What game series has the most strange spinoffs?

[Like the hat?]

Series where there is a "main" series but then lots of other games that are weird and different from the mainline?

For purpose of conversation, Mario is excluded. Mario has everything else beat by a large margin.

My vote goes for the Zelda series. Outside of the main games, you have the four swords games, the Hyrule Warriors games, the Tingle games, Link's crossbow training, triforce heroes, and surely many more I'm forgetting.

What other (non Mario) series has tons of spinoff games? Is it Final Fantasy (probably)?

Share some of your favorite spinoffs as well.

 

[Deleted member 16876]

Dynasty Warriors

Edit:

To expand, the series basically became a genre and most games in the genre comes from Omega Force. Berserk, Zelda, Gundam, One Piece, Persona... There is so many of them and all of them are made by the same developer weirdly enough.

My personal favourite spin off has to be Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate. The amount of content in that one game is insane. Gundam and Hyrule are also amazing.

 

[Etrian Darkness]

Pokémon.

 

[WhtR88t]

Came here to say Zelda… a lot of weird ones.

Sonic might be up there too– Spinball, Team Racing etc.

Let us not forget Metroid Pinball on the DS too.

 

[Speevy]

Megaman

 

[Dolce]

Kirby. Pretty easy. You have Block Ball, which is Arkanoid. You have Pinball. You have Kirby Dream Course which is golf. You have Air Ride which is a platforming/racing game. You have fighting games. You have his Rainbow spinoffs where he becomes a ball and you draw around him. Mass Attack. Robobot.

Kirby wins.

Edit: Also Kirby's Avalanche, which is Puyo Puyo, and Tilt 'N' Tumble which is... a gyro game.

 

[Speevy]

The Last of Us dating sim was awkward. Like seriously stop killing everyone Ellie.

 

[mopinks]

yeah I'm going with Kirby

 

[Damn Silly]

Sonic was my first thought.

Multiple differing racing games, multiple fighting games, RPG, Kinect skating game, Pinball, edutainment, multiple puzzle games

 

[cvbas]

Pac-Man.

There's Pac-Man-like games such as Mrs. Pac-Man and Pac-Man Jr., there's the side-scrolling Pac-Man Land, there's the weird adventure game Pac-Man 2, there's the 3D Platformers from the PS2 era, there's Pac-Man Rally for the PS2 and the list goes on.

 

[Betelgeuse]

Gears only for Gears Pop. That crossover still makes no sense to me.

 

[butalala]

My first thought was Kirby.

 

[Redcrayon]

Dizzy is a relevant series here for UK members of a certain vintage. You had the main adventure games and a ton of spin-offs, it was effectively the Mario of the 8-bit microcomputer scene here in the late 1980s.

Dizzy (series) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Deleted member 864]

Sonic has done a lot over the years. Same with Kirby.

 

[TacomaSCDisaster]

Sonic sprang to mind first. The series has done party games, fighting games, racing games, pinball games, puzzle games, RPGs, the list goes on.

 

[WestEgg]

Surely the Tingle games alone make Zelda a top contender.

 

[Clive]

Feels like Final Fantasy is worth mentioning at this point, especially if looking at franchises created from FF lore like Chocobo, Crystal Defenders and Kingdom Hearts. Fighting, Final Fight-style brawler, racing, dungeon crawlers, straight up movies, strategy, card battle, rhythm and loads of weird Japan-only phone stuff.

We also have sub-series to for example FF7 which play very differently like Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core which have pretty non-standard systems like being shooters or slot machine sims.

 

[Rotobit]

Final Fantasy. Sure, at first they mostly seem like RPGs, but dig a little deeper and you have...

