Ninja Fishing for iPhone looks eerily similar to popular Flash title

Ninja Fishing is a new title coming on the App Store that combines Fruit Ninja's hacking and slashing mechanic with a fishing game, where you throw fish up in the air and then chop them down for fun and profit. Unfortunately, quite a few people have noticed a resemblance to a Flash game called Radical Fishing, which itself was already being made into an App Store title called Ridiculous Fishing. Sure enough, the original Flash title has you fishing and then shooting fish out of the air, and the planned iOS title plays generally the same way, it would seem.

So what's the deal? Certainly there is a resemblance between the two games, even if the swipe-to-slash mechanic is a new addition. And this obviously isn't the first time we've seen game mechanics from another medium apparently ripped off for an iOS title. But the developers of Ridiculous Fishing seem to be taking it in stride anyway -- they're still working hard on their iOS title, and they say it'll have lots of cool new ideas and "an amazing visual style" as well.

Gamenauts, the company that released Ninja Fishing, says that the title was inspired by the original Flash game, and that credit will be given, though they weren't specific on how that will be done. Mistakes were made, it seems, but given how many titles are available on the iOS store, it's probably not too surprising that we've got a few overlaps.