04-03-2023, 07:52 AM
Over the years, many fan games have been either thought of, teased, demoed, or even released. Some great, others.. not so great. A lot of potentially good (or really bad) fan games end up being cancelled or postponed for many reasons, so I thought I’d compile mine here, and let others discuss and compile their own cancelled fan games.
I’m gonna be discussing these projects in the chronological order of cancellation. Alright, here we go.
Note: some of the info of these projects is from my (or some some cases, my brother’s) memory only as I didn’t write all of this down or even reached the programming portion of some of this stuff, so take all of this with a grain of salt.
Note 2: I'll probably have to edit this post when I manage to find more images of some of the projects.
Really old Mario Fan Games I never released (Date of Cancelation: 2016):
I don’t have any photos of these on hand and I’m pretty sure these games and their files are lost to time (IIRC). All you have to know is that these used the engine from a Construct 2 Mario tutorial series on YouTube (link to that) and that they were not very good, only containing 1 level at least. One was a attempt at recreating New Super Mario Bros. DS but in more retro’ish style*, and the rest was just me messing around with the program.
*I actually had made a recording of me describing this idea to my father (who IIRC liked the concept), however I won’t be releasing it here as not only do I not have it on me but it’s also a rather personal recording.
Super Mario Super Collection (Date of Cancelation: 2016):
A Mario fan game that was supposed to be a expanded version of Super Mario All-Stars, containing more games and using the artstyle of the SMW ROM hack “SMW Redrawn” by icegoom (though it wasn’t always the case as I was basically changing the artstyle every once in a while). It ended up just being a dumping ground for features, Power Ups and objects that were not needed for that purpose. This is perhaps the only one of my very early fan games library that I showed any pictures of before the creation thread (on the MFGG discord), though that was well after it was canned.
By the way, one of the photos shows a Test Level based off AgentTer’s own Mario fan game, which was one of the inspirations for this project.
The funny thing is, there is now currently another Super Mario All-Stars expansion in development called Super Mario All-Stars Deluxe*, in the same software no less
Hopefully that ends up avoiding the fate of this project.
*By the way, there is a thread about it on the forums, but most of the development showcases/progress is in the MFGG discord server.
Untitled Super Mario Fan Game/Super Mario Kingdoms: (Date of Cancelation: 2016):
Not to be confused with Super Mario Kingdom (2012) by Gatete, this was a fan game idea that eventually morphed into Super Mario Generations, which I will discuss later. Like Super Collection, this fan game used the artstyle of “SMW Redrawn”, and was meant to be play similar to Mario 64/Mario Odyssey, and feature a new sidekick for Mario (IIRC it was a bird of sorts).
I drew big paper doodles* of some ideas, like incorporating Luigi, Peach and Toad as playable characters with their own stats, ones that even affect how certain Power Ups work (e.g. The Fire Flower had different fireball stats of speed, gravity, and bounce height depending on the character). I also did doodles* of revamped versions of Power Ups like the Bee Mushroom (which would’ve combined elements from Mario Galaxy and the Bee transformation from Banjo-Kazooie), as well as new Power Ups such as “Gnome Mario” (unfortunately I can’t recall what it did).
*I don’t currently have those doodles on hand so you’re gonna take my word for it.
Untitled Basic Mario Time Travel Test: (Date of Cancelation: 2016):
Not to be confused with a much later test I did involving Time Travel in Super Mario World, this was just a simple test for a Mario fan game which would’ve incorporated the Time Travel mechanic from Sonic CD. It was drawn in a very rough style, and I believe I still have the project file on my Google Drive. The test featured a Mario World-esc checkpoint that when triggered took Mario to the “Bad Future“, where all of the background objects would be more roughed and scratched up*.
*It somewhat resembled the other dimension theme from Super Mario Bros. Dimensions.
Angry Birds X (Date of Cancelation: 2017):
Angry Birds is probably one of my favourite game franchises besides Mario and others, so it’s not a surprise to know that I’ve wanted to make an fan game of the series for a long time. The fan game was meant to have a unique artstyle which would’ve been a combination of the Pre-Chrome/Chrome* artstyle and the Toons* artstyle, and be pretty much a “dream Angry Birds game”, if you will. The only thing I had made for the game were sprites, mockups and doodles**, I had never programmed a single thing for this project.
