Shovel Knight brought with it a ton of new ideas in terms of gameplay, but a lot was borrowed as well.
To be fair, it was like that in the actual NES era too.
Unless you’re an actual enthusiast, there are TONS of NES games that you’ve never heard of, that inspired the gameplay of other games.
Then there’s the games that were japan only, never got an outside release. But then a later game that DOES get an outside release uses elements from those games. From out perspective, that 2nd game invented that formula. You find out years later it wasn’t.
I dunno about “everything” being a new idea. There definitely were some, but there were a lot of clones of other games and genres being beaten to death just like now.
Mario-style platformer? Side-scrolling beat-em-up? Couldn’t count them all.
Old games stood on their own merits: artwork, sound design, game mechanics. I have no idea what “retro authenticity” is supposed to be, but it doesn’t sound like it involves inspiration or imagination.
