Formula With A Twist / Video Games

Beat 'Em Ups

• Battletoads intentionally invokes the Teenage Mutant Samurai Wombats formula while differentiating itself by being punishingly difficult, to the point that most people who have played it could never get past the infamous Turbo Tunnels level.
• Cadillacs and Dinosaurs was created to cash in on two trends: the popularity of Beat 'em Up games and the popularity of Jurassic Park. As such, it adapted an obscure post-apocalyptic comic book about a group of adventures in a land of dinosaurs into a unique game.
• Double Dragon sets itself apart from other Beat 'em Up games by aping a Fist of the North Star-style After the End setting, in addition to having the co-protagonists be twin brothers.
• Golden Axe was created by Sega to compete with Final Fight in the arcades, but with the added flavor of Conan the Barbarian-meets-The Lord of the Rings—two things that the creator was very fond of.
• Streets of Rage was created by Sega directly to compete with Final Fight. Final Fight on the Super Nintendo lacked any Two-Player Co-op gameplay, which Street of Rage capitalized on by making absolutely sure that it was capable of co-op. The fact that the game (and its sequels) were developed specifically for a home console actually benefited it, as it allowed the devs to add other cool features like secret characters and a soundtrack that is still beloved to this day.

Fighting Games

• Bushido Blade was an attempt to portray the violence in a fighting game "realistically" by having each attack capable of crippling or even killing an opponent.
• ClayFighter is a fighting game that is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: stop-motion clay figures fighting each other.
• Darkstalkers applied the typical fighting game structure and filled its cast with a variety of monsters and supernatural creatures from various folklore, such as a vampire, a succubus, a Frankenstein's Monster, a mummy, a werewolf, a zombie, and even a Little Red Riding Hood expy.
• Dead or Alive pretty much codified the (often-derided) Panty Fighter sub-genre of fighting games.
• Divekick began as a Parody of fighting games which took the most overpowered move in most games of the genre (the Diving Kick) and made a system in which it was the only attack that could be performed. The absurd, simplistic gameplay as well as the tongue-in-cheek references to both popular culture and the Fighting Game Community set it apart from other games of its type.
• Killer Instinct set itself apart from the rest of its kind by embracing the ridiculously long and convoluted Combos and overzealous Announcer Chatter (becoming the Trope Namer for "C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!").
• Mortal Kombat created a hyper-violent fighting game in which the appeal was to watch the characters maim and humiliate each other in intensely gory fastion.
• Primal Rage is a fighter where dinosaurs (and other Kaiju monsters) fight each other over control of what's left of post-apocalyptic "Urth".
• Samurai Shodown set itself apart in the market for being both a weapon-based fighting series (and thus playing mechanically distinct from other games) but also for its Feudal Japan setting, music and character designs. It went on to inspire other weapon-based fighting franchises such as Battle Arena Toshinden and the Soul Series.
• Tekken copied the formula of Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter before it, but found a middle ground between the zany and somewhat cartoonish characters of the former and the ultra-realistic fighters of the latter. While it lacked green electric monsters and stretchy-armed Yoga practitioners, it had a fighting bear, a robot, and ninja that can spin his arms like rotors. Further games in the series added more characters while mostly retaining the balance between the normal and the abnormal.
• At the time of its release, Virtua Fighter summed up its entire premise in the title: it was the originator of the 3-D fighting game Sub-Genre. These days, it's something of an Artifact Title because 3-D fighters are now extremely common.