That said, the project has gotten somewhat of a revival recently, in the form of Angry Birds Slingshot Frenzy, which had not only released a demo of sorts on a GitHub site but is currently in development in a new engine to be more accurate to the AB Classic engine.
*Pre-Chrome is a name given by fans to the artstyle of Angry Birds games from 2009 to 2011, Chrome is the artstyle used ever since the release of Angry Birds Chrome and Angry Birds Rio, and Toons is the artstyle used for not only Angry Birds Toons but also for most of the “cinematic” animations for various Angry Birds games ever since 2012, with it also being used in-game later on for games such as Friends, 2, Star Wars II, Stella, Transformers, and others.
**Once again I don’t currently have those doodles on hand so you’re gonna take my word for it.
MarioCraft (Date of Cancelation: 2017):
A simple mashup of 2D Mario and Minecraft. I don’t have anything else to say here other than it was inspired by LevelUP’s series of the same name, and featured an attempt at creating online multiplayer (I think that portion crashed and burned though*).
*That said I did manage to make a much better attempt at it later on, in the form of a basic Super Mario Bros. 2 multiplayer test.
Untitled Waluigi Joke Game; Early Plotline (Date of Restarting: 2017):
I’ll discuss the proper of this game later on, but for now I’d like to talk about it’s early plotline.
Waluigi’s story is pretty much the same, Ostrich’s is a bit different, and Wario’s probably didn’t even exist at this point.
Ostrich’s story would’ve been having him being kicked out of MFGG for a brief period for mass @everyone’ing the MFGG discord (which was based on an actual event that I caused and I honestly regret doing so). In this version the MFGG is portrayed in a rather bad light, and I think I made the early plotline describe it as a “cult” of sorts, with them worshiping Mario*, who by the way is evil in this version. I believe I was a bit upset when coming up with this plotline, so that might explain the really strange elements.
*I actually made a sprite of Mario for this version but I unfortunately don’t have it anymore. (..There is a pattern emerging, I swear..) Just know that it was one of Neweegees’s custom Mario sprites, but with the 3DS era of Mario & Luigi shading applied to it, and not in a good manner.
I don’t remember anything else from this version, so let’s move on.
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe Redux (Date of Cancelation: 2017):
This was a attempt at making a mashup of SMBDX on the Game Boy Color and the All-Stars version of SMB1, but it didn’t do a good job of doing either. The artstyle was based off I think one of the most popular Mario fan games of all time (at least according to the MFGG main site), “Super Mario Bros. DDX”. In a first of of the fan games on this list, I actually released 2 demos for people to try out. It went pretty poorly. Not only did the game not have the features from Deluxe (at least not in the released demos), but it also didn’t look very good or play very well. It also didn’t help that the fan game was a remake, and remaking official Mario games was not the best idea considering all those DMCA takedowns.
Those reasons, along with me wanting to focus more on Super Mario Generations, were the final nails in the coffin for this project.
Untitled Mini Sonic Project (Date of Cancelation: 2019):
I really wanted to make a Sonic fan game at some point, thus causing this project to start. The first idea was that it would’ve taken levels from other Sonic fan games and give them the “Mania“ treatment. That idea received a quite mixed response from Sonic fan developers (specifically ones from Sonic Retro). Some liked the idea, others thought it was lazy.
The game’s artstyle was what would happen if you took Sonic Pocket Adventure on the Neo Geo Pocket and gave it the Sonic Mania colors, shading, and smoothness(?).
I had recreated Green Hill Act 1 as a test level for making sure the engine felt right. At a later point I decided to scrap the “use levels from other fan games” and instead make my own. The only ones I thought of before canning the project were a Green Hill-like Zone and a Zone that was based off the scrapped Wood Zone from Sonic 2 combined with the Fairy Godmother’s potion factory seen in Shrek 2 (yes I’m serious). The Green Hill-like Zone was the only one I actually put in the game (other than the test level) before canning it.
The project was scrapped due to both a lack of motivation, burnout from working on this and Super Mario Generations at the same time, and the whole “laziness” vibe the project was emitting according to Sonic Retro users.
With that said, recently I have decided to revive the idea again in a different manner, but I’ll get to that later..