• Chocobo Racing, a kart racer.
• Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon, a rogue-like
• Final Fantasy Fables, a card battler
• Pictlogica, which is just Picross, by Jupiter and everything.
• Theatrhythm, a rhythm game.
• Dissidia and Ergheiz (kinda), fighting games.
• Kingdom Hearts if you wanna count that is pretty friggin' weird if you think about it
• Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire, a free-to-play nightmare city builder... thing
• My Life as a King, a WiiWare city builder/management sim
• Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a bad movie
• Final Fantasy Unlimited, a very bizarre anime
• Dad of Light, a Japanese drama about FFXIV
• A FFXII spin-off flash game where you play as a moogle
• Crystal Defenders, a tower-defense game
• Itadaki Street, not necessarily a FF spin-off exclusively but modern games have featured it heavily.
• A popular and enduring TCG

and almost certainly more I'm forgetting

 

[aisback]

Sonic is my guess.

I was going to say mario but that was too obvious.

 

[mopinks]

Final Fantasy. Sure, at first they mostly seem like RPGs, but dig a little deeper and you have...

• Chocobo Racing, a kart racer.
• Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon, a rogue-like
• Final Fantasy Fables, a card battler
• Pictlogica, which is just Picross, by Jupiter and everything.
• Theatrhythm, a rhythm game.
• Dissidia and Ergheiz (kinda), fighting games.
• Kingdom Hearts if you wanna count that is pretty friggin' weird if you think about it
• Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire, a free-to-play nightmare city builder... thing
• My Life as a King, a WiiWare city builder/management sim
• Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a bad movie
• Final Fantasy Unlimited, a very bizarre anime
• Dad of Light, a Japanese drama about FFXIV
• A FFXII spin-off flash game where you play as a moogle
• Crystal Defenders, a tower-defense game
• Itadaki Street, not necessarily a FF spin-off exclusively but modern games have featured it heavily.

and almost certainly more I'm forgetting

Click to shrink...

you could make a good case for Dragon Quest too, since it also checks most of these boxes

Final Fantasy is still waiting on its musou

 

[arcadepc]

Eroge visual novels adapted to fighting games.

 

[Rotobit]

you could make a good case for Dragon Quest too, since it also checks most of these boxes

Final Fantasy is still waiting on its musou

Click to shrink...

Yeah DQ is basically neck-and-neck. Something to be said about it essentially being the origin point of Mystery Dungeon.

 

[mnk]

Final Fantasy. Sure, at first they mostly seem like RPGs, but dig a little deeper and you have...

• Chocobo Racing, a kart racer.
• Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon, a rogue-like
• Final Fantasy Fables, a card battler
• Pictlogica, which is just Picross, by Jupiter and everything.
• Theatrhythm, a rhythm game.
• Dissidia and Ergheiz (kinda), fighting games.
• Kingdom Hearts if you wanna count that is pretty friggin' weird if you think about it
• Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire, a free-to-play nightmare city builder... thing
• My Life as a King, a WiiWare city builder/management sim
• Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a bad movie
• Final Fantasy Unlimited, a very bizarre anime
• Dad of Light, a Japanese drama about FFXIV
• A FFXII spin-off flash game where you play as a moogle
• Crystal Defenders, a tower-defense game
• Itadaki Street, not necessarily a FF spin-off exclusively but modern games have featured it heavily.
• A popular and enduring TCG

and almost certainly more I'm forgetting

Click to shrink...

There was that Monster Hunter wannabe on 3DS, and World of Final Fantasy for the Pokemon crowd. Plus all the gacha games, like the one where they turned Ariana Grande into a Final Fantasy character.

 

[Zen_Master]

House of the Dead > Typing of the dead.

 

[Deleted member 76797]

SMT for one of it's spinoffs blowing up to be bigger than the mainline series

 

[Chopchop]

Touhou, probably. The mainline games are bullet hell shmups, but because the developer has a very "whatever" attitude about using his IP, plenty of other indie groups make spinoff games. Including fighting games, platformers, side scrolling shooters, and all sorts of other shit.

 

[ItchyTasty]

Mario has been in every sport imaginable, I even had a Mario dance mat game as a kid.

 

[Starlatine]

it didnt had much but if you stop to think the fallout series had a mmo-esque spinoff, a tactics spinoff, a diablo clone spinoff and a mobile building game spinoff, it's kinda weird for a so called mature hardcore rpg series

comparing to other series that had as many spinoffs as people working on the usual games it might not seem much but considering each of them was weird in their own way i feel like its worth mentioning

 

[Alecs27]

Crash bandicoot

 

[DavidBoring]

 

[Hoa]

Megaman has 2 different RPG series with Battle Network and Starforce. Those even have their own spinoffs and side games like Battle Chip Challenge, 4.5 EXE, Network Transmission. Megaman X even had an RPG of its own with Command Mission.