Team Fighting Games

• BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle is a tag-team fighter similar to Marvel vs. Capcom and Dragon Ball Fighter Z, but is also a Dream Match Game filled with fan-favorite characters from several anime-inspired games and media, such as BlazBlue, Under Night In-Birth, Persona 4: Arena, Arcana Heart, Senran Kagura, Akatsuki Blitzkampf, and especially RWBY, the latter of which was most welcomed and unexpected as an American production.
• Dragon Ball Fighter Z is the case of the right game being released at the right time. Dragon Ball had a resurgence into popularity which just happened to coincide with a time in which Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was derided as a Contested Sequel to the Capcom vs. series. Thus, the game was able to easily pull its audience from both Dragon Ball fans and disgrunted MvC fans and market itself as "Mahvel, but Dragonball".
• The King of Fighters originated the elimination-style team battle formula that was later also adopted into the crossover series SNK vs. Capcom.
• Skullgirls is a tag-team game that allows players to create teams of between 1 to 3 characters similar to Marvel vs. Capcom. Its roster (originally) was filled with nothing but cute and sexy (but grotesquely deformed or otherwise weird) girls. As the roster expanded, male characters were also included, but the weirdness factor remained its key selling point, aside from the gameplay.
• Xmen Vs Street Fighter started the Capcom vs. crossover gimmick, as well as the tag-team battle style that would later be utilized by a number of other games, such as its successors in the Capcom vs. series.

Metroidvanias

• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night put its own unique spin on the Metroidvania genre it would help define by adding RPG-like elements, such as weapons, magic and leveling.
• Metroid distinguished itself from Run-and-Gun and Platform Games by requiring the player to backtrack through various parts of a massive maze, as well as attempting to locate the many secret items and passageways that allow them to progress.
• Metroid Prime combined the standard Metroid formula with elements of a First-Person Shooter and brought the genre into 3-D: a task that had originally been seen as nigh-impossible.
• Hollow Knight was a Metroidvania during a resurgence, but it combined the genre with Souls-like RPG elements. It still remains one of the most successful and inspiring 2D Soulslikes. The cute characters and (literally) dark and gothic setting and lore didn't hurt either. Those are common for Soulslikes, but less so for Metroidvanias, besides Castlevania itself. One of the DLC bosses is even themed like a vampire, possibly as a homage.
• Dead Cells is a Metroidvania game combined with a Roguelike and a Souls-like RPG (whew!). Like HS, it helped popularize the idea of a "Rougevania", though it wasn't first out of the gate.

Platform Games

• Braid distinguishes itself from other platformers by making use of various time mechanics that can slow down or reverse the flow of time. These mechanics also facilitate the story's hidden narrative, supplementing the game's final twist in the last level.

Parkour Sub-genre

• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The game differentiated itself from Super Mario Bros. and its numerous clones by focusing on speed and cool/unique ways of moving through levels instead of precision platform jumping. This take on the formula has had Sonic retroactively considered the first "Parkour" game.
  • The game was credited with starting the "Mascot Platformer" games trend, as it was believed that Sonic's "attitude" and anthropomorphic features were the formula that made the game successful.
• Mirror's Edge stood out from other games in the "Parkour" genre by explicitly embracing the entire culture of parkour (including utilizing Real Life techniques of the art), as well as shifting the perspective to First-Person.
• Prince of Persia is a parkour-style action/platformer game whose primary gameplay gimmick is allowing the player to use various time-based mechanics to traverse obstacles, solve puzzles or undo mistakes.

Run-And-Gun Sub-genre

• Broforce takes pride in riffing on as many Hollywood action films as it possibly can.
• Castlevania pitted the player against iconic Universal Horror and Hammer Horror enemies and bosses, armed with a whip and other demon-slaying weapons.
• Contra, one of the original Run-and-Gun games, distinguished itself from the rest by mimicking the aesthetics and antagonists of the iconic Alien franchise.
• Mega Man was instantly memorable for allowing the player to complete its stages in any order, albeit some levels are harder than others. In addition, the titular character can absorb the powers of the bosses he defeats and use them to either make the other levels or bosses easier.