Somari: the Genesis Remaster (Date of Cancelation: 2019):
This was an attempt at recreating the infamous Sonic the Hedgehog NES bootleg “Somari” in the style of Sonic 1, with the level designs and music* changed to match the bootleg.
*The music was taken from Lu9’s Somari Genesis soundtrack on his YouTube channel, and I did give him credit.
With that said, I was actually planning on making it have a different story; It would’ve went something like this:
Mario and Luigi arrive at Professor E. Gadd’s lab for a experiment. While checking the tests, Luigi accidentally turns on a machine which sucks Mario into a simulation of Green Hill Zone. While there he bumps into Sonic and accidentally collects the 7th Chaos Emerald in the process. Dr. Eggman arrives, steals the remaining 6 (not noticed the missing 7th) and Sonic chases after him. Mario is then told by E. Gadd (through a communicator of sorts) that he’ll have to beat the ‘Game’ and collect all the remaining Emeralds in order to escape. Cue gameplay.
Due to both a lack of motivation and technical issues (the plugin I was using to make the Sonic movement wasn’t ported over to Construct 3, and other solutions weren’t there at the time), I scrapped the project.
Untitled Mario 2D Artwork-based Fan Game (Date of Cancelation: 2019):
This was more or less a tech demo for a possible Mario game using the artstyle of the 2D artwork, which was made in a sort of dumping ground project file I labeled “All Mario Engine*”. The tech demo included some basic Mario stuff, plus having the camera zoom out like in Rayman Origins/Legends, as well as having a mechanic of going from the foreground into the background similar to VB Wario Land on the Virtual Boy. I was planning on possibly expanding this as a follow up to Super Mario Generations, but I ended up scrapping the idea due to it being too ambitious for one guy to do. This fan game may or may not have used elements from Super Mario Kingdoms, such as the idea of Luigi, Peach and Toad being playable, but honestly I don’t remember anything else.
*Not to be confused with another “All Mario Engine” that was made for another software.
Untitled Waluigi Joke Game (Date of Cancelation: 2020):
Now, this was a weird one. Inspired by Super Mario 64: Really Good Edition, it was basically one of those jokes games were it looked bad but played decently. It would’ve featured 3 plotlines for it’s 3 playable characters (I don’t remember of I’d shared that on the forums so I’ll describe it now):
Waluigi’s story: Waluigi wakes up in his house to find that Wario is gone and a letter was received from the mail. It was a letter from Masahiro Sakurai saying that he won’t be featured as a fighter in Smash Ultimate and was again relegated to an Assist Trophy. Enraged, Waluigi sets off on a quest to complain to Nintendo’s HQ about the ordeal.
Ostrich’s story: So, remember that one joke comic I had made which featured my Avatar (the Ostrich with the blue shoes) stealing the golden statue of Thunder Dragon? Well in this game he’d do that again. He’d enter the outlands of MFGG, where most of the staff would talk about stuff. In order to get into the place he’d posses MorsGames and attempt to pass himself as him. After equipping a Vanish Cap he attempts to take out of a glass container, but triggers the alarm, causing the MFGG staff to come rushing over and getting him caught before he’d managed to steal it.
After getting pushed by PedigreeTheHusky/SonicProject (the joke was that he is a guard dog), he accidentally launches not only himself but also a MFGG Time Capsule towards the Nintendo HQ. Ostrich lands a few miles away from the outlands, and Waluigi runs into him. After pulling him out from the ground Waluigi attempts to continue on his way when Ostrich realises what he’d done and then tells Waluigi the consequences of his actions. Waluigi doesn’t care in the slightest, but decided to let him tag along since the two are heading towards the same location, that being the HQ of Nintendo.
Wario’s story: So, before Waluigi wakes up Wario is watching TV. His stomach starts to rumble, leading him to declare “It’s Pizza Time!“, only for him to find out he is low on cash. Remembering that his and Waluigi’s rent is due as well, he tries to come up a way to make some quick money fast with the least effort. The TV then shows a Bloomberg report about Nintendo’s current stocks and financial reports, leading him to decide to rob the company of their money. He then leaves the house, and goes off to Nintendo’s HQ.
After a little bit progressing his story, he eventually ends up in a city a long while away from Nintendo, and having ran of out money he’d be willing to cough up, he tries to raise some extra dough by creating a bootleg Mario game (cue Vinesauce jokes). Waluigi and Ostrich end up finding him, and they all team up to go to Nintendo HQ for their own selfish interests.
