Undertale

At sixteen, Toby Fox made EarthBound: The Halloween Hack (2008), a mod of MOTHER 2. A song he wrote for it later became "Megalovania," known around the world. He's very precise about his influences: "I can say for sure that I wanted to make something with as much emotional power, humor, and mystery as the MOTHER series has, though it doesn't need to follow the same path. Also, the main character is a kid in a striped shirt... maybe that's a bit too on the nose." His Kickstarter in June 2013 raised $51,124 from 2,398 backers against a $5,000 goal, and the game was completed in 2015. What happened afterward is the interesting part. Fox himself was deeply involved in localizing the Japanese release (August 2017). A creator raised on Japanese games went on to personally oversee bringing his own work back into Japanese — the darkest line this map draws under what it calls "influence flowing back from overseas."