Racing Games

• Gran Turismo was as much a "car simulation game" as it was a racer. In addition to the cutting-edge graphics that made the cars and environments look stunningly realistic (for its time), it took great attention to detail to realistically portray the way cars would handle, forcing the player to carefully decide which of the various components and modifications to apply to win the actual races.
• San Francisco Rush changed the racing game formula by having much of its draw be the crazy physics that allowed cars to tumble through the air and even explode. A number of players didn't even bother with the actual racing and just wanted to pull off as many wacky and zany stunts as possible.
• Super Mario Kart was the first Mascot Racer, using cute and lovable mascot characters, along with gimmicky tracks and wacky items/weapons to stand apart from each other.

Role-Playing Games

• Bravely Default is a turn-based battle system with the twist that characters (both yours and the enemy's) are allowed to "take an advance" on their turns, acting multiple times in a row, in exchange for putting their turn count into the negatives and needing to wait for it to return to 0 before acting again. Characters can instead "Default" to "bank" additional turns for later.
• Chrono Trigger stood apart from its peers (even to this day) by utilizing Time Travel into its plot and gameplay. For example, a side-quest involves going back in time to save a dying forest (leaving behind a Robot Buddy from the future to see the work to completion), then traveling hundreds of years to the present day, where the robot has been waiting to reunite with you. In addition to this, these same Time Travel mechanics created the Trope Maker and Trope Namer for New Game Plus mode, in which they could play through the game again with most of their abilities and inventory intact.
• Drakengard and its spin-off series, Nier were conceived when its creator, Yoko Taro, expressed confusion about how games and their players could casually enjoy death and killing. Each of his games have thus centered around themes of life and death, exploring what it means to die (and to be "alive" for that matter). This has resulted in some of the darkest, most bizarre and existentially-engaging games in the RPG genre.
• Moon: Remix RPG Adventure encourages the player not to "be a hero" in the sense of fighting creatures and barreling your way through the land, but to help the locals and form bonds with them. In fact, most of the problems the player has to solve are the result of another character acting like the world is nothing but a winnable game.
• Mother was created at the time that fantasy-based RPGs were taking off in popularity in Japan. However, when making the first game, its creator wanted to differentiate from the rest by setting its plot in a modern-ish world instead of the stock fantasy one. He also added a lot of self-referential humor and deconstructions for good measure. The changes stuck for its sequels, and in turn gave rise to a lot of imitators, including Undertale.
• Pokémon is a role playing game with the basic twist of allowing players the opportunity to recruit any Random Encounters into their party. Due to this, the entire game world is balanced around the idea of every party member potentially being an enemy and vice versa, so individual enemies don't have greatly inflated stats compared to yours, and battles are mostly one on one instead of fielding the entire team at once.
• Shin Megami Tensei chose to differentiate itself from its Eastern RPG contemporaries by having the story take place in a post-apocalyptic world filled with Ruins of the Modern Age, as well as with heavy religious themes from Christianity, Buddhism and so forth, usually with a plot centered on reincarnation or rebirth, as well as a Alignment-Based Endings system which determines if the player sides with Order or Chaos (or neither, since it's common that Both Order and Chaos are Dangerous as their core members are jerks), and decide what sort of world will exist from then on.
• Undertale is a Role-Playing Game by American Toby Fox with Eastern RPG mechanics and aesthetics, which primarily deconstructs the ability of Save Scumming. By extension, it also deconstructs other aspects such as Videogame Cruelty Potential and Videogame Caring Potential, demonstrating how much of a monster a person with the ability to do terrible things and then erase them like they didn't happen would actually be. As a consequence, the player doesn't have to actually kill anyone and can avoid violence as much as possible.
• Vandal Hearts differentiates itself from other Strategy RPG games first by being Bloodier and Gorier, and then with its Dual Turn System. In the Dual Turn System, the player and the computer simultaneously give commands to one character each, and these characters would take their actions at the same time.
• The Xeno series^note Which includes the Xenogears, Xenosaga and Xenoblade Chronicles sub-series are notable for combining traditional Eastern RPG mechanics with an epic Space Opera that focuses on using Humongous Mecha in combat.