The gameplay would’ve incorporated elements from Banjo-Kazooie/Banjo-Tooie, and in general be a somewhat decent collect-a-thon and open-world joke game. I cancelled the project due to it becoming too ambitious, and looking back on it I honestly feel that the plot would’ve gotten dated fast.
Waluigi Joke Game Sequel/New Super MFGG Bros. Concept Revival (Date of Cancelation: 2020):
Considering the Waluigi Joke Game itself was canned, the fate of this one is a pretty forgone conclusion. The game was not only mean’t to be a sequel to the Waluigi Joke Game, but was also an attempt to revive the MFGG community fan project New Super MFGG Bros. (it was a Mario like game where you’d play as various MFGG members, and it kept restarting development but never really going anywhere).
The playable characters (or at least the ones I can remember at the top of my head) were Ostrich and.. SonicKade2048/Kirb*; Ostrich would’ve kept his moveset from the Waluigi Joke Game, while Kirb was to a have a more Sonic the Hedgehog styled moveset with the Spin Dash and other such moves.
The only other thing I can remember about it was that the story would’ve been taking place during the events of the Untitled 2D Artwork-based Fan Game, and that it would’ve involved the evil inverted versions of certain MFGGers** causing mayhem, but that’s really it.
*Kirb, if you are somehow reading this, let me just say that I thought it was a good idea at the time and I have no idea how well it would’ve went had I went forward with it.
**I honestly don’t remember much of the event that happened but IIRC VinnyVideo and possibly other staff members were copied by other MFGG users who made their avatars and name resembled the copied members but their profiles pictures were color inverted and their names were changed as well.
Paper Mario: The Well-Crafted Journey (Date of Cancelation: 2020):
This was a Paper Mario joke game conceptualised by my brother JC/GreatDestinationTracks3 and programmed by me. It was to have been a fan-made sequel to Paper Mario Color Splash, and would’ve played similar to the N64 and GameCube entries of the series, and include some elements from later installments.
The story featured Mario & Peach returning to the Mushroom Kingdom (after the events on Prism Island), only to discover a odd doorway. A Toad (who is supposed to be Feist T. from Paper Mario) tells them about how the door leads into a strange and scary world, and that one time a Toad went inside it and did not come back, so ever since that incident, they blocked it off and forbid anybody from going in it. Later on, Peach is kidnapped by a buff Koopa-esc creature (named Trayvorx) and taken to the doorway, leading Mario to rush after. While in the weird world, Mario would meet odd characters (including a punk turtle, a dragon with a big nose, a crazy slug, a red boomerang bat, an anthropormorpic hammer, a butterfly with big hands, a water droplet, a rabbit with robot arms, a robot that shoots tea, coffee and milk, and a yellow vacuum cleaner) who’d join in his party.
Trayvorx was said to be a former elite Koopa Troopa who experienced some mutations of sorts after he was banished into that world for attempting to overthrow Bowser. Trayvorx plans on using Peach’s happiness to fuel a machine in order to take his ultimate revenge on Bowser and his minions. Meanwhile, Bowser lands into into the weird world himself, after getting bamboozled by a TV game show offer(?).
The game’s plot was also supposed to take place during the Untitled Waluigi Joke Game, with some sequences causing certain events to unfold in either game. An example was that after beating the first boss, a Evil Cow was to have fallen and crush the boss. The cow itself came from the first boss of the Untitled Waluigi Joke Game, and came down after Waluigi managed to defeat it. Another sequence was to have Paper Mario pull a switch which didn’t seem to have done anything, only for the camera to pan over to Waluigi, Ostrich, and Wario, and showing that a trap door was activated, leading all 3 to fall through separate pipes. Other examples exist but if I’d list them I’d be way too long so I’ll move on now.
The game was canned due to multiple reasons, those being technical issues (I had no idea how to properly program a turn-based JRPG), JC losing interest in making the project (it was because he became multi-fandom at that time), and that it was becoming too ambitious.
