At this point, the Magic thing is more a homage than a rip - off; frankly, as a fellow gamer I find it endearing that Takahashi was able to put then -
niche gaming stuff into shonen manga, like the «Monster World» storyline in volumes 6 - 7 that's obviously based on Dungeons & Dragons.
Not exact matches
The games I like to play... JRPG's or
niche Japanese titles... typically aren't broken on release, and while I have a massive backlog as well... probably more than yours spanning 30 years of
gaming... I still get
stuff day one.
Also the early MMOs were very much
niche and not that well known, hell even Star Wars Galaxies wasn't that popular or heavily talked about in
gaming news past its initial
stuff.