Souls-Like Games

• Nioh set itself apart from other Dark Souls-imitators by being set in feudal Japan, although having a western Caucasian man as its protagonist.
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order moves the Souls-like formula into the Star Wars universe. Elements like "bonfires", reclaiming one's loot and progress after death, and other elements of the genre are all intact, although given no explanation about how they work within this game.

Shooters

Battle Royale Games

• Apex Legends is a Titanfall Spin-Off that not only adds a sci-fi aesthetic to the Battle Royale genre, but also incorporates aspects of the Hero Shooter genre as well, with a cast of distinct characters with unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses.
• Battlefield V added a Battle Royale mode modeled on the weapons and technology of World War II.
• Fortnite: Though it started as a standard Survival/Zombie Horde Mode game, Fortnite later introduced a Battle Royale mode to cash in on the success of Player Unknowns Battlegrounds. It then vastly overtook its predecessor in popularity, thanks to its unique aesthetic, building mechanics, and other wacky features that helped give it a unique identity, becoming the Battle Royale Game that defined the others.

Hero Shooters

• Overwatch was designed to be a more-accessible entry into the First-Person Shooter/Hero Shooter genre, by combining it with Multiplayer Online Battle Arena mechanics. As a result, it became the most popular game in the genre by a wide margin.
• Rainbow Six Siege marks a massive departure from the typical Rainbow Six formula by introducing a tactical PvP shooter with a variety of Operators with their own sets of abilities and distinct personalities. What sets it apart from even other Hero Shooters is the destructible maps, which create infinite possibilities for engaging enemies or making tactical movements through the environment.

Looter Shooters

• Anthem (2019), according to behind-the-scenes information leaked to the public, was originally designed by Bioware as a new IP but one in which they had no idea what to settle on a selling point. Initially, they attempted to distance the game as being compared with previous Looter Shooter games such as Destiny, but said comparisons became inevitable as the project crystallized. Further, the team hastily created footage of the concept and threw as many ideas in as possible, including the ability of Flight, although they weren't sure they would keep the idea. Eventually, Executive Meddling forced the flight to be added permanently as the game's main selling point, and it later essentially became to be known as "The Looter Shooter where you can fly".
• Borderlands is the game that popularized and basically created the "Looter Shooter" sub-genre by combining a First-Person Shooter with Role-Playing Game-style progression and Random Drops. The series still stands as unique in the genre for its snarky humor and distinct art style.

Sports Games

• BMX XXX was originally supposed to be a standard BMX-style tricks/racing game using the licensing of professional Dave Mirra. After the deal fell through, Acclaim instead shifted the game's focus onto nudity, graphic fanservice, and even video of real strippers.

Survivor Horror

• Eternal Darkness was a Survival Horror game based on an original Cosmic Horror Story mythos and incorporated a Sanity Meter mechanic which would cause all sorts of bizarre phenomena to happen to the player character, the environment, and sometimes even the game itself. Due to Nintendo patenting the idea, it remains a unique feature even to this day.
• Fatal Frame has a unique combat method for the genre: the player must take pictures of the ghosts to defeat them.
• Haunting Ground takes the classic Survival Horror formula (particularly, the run-and-hide gameplay reminiscent of Clock Tower) and gives the protagonist a dog as the only means to defend herself.
• Operator's Side (called Lifeline in North America) is a Survival Horror where the player has to guide another character around via a microphone as a playable Mission Control.

First-Person Stealth Horror

• Outlast has a video camera as the protagonist's main tool for being able to see in the dark environment, at the cost of rapidly draining the camera's battery life.
• Penumbra was the first game Frictional Games created in a sub-genre of horror that requires the hero to run and hide from enemies rather than combat them (or sometimes even look at them). This formula would later be used by many of their follow-up games.
• SOMA has similar Sanity Meter effects as Frictional Games's previous titles, Penumbra and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but in this game, the system is contextual and the exact method and result of losing sanity depends on the enemies, environment, etc. In addition, the game is set underwater and thus numerous sections have unique mechanics while submerged.