Super Mario: The Talking Mushroom (Date of Cancelation: 2021):
This was another joke game idea from JC/GreatDestinationTracks3, created long after The Well-Crafted Journey got canned. It would’ve been a typical Mario platformer, but with the gimmick that Mario can’t collect any Mushrooms at all. The story would’ve went as follows:
Mario is at Peach’s Castle when Bowser launches a surprise attack. Bowser knocks Mario far far away, leading him to hit his head on a boulder, losing most of his memory (such as his moveset). The only thing he remembers is that he has to save Peach and stop Bowser. The one-off banjo-playing boy from that one episode of Jimmy Neutron would’ve taught him the typical Mario moveset along with new moves from his Internet Cafe. He’d also tell Mario that’d he is a talking Mushroom and thus shouldn’t eat any. After which Mario sets off to stop Bowser.
The gimmick of not collecting Mushrooms means that Mario only had 1 hit point, and getting a Fire Flower, for instance, would only give him 2 hit points, and if he’d get hit he’d turn back into Small Mario, so it would’ve worked more like SMB1 in the damage department.
The game was only a concept, and did not have any art or programming done for it, though when thinking about how it would’ve looked I always thought that Mario would use his Mario Land 2 sprite.
Super Mario Generations (Date of Cancelation: 2022):
Alright, here it is, the thing you’ve probably seen coming. Possibly the fan game I was most hoping to actually finish and release, but alas, it never did. They are many reasons; creative burnout, lack of proper Mario knowledge needed for a project like this, coding issues, bloated unnecessary stuff that was hogging priorities, and possibly other reasons I can’t currently remember.
I had been working on this fan game ever since 2015/2016, so it has been in production for a really long time. You could even say it was stuck in development hell. One of the things that happened as a result of this long development is that the musician for the fan game, GamerInGeorgia, left the project. I did respect his decision, and looking back he really dodged a real sinking ship there.
The last time I updated the was this demo: https://mfgg.net/index.php?act=resdb&par...2&id=37236
On June 29, 2022, I attempted to possibly try restarting the project from scratch using the Unity game engine, in order to properly tackle the Sonic Generations inspired gameplay; Classic Mario would’ve been in 2D.5, while Modern Mario would’ve been in 3D. However, due to technical issues regarding my old Mac OS running a version of Unity that couldn’t get the visual scripting tool to work, I instead had to try and use C# to code everything, and after a few frustration inducing minutes, I eventually decided it wasn’t worth the hassle to revive this project*.
*Note, I have actually used the newer version of Unity and it’s visual scripting tool alongside C# on a more higher end computer, and that was a fairly pleasant process.
With that said, I do honestly hope that one day someone else could revive this project and probably do it’s concept justice (not as a Sonic Generations mod though, that has already been done).
BONUS ENTRY 1: Super Mario Flashback: Really Good Edition; Arguably Better Version (On Hold):
So, this is meant to be the 2nd release of Really Good Edition, which will feature some more features from the real SMF, including but not limited to;
Certain abilities (like the down slide), the Super Star Power Up, various sprite work tweaks, some quality of life improvement, and worlds from early demos of Super Mario Flashback, such as Yoshi’s Island, Cool Cool Mountain (which was accessible by pressing the C key in the star selection), and others.
Currently progress of this on hold due to me prioritising more important projects such as Mario’s Rather Unusual Trilogy and Angry Birds Slingshot Frenzy, which are fan games I am currently working on and would like to release (update in the case of the first entry of the trilogy, Mario’s slightly Unusual Boss Rush). It is also on hold due to some odd technical issues; for some reason the game lags a lot in the program editor, and at the moment I don’t feel like trying to see what the root cause of that is.
Now, I don’t really feel like cancelling this project at the moment; it’ll really depend on whether or not I’ve released the entirety of Mario’s Rather Unusual Trilogy, and if I’ll have the free time to clean up the fluff in this project.
With that said, I find it kinda ironic that a fan game meant to parody Super Mario Flashback, which is currently on hold due to technical issues regarding Game Maker Studio*, has now ended up in a similar situation of being on hold due to, albeit different, technical issues.
*Mors did a tweet as well as a Discord message stating this as one of the main reasons.
Anyway, that was pretty much that.
