List of Drillimation knockoffs acknowledged by Drillimation

Like with most media franchises, The Drillimation Series is subject to many knockoffs and bootlegs. While many counterfeit machines and games are made, many of these have come to the attention of Drillimation Studios themselves. Many of these unlicensed, unofficial, or counterfeit products have been shut down, removed from sale, or subject to legal action under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) by Drillimation Studios facilities across the globe.

GoAnimate takedowns of unofficial content
Like with most media on the internet, The Drillimation Series had driven fans to create "grounded videos" featuring the franchise's characters and locations. According to animation website GoAnimate, the amount of Drillimation videos had six folded in 2014. While Drillimation hasn't officially commented on these, they have been routinely filing DMCA complaints against these as they did not adhere to the Drillimation Content Usage Rules and Regulations. GoAnimate user TrumpAnimeGamer91 mentioned some of his friends receiving DMCAs from digital rights managing company Hideo Ochiai Labs. This happened on other websites such as YouTube, VidSpace, and Tumblr as well. The number of Drillimation videos on GoAnimate began declining in January 2016 after the HTML5 update, which removed most of the site's themes.

Drillimation vs. Hanna-Barbera
"This might have likely formed the basis for all of Capcom's crossover fighters. It was a game where both styles of animation come together. It was the East vs. the West!"

- Susumu Takajima, interview in Official Nickelodeon Magazine

Drillimation vs. Hanna-Barbera is a fan made versus fighting game featuring Drillimation characters, as well as characters from some of Hanna-Barbera's famous cartoons such as The Flintstones, Quick Draw McGraw, Huckleberry Hound, and many others. The fans made it as a tribute to when Drillimation was owned by H-B in the late 1970s. Drillimation discovered the game in 1994 and immediately bought the rights to it. Drillimation then proceeded to produce an hourlong TV special with Hanna-Barbera based on the game on Cartoon Network.

Other Drillimation fan games that featured characters from other western animation include Drillimation vs. Nickelodeon, which featured Nickelodeon characters.

Lucky Star: Reloaded and Remastered
In 2011, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the franchise, developers from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana created a 3D voxel version of the original 1987 Lucky Star. It was playable in the player's browser via the power of JavaScript and WebGL. A few days later, the game was pulled from Purdue's website due to a DMCA complaint made by Drillimation Studios, saying that "the game copies the assets of the original game and allows players to play an unauthorized copy of the game".

Miss Driller
"I couldn't tell if this is a ROM hack or a fangame."

- Susumu Takajima, during his fangame interview

Miss Driller is an official Mr. Driller fangame for the Xbox and home computers created using Driller Engine 4. The game has players taking on the role of Anna Hottenmeyer to rescue Konata Izumi. Originally created by Drillimation Online user Moekyun88 in 2002, the game went viral after word of this game was spread on 4chan in 2003. According to the game's creator, the distribution rights for the game were quickly bought by Drillimation Studios. Due to its rarity, there are no possibilities of having an official release.

Mr. Driller Drill Spirits HD
In the summer of 2015, an independent game developer from Seattle, Washington recreated the first stage of Mr. Driller Drill Spirits (known as Mr. Driller 64 on the N64) in HD using the Unity game engine. It was playable in the player's browser via the power of HTML5 and WebGL. It didn't last long when Drillimation Studios sent a cease and desist letter to CloudFlare, the hosting provider of the game. It didn't take too long for the game to be pulled offline.

The Dynamism of Haruhi Suzumiya
The Dynamism of Haruhi Suzumiya is an unofficial clone of Capcom's Power Stone made using Driller Engine Ultimate, using the models from The Adventures of Haruhi Suzumiya arcade games while borrowing elements from Power Stone. It was free to play on Drillimation Online and even on Steam. However, after a few months from its release, Valve removed it from their storefront after receiving a DMCA complaint from Kadokawa Shouten claiming it had infringed on the Haruhi Suzumiya trademark and copyright. Drillimation was also unaware of this when raids on Drillimation Online occurred when users spammed posts on the Drillimation Forums saying #revivethedynamism. Eventually, raiders launched distributed denial of service attacks on Kadokawa Shouten after they defied the fans' requests to bring it back on Steam.

