceit
• Chiller (NES port of the arcade game)
• Chinese Kung Fu/Challenge of the Dragon (Sachen knockoff of Double Dragon I, offered to Color Dreams for Western publication but they rejected it and made an original game also titled Challenge of the Dragon)
• Deathbots
• Era's Adventures 3D
• F-15 City War (FC/NES knockoff of Thunder Blade)
• F-22 (Highly modified hack of 1943: The Battle of Midway by Inventor, published in truncated form by Waixing on various plug-&-play Famiclones)
• Felix the Cat
  • The BMB game now has it's own page.
  • Pokemon 2000 (a hack where Felix is replaced by Pikachu, not to be confused with the aforementioned Dragon Co. game)
• Firehawk (NES Desert Strike clone by Codemasters, unrelated to the arcade game Fire Hawk or the sequel to Thexder)
• Gaiapolis (Famicom/NES version)
• Galactic Crusader
• Impossible Mission II (NES port)
• Iraq War 2003
• Lei Dian Huang Bi Ka Qiu Chuan Shuo (combination of Pokémon Yellow and Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen)
• Magic Dragon (R-Type knockoff for Famicom)
• Maxi-15, a NES multicart with 15 games, most of which are listed on this page. Mainly remembered for its infomercial that featured Hulk Hogan.
• Monino Save Story
• Open Corp, a South Korean developer, has:
  • Adventure Kid (MSX/Master System port of Adventure Island II)
  • Jang Pung II (Game Gear bootleg of Street Fighter II)
  • Koko's Adventure (Famicom knockoff of Super Mario World stealing its background graphics as well as the sound engine of Tiny Toon Adventures, and starring expies of Goku and Chi-Chi as the player characters)
  • Metal Force (Mega Man (Classic) knockoff)
  • Power Block (Horizontal Breakout clone)
  • Twin Mouse (Sega Master System bootleg of Tiny Toon Adventures)
• Operation Secret Storm
• Both Pac-Man (1980) and Ms. Pac-Man had licensed (from Namco) and unlicensed (from Atari Games/Tengen) ports on the NES
• The three Panesian games, better known as the NES porn games:
  • Hot Slots
  • Peek-a-Boo Poker
  • Bubble Bath Babes, which was also released by a different company with the adult content removed as Mermaids of Atlantis
• Pokeball Coach Pokemon Go
• Pocket Monsters: Go! Go! Go!! (a Rom Hack of The Smurfs 3, with Pokémon plastered all over it)
• Pokémon Stadium for the Genesis
• RBI Baseball and its sequels. While it may have not been licensed by Nintendo it was licensed by the MLB Players Association.
• Robodemons
• Rocman X (Thunder Blast Man)
• Shi Kong Zhi Lun (Famicom demake of Chrono Trigger, made by Shenzhen Nanjing Technology who also developed the above mentioned Final Fantasy VII demake.)
• Shui Hu Feng Yun Zhuan (Golden Axe clone based on the Chinese novel Water Margin, as well as "borrowing" assets from Streets of Rage, Street Fighter II, and Knights of the Round. Surprisingly, the game received English translation by Piko Interactive in 2015 as Water Margin: A Tale of Clouds and Wind, with the much of the copyright infringing elements removed.)
• Silent Assault
• Squirrel King (Mega Drive knockoff of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers)
• Super Contra 7 (Standalone Contra game with sprites and backgrounds ripped from Mighty Final Fight.)
  • Super Contra X
  • Contra Spirits/Super Contra 3 (Famicom port of Contra III: The Alien Wars)
• Super Evolution, a generic gacha Mobile Phone Game based around collecting blatant Pokémon gijinkas with poorly translated names (e.g. "Shellhelmet" for Shelmet) and poor Japanese voice acting.
• Tagin' Dragon
• The Adventures of Captain Comic (NES port of the MS-DOS game)
• The Dragon (Famicom beat 'em up starring a Bruce Lee Clone with sprites ripped from Mortal Kombat, not to be confused with the aforementioned Challenge of the Dragon)
• The P'radikus Conflict
• Tom & Jerry 3 (Famicom conversion of the Genesis game Tom & Jerry: Frantic Antics)
• Twin Eagle (Area 88 knockoff by Sachen, published by American Video Entertainment as Double Strike in the US to avoid confusion or legal conflict with the Taito/Seta vertical shmup also called Twin Eagle)
• VR Fighter vs. Taken 2 (Megadrive Crossover of Virtua Fighter and Tekken)
• Wait and See! (Based on the Russian animated series Nu, Pogodi!, but steals artwork from Bugs Bunny)