Also has:
A 3d action adventure series with Megaman Legends.
A racing game (Battle and Chase)
An interactive movie game (Super Adventure Rockman)
A soccer game (Megaman Soccer)
A board game ( Wily & Right no RockBoard )
A boss fighting arcade game (Power Battle and Power Fighters)
Whatever the hell Xover is.
A pachislot game.
And a ton of old mobile games in various genres.

Another series with a weird spinoff is R-Type

Typically a shmup game, this one is actually a turn based strategy game.

 

[mopinks]

SMT for one of it's spinoffs blowing up to be bigger than the mainline series

Click to shrink...

it's got nothing on Donkey Kong

 

[Cantaim]

There was that Monster Hunter wannabe on 3DS, and World of Final Fantasy for the Pokemon crowd. Plus all the gacha games, like the one where they turned Ariana Grande into a Final Fantasy character.

Click to shrink...

She actually got two characters in that game. She was apparently that popular lol.

 

[giapel]

Not as many as other series but Wario ware was as weird as it gets.

 

[MaxAugust]

Dynasty Warriors

Edit:

To expand, the series basically became a genre and most games in the genre comes from Omega Force. Berserk, Zelda, Gundam, One Piece, Persona... There is so many of them and all of them are made by the same developer weirdly enough.

My personal favourite spin off has to be Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate. The amount of content in that one game is insane. Gundam and Hyrule are also amazing.

Click to shrink...

Not to mention that Dynasty Warriors is technically a Romance of the Three Kingdoms spinoff albeit one that has gotten more mainstream than the original strategy games.

 

[Deleted member 16876]

Not to mention that Dynasty Warriors is technically a Romance of the Three Kingdoms spinoff albeit one that has gotten more mainstream than the original strategy games.

Click to shrink...

Yeah and to stretch it further, the first game was a fighting game so you got a spin off of a spin off technically.

 

[Manmademan]

Metal Gear.

 

[Lowblood]

While the gameplay has generally stayed the same, Bomberman has had quite a few variants over the years:

-Crossover with Wario
-Edgy version with Act Zero
-And now the anime girl version with Bombergirl

Plus his guest starring roles in Smash and Lode Runner.

 

[Barrel_Roll]

The Persona series, which is funny because it is itself a spin-off of another series, Shin Megami Tensei. But off the top of my head we have Persona fighting games, dancing games, OVAs...

 

[Deleted member 10737]

probably kirby

 

[Rotobit]

While the gameplay has generally stayed the same, Bomberman has had quite a few variants over the years:

-Crossover with Wario
-Edgy version with Act Zero
-And now the anime girl version with Bombergirl

Plus his guest starring roles in Smash and Lode Runner.

Click to shrink...

The cameo in Lode Runner predated Bomberman, so in a way all of that is Lode Runner spin-offs

I'd also say the N64 games are fairly distinct and weird in their own way

Megaman has 2 different RPG series with Battle Network and Starforce. Those even have their own spinoffs and side games like Battle Chip Challenge, 4.5 EXE, Network Transmission. Megaman X even had an RPG of its own with Command Mission.



Also has:
A 3d action adventure series with Megaman Legends.
A racing game (Battle and Chase)
An interactive movie game (Super Adventure Rockman)
A soccer game (Megaman Soccer)
A board game ( Wily & Right no RockBoard )
A boss fighting arcade game (Power Battle and Power Fighters)
Whatever the hell Xover is.
A pachislot game.
And a ton of old mobile games in various genres.

Click to shrink...

This is a good shout, it's easy to forget considering how many of the early spin-offs never let Japan but Mega Man was eeeverywhere. I remember thinking in the 2000's "wow there is way too much Mega Man". And then the 2010's happened, RIP.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

star fox probably