Touhou Kireiyoru: Fantasy Night

 * Main Article: Drillimation Studios v. PoQoP

Touhou Kireiyoru: Fantasy Night is a fan-made Touhou Project game developed and published by PoQoP exclusively for iOS devices. The game was created under Drillimation's Content Usage Rules and released in April 2011. Although the contract says that original art styles must be used, PoQoP decided to break the agreement by using the assets from Touhou 8: Imperishable Night and other fanmade assets. As a result, Drillimation terminated the contract and sued PoQoP for piracy and copyright infringement. At one point after the lawsuit, the game was removed from the App Store. As of December 2011, the game returned to the App Store following a counter-notice sent by Apple.

Touhou Pangaea: The Insanity
Touhou Pangaea: The Insanity is a series of very difficult stages and bosses of the Driller Engine 2 Era made by YouTuber PangaeaPanga from Rocky Hill, Connecticut, all of which he made through a ROM hack of Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom. The whole game took him around a year to make and beat, and even hosted the ROM on his website. In September 2015, the ROM was removed from his website due to a DMCA complaint made by Nintendo regarding his hacked Super Mario World levels, as well as Touhou Pangaea: The Insanity. The takedown eventually lead to Alex Tan v. Drillimation Studios California, where game publishers need to consider fair use before allowing ROM hacks of Drillimation games to be made.

Touhou Reiiden: Highly Responsive to Prayers Lunatic Edition
In 2008, a group of students from Commack High School in Long Island, New York began working on a massive remake of the 1986 game Touhou Reiiden: Highly Responsive to Prayers. The remake included 25 levels per world, Marisa Kirisame, Sakuya Izayoi, and Sanae Kochiya being playable, and some new soundtracks. The game took four years to complete. Drillimation Studios didn't agree about this. Not only did they send a cease and desist letter, they also said that "the game is way too long to beat and is too difficult". Surprisingly, Team Shanghai Alice was doing a remake to the game but was canceled before it was released.

Konata x Yutaka Yuri Fanfiction
In 1997, an erotic fanfiction featuring characters from Lucky Star came to the attention of Drillimation when several anime-themed fansites were hacked from a virus named Tsukasa, replacing front pages with this fanfic. The fanfic was also subject to controversy over its erotic content, despite that Drillimation was a family-friendly game developer. The fanfic has also been used by spam bots on wiki-related websites, although many versions of this hack have been patched.

Rensenware
Rensenware (a play on ransomware over Seirensen) is a ransomware created by a South Korean Driller Engine developer in 2007. The ransomware encrypts all files when the machine is run, displayed by a window of notification. The ransomware mainly affected machines that were running Windows 98, 2000, ME, XP, and Vista. The virus crashes when encountering files that cannot be encrypted due to a bug.

Rather than asking for money, the user is instructed to play the PC version of the 1999 arcade game Touhou 12: Undefined Fantastic Object and must get at least 2 million points on Lunatic Difficulty in order to decrypt the files. Unlike other ransomware viruses, where they're deleted after some time, the player has unlimited attempts to defeat the virus.

The developer's computer also got infected upon creating the virus and was unable to defeat it due to the difficulty of the game and that he was a beginner Touhou player. However, a patch was uploaded to GitHub for decryption of the files for the ransom part. Bandai Namco and Drillimation found out the virus in 2008, and Drillimation sued the developer for copyright infringement for allowing players to download an unauthorized copy of the game, as well as trademark infringement for the use of "Rensen" in the title, and Touhou Seirensen is a trademarked name in all regions the Touhou Project series is published in.

After the case was settled in Seoul, South Korea, Drillimation sent details of the virus to Symantec, and classified the virus as "Unsafe" for all Norton products.

Dünya Belirlenmesi
Dünya Belirlenmesi (lit. World Identification) is a Turkish cartoon series that was known for having a great deal of negative reception over being a direct rip-off of the Drillimation anime. It was known for having music taken directly from GoGang, Angry German Kid, and the original Mr. Driller series respectively. It was also criticized for having footage taken from 1974 episodes of Space Ninja Team Star Trigon. It was canceled following a DMCA complaint by Drillimation Studios following unauthorized use of Drillimation material and was even criticized by Hanna-Barbera themselves.