Do those other post-apocalyptic games have cryptic alliances and secret societies like the Friends of Entropy or the Knights of Genetic Purity?There is nothing stopping someone from making basically the same thing as the old TSR properties with different names. What does Gamma World offer that Mutant Future or Mutant Crawl Classics doesn’t? I don’t really play video games but I take it from earlier comments that there are video games that also give the same approximate experience.
I love Boot Hill but it isn’t like we have a lack of western games on the market plus you can get it PoD from DrivethruRPG, what else do you need?
I’ve tried finding an equivalent of Star*Drive with stellar nations, the Verge, and the Externals, but there’s nothing comparable. And you can’t make anything comparable without risking being sued by WotC. WotC has no intention to ever touch those IPs again and copyright law prevents anyone else from even making close approximations.
The original authors of Alternity took the lapsed trademark and tried to make a retroclone that quickly fizzled out. Part of the reason they failed was that fans were angered to learn they didn’t actually own the rights to Alternity.
Copyright law is broken and is strangling creativity. Copyright terms are too long. By the time the copyright to TSR products expires in the late 2080s, everyone who played it will have been dead for decades. There will be no one around who knew it existed, much less wants to continue it.