By Craig Pearson on January 23rd, 2012 at 11:22 am.
If you’re going to infringe on copyright, you might infringe on all the copyrights at the same time. That way you can keep track of who’s taking you to court. Mario Crossover 2.0, the sequel to the already astonishingly rippy-offy original, is a remarkably slick mash-up of all the best Nintendo games. And Zelda.
Crossover 2.0 takes the basic concept of allowing characters like Samus (from Metroid), or Link (from Meh-lda) to run around Mario levels and runs in crazy directions with it. Mega-Man tossing blocks at Koopas, Samus blasting them with her arm gun thing, Link boring them to death with his boring-ness. I love the idea of in-game power-ups upgrading the graphics, taking the player into a modern era with every mushroom, and sliding back through history when damage is taken. And Ryu fighting Bowser is just precious. Feast your eyes on the entire roster in this demonstrative video-gram from a bygone era.
It’s expected to arrive in the first months of 2012.
23/01/2012 at 11:28 Meat Circus says:
Your mum is in another castle.
23/01/2012 at 11:33 Theoban says:
My Mum *is* the other castle
23/01/2012 at 12:58 Bhazor says:
When yo momma took off her armour at the end, everyone *still* thought she was a man.
23/01/2012 at 11:32 Tams80 says:
*might as well
That was bad enough to not be relegated to an email.
Some of the Mario music, especially the older stuff will give me nightmares. It also makes me cringe. The first game was brilliant fun though.
23/01/2012 at 11:50 ulix says:
Just like the (real) second (not Doki Doki Panic with a Mario skin, which was also awesome), the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, and all the others?
23/01/2012 at 13:13 Frosty840 says:
People give SMB2 such a hard time for not being a “real” Mario game, but its history is much more interesting than that. It actually started out life as a prototype for, of all things, Super Mario Bros. 2, but the other SMB2 was released instead.
That prototype was developed into a full game (Doki Doki Panic), which was eventually repurposed into being… SMB2… Again…
The Wikipedia page has more details; I just think it’s a bit unfair of people to dump on SMB2 without knowing its history any deeper than “Oh, it’s just some reskin, it’s not a ‘real’ Mario game.” when it actually really was. Almost. Kind of…
24/01/2012 at 01:50 Ushao says:
So what you’re saying is… We have to go deeper?
23/01/2012 at 11:41 noodlecake says:
Shame on the lack of comments on this article! This looks fantastic. :) I saw this on indiegames a few days ago. I had a SEGA Mega Drive so none of these characters mean anything to me. It’s nice to see something that isn’t an RTS, RPG or FPS! I’m getting quite bored of PC gaming. It would be nice to see some of the really interesting console games ported to PC, like LittleBigPlanet or Beautiful Katamari.
23/01/2012 at 12:12 brulleks says:
I was a megadrive fanatic as well, so I only really recognise the mario characters in the video.
They should make one based on Sonic levels with characters from the SEGA games. Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Double Dragon etc
Of course, they’d all get to the first looping incline and have to give up.
23/01/2012 at 14:02 Bhazor says:
@ Noodlecakes
You only had a megadrive? My condolences to your childhood.
23/01/2012 at 11:42 paralipsis says:
I see you still haven’t gotten over that time that Link bullied you in high school.
23/01/2012 at 11:42 kavika says:
Missing important details in the article, like:
- is it already out?
- When will it be out?
The video says it (first quarter this year), but so should the article :)
23/01/2012 at 11:50 Craig Pearson says:
Good point.
23/01/2012 at 11:43 ulix says:
“of all the best Nintendo games. And Zelda.”
Oh Snap!
…because… Zelda isn’t just the best, but the very best?
23/01/2012 at 11:46 Bluerps says:
Heh. I wish they could charge money for that thing, so that I could give it to them.
23/01/2012 at 11:47 westyfield says:
I have played none of those games.
23/01/2012 at 11:58 Ridnarhtim says:
What’s with the Zelda hate?
23/01/2012 at 12:01 Syra says:
What is a ‘nintendo’?
23/01/2012 at 14:47 Milos says:
Japanese word for syphilis.
23/01/2012 at 20:16 Cunzy1 1 says:
It’s like PC games but you don’t have to sit in the corner at the desk WITH ALL THE OFFICE THINGS.
23/01/2012 at 12:03 Hodge says:
The original one was absolutely brilliant for the thirty seconds it lasted before crashing the browser plug-in.
23/01/2012 at 18:45 Baines says:
The original was brilliant for the 30 seconds it lasted before I remembered that I don’t like Super Mario Bros. I’d rather play any of the other characters’ games than it.
23/01/2012 at 12:03 sneetch says:
“… a remarkably slick mash-up of all the best Nintendo games. And Zelda.”
“… Link (from Meh-lda)…”
“… Link boring them to death with his boring-ness.”
Dear Sir,
whilst browsing the internet I was shocked to come across the above errors in your article. I feel it is my solumn duty, under article 42 of the Correction of Wrong People on the Internet Act (1832), to tell you: no you’re wrong, Link is cool and you’re the one who’s boring, because of that I feel fully justified in dismissing you as a hater.
I trust that you will take this rebuttal of your position into account, reflect upon it and I expect a full written apology and retraction to follow.
Yours in self-righteous indignation,
Sneetch
23/01/2012 at 12:32 Craig Pearson says:
Dear Sneetch,
Thhhhptptptpptpthjththththththttttttt!
Love,
Impossible Sexington
23/01/2012 at 15:25 Kodeen says:
Craig Pearson is error
24/01/2012 at 16:29 deadfolk says:
Freaky – never seen this quote before, then twice in one day.
23/01/2012 at 12:44 Jody Macgregor says:
Thank god there are other people who hate Zelda.
23/01/2012 at 12:50 Bluerps says:
There are always other people who hate something too, for everything. I mean even kittens and rainbows are hated by multiple people.
23/01/2012 at 13:19 Ridnarhtim says:
Kittens and rainbows I can understand. But ZELDA? Really? Were you born without a soul, or the capacity to feel love and joy?
23/01/2012 at 14:43 Vagrant says:
hallelujah! I thought I was the only one who could spot a terribly designed game!
Also, the era travel mechanic is totally infringing on my game idea. Boo hoo.
23/01/2012 at 19:08 jon_hill987 says:
@Vagrant: You have clearly not played many Zelda games, to My knowledge OoT was the only one with time travel. Others have had [light world/dark world] or even [overworld/shrunk into the flowerbed world] but many don’t have anything of the sort.
23/01/2012 at 13:04 Dominic White says:
This has nothing on Mushroom Kingdom Fusion, which is also gearing up for a major new release. Mario fighting Zerg with Megaman powerups and guns from Quake? Yep.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsD-TPgbpWM
This is a trailer for the previous version. The new one should have another full games worth of content, give or take.
23/01/2012 at 16:23 deadly.by.design says:
Yeah, you beat me to the link…
MKF is great when it works. Even if I tend to install it, play a bit for nostalgia and then never touch it again, a new version would be neat.
23/01/2012 at 18:33 Dominic White says:
Version 0.4 was largely just a show-and-tell. Apparently with 0.5, they’ve focused on making it a more coherent game and optimizing it.
23/01/2012 at 18:34 Megadyptes says:
I tried Mushroom Kingdom Fusion out ages ago and it didn’t feel all that great to me, tons of content but it didn’t all meld well together. Too many cooks etc.
Super Mario Bros Crossover was pure brilliance, though, simple and every character just fit in remarkably well. I’m looking forward to the sequel.
Zelda is awesome, haters gonna hate.
23/01/2012 at 13:15 Josh W says:
For some reason my favourite bit was when it ripped off the “new challenger” thing, perfect fit of course.
23/01/2012 at 13:19 Frosty840 says:
Craig, are you hating on the top-down Zelda games or just the modern snore-fests? I’ll admit the newer games are a bit on the crap side (and any of you who try to defend the endless godawful trudging back and forth over the empty plains and oceans of Hyrule are wrong), but the SNES Zelda game and the various versions on the various Gameboys were all rather lovely.
23/01/2012 at 13:39 Craig Pearson says:
TBH, it’s more that I’m keeping a Kieron RPS tradition alive. I am kinda meh on them, though.
23/01/2012 at 20:19 Cunzy1 1 says:
I just don’t care enough about fairies/bombs and boomerangs. It isn’t that I haven’t tried but I’m just not a fan of LoZ either.
23/01/2012 at 14:36 Nick Ahlhelm says:
I think it would be pretty hard to kill it as its a free on the internet parody. I suppose it wouldn’t stop companies from trying, but I’m guessing their new release partner is all about ignoring cease & desist orders.
23/01/2012 at 14:59 jonfitt says:
It’s interesting to note how similar all of these characters (most of whom I have never seen) are, and how they seem to have changed little through several generations of games. Zelda is still living the same groundhog day nightmare.
The trick seems to be “get ‘em when they’re young, and then ride the wave of nostalgia”. Nintendo clearly have the long-game mapped out better than say, Activision.
23/01/2012 at 15:05 Burning Man says:
“You now have the Mario music in your head”
F**K. IT IS NOW IN MY HEAD.
Why is it not stopping? Also why do I know it so well? I’ve barely played any Mario. *scared*
23/01/2012 at 17:10 Synesthesia says:
that’s-ah probably the hivemind!
23/01/2012 at 16:10 nrvsNRG says:
THIS IS JUST AWESOME
23/01/2012 at 16:27 Synesthesia says:
I will not stand for this communist piracy that is destroying freedom.
23/01/2012 at 17:39 Raiyan 1.0 says:
The creator of this monstrosity is probably a foreign Japanese thief stealing American property.
23/01/2012 at 16:52 Beelzebud says:
My inner child is now freaking out, dying to play that! It’s like a mash-up of my childhood.
23/01/2012 at 20:22 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
It might not be original IP, but at least it is very original copyright infringement.
23/01/2012 at 22:03 MellowKrogoth says:
This awesomeness is proof that current copyright law is deeply wrong. Doing this kind of non-commercial fan work should be allowed within a few years of a franchise being created. Instead, any of the copyright holders of the games in question here could very easily shut down Super Mario Crossover, if they didn’t feel it was free advertising.
Meanwhile, Lord of the Rings fan projects get shut down on a regular basis while Tolkien has been dead and buried for decades.
Meanwhile, idiots sit on their “IP” doing either noting at all, or vastly inferior projects to what the fans come up with.
Wasn’t copyright supposed to encourage the creation of more, better works?
24/01/2012 at 00:31 ulix says:
Luckily, Nintendo rarely, if ever, shuts down projects like this one. The only (of hundreds of popular) fan-made games that I know of, that Nintendo did ideed C&D, was that Pokemon Online thing.
Now of course there’s characters in this from Konami, Capcom & Tecmo (I don’t know where the tank is from), so we’ll see.
24/01/2012 at 01:48 MellowKrogoth says:
Yeah, Nintendo seem to be pretty cool with that and the emulation scene, fortunately. But I’m still disturbed by the fact it all hangs on their whims.
24/01/2012 at 07:33 Thants says:
Wait, was that blaster master? Nice!