Random note I felt like putting here:
For some reason I really liked the idea of games taking place during other games, and that may have been the reason I created a “Stop ’n Swap” thread in the Developer Discussion forum (I might’ve wanted to implement such a feature for the Untitled Waluigi Joke Game, The Well-Crafted Journey, the Waluigi Joke Game Sequel, and the Untitled 2D Artwork-based Fan Game)
BONUS ENTRY 2 (Reviving Various Ideas and Concepts):
For the third entry of Mario’s Rather Unusual Trilogy (Mario’s VERY Unusual Final Frontier), I thought of reviving various elements from all of the previously mentioned Mario fan games. The game’s main artstyle and most of the code was brought over from Super Mario Generations, optimised and cleaned up to now fit my higher standards.
The idea of playing as Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad, along with the Mario Odyssey styled gameplay from Super Mario Kingdoms and the 2D Artwork-based Fan Game was finally put to good use here, Wario, Waluigi and Ostrich* are playable with most of their moveset from the Untitled Waluigi Joke Game ported over (with some tweaks), Yeth** is a playable character (an concept originally from Somari: the Genesis Remaster), a world based off the concept of scrapped ideas/content is planned as the 2nd to last world before the final boss, a bonus world with a boss based on a idea from The Talking Mushroom is also planned, and a lot of other ideas I’m currently planning on implementing in a manner that is doable and not too ambitious.
*Ostrich and Yeth are bonus characters with currently no impact on the plot
**Yeth is a character from a ROM hack of Sonic the Hedgehog 1 of the same name which became somewhat of a meme thanks to YouTuber AntDude’s coverage of it.
Oh, and remember that Mini-Sonic project I brought up, saying how I’m reviving the idea again in a different manner? Well now I’m currently prototyping it as a possible spin-off entry of Mario’s Rather Unusual Trilogy called Sonic’s Foray into Random Zones, with the same basic concept of the Rather Unusual Trilogy, that being crossing over worlds and fighting bosses from different media. That project I’m still on the fence about though.
With all that said, that is all of the cancelled fan game projects I can currently remember at the top of my head. Now I guess it’s other folk’s turn to post their own canned projects.
I’m gonna be discussing these projects in the chronological order of cancellation. Alright, here we go.
Note: some of the info of these projects is from my (or some some cases, my brother’s) memory only as I didn’t write all of this down or even reached the programming portion of some of this stuff, so take all of this with a grain of salt.
Note 2: I'll probably have to edit this post when I manage to find more images of some of the projects.
Really old Mario Fan Games I never released (Date of Cancelation: 2016):
I don’t have any photos of these on hand and I’m pretty sure these games and their files are lost to time (IIRC). All you have to know is that these used the engine from a Construct 2 Mario tutorial series on YouTube (link to that) and that they were not very good, only containing 1 level at least. One was a attempt at recreating New Super Mario Bros. DS but in more retro’ish style*, and the rest was just me messing around with the program.
*I actually had made a recording of me describing this idea to my father (who IIRC liked the concept), however I won’t be releasing it here as not only do I not have it on me but it’s also a rather personal recording.
Super Mario Super Collection (Date of Cancelation: 2016):
A Mario fan game that was supposed to be a expanded version of Super Mario All-Stars, containing more games and using the artstyle of the SMW ROM hack “SMW Redrawn” by icegoom (though it wasn’t always the case as I was basically changing the artstyle every once in a while). It ended up just being a dumping ground for features, Power Ups and objects that were not needed for that purpose. This is perhaps the only one of my very early fan games library that I showed any pictures of before the creation thread (on the MFGG discord), though that was well after it was canned.
By the way, one of the photos shows a Test Level based off AgentTer’s own Mario fan game, which was one of the inspirations for this project.
The funny thing is, there is now currently another Super Mario All-Stars expansion in development called Super Mario All-Stars Deluxe*, in the same software no less
Hopefully that ends up avoiding the fate of this project.
*By the way, there is a thread about it on the forums, but most of the development showcases/progress is in the MFGG discord server.
Untitled Super Mario Fan Game/Super Mario Kingdoms: (Date of Cancelation: 2016):
Not to be confused with Super Mario Kingdom (2012) by Gatete, this was a fan game idea that eventually morphed into Super Mario Generations, which I will discuss later. Like Super Collection, this fan game used the artstyle of “SMW Redrawn”, and was meant to be play similar to Mario 64/Mario Odyssey, and feature a new sidekick for Mario (IIRC it was a bird of sorts).
I drew big paper doodles* of some ideas, like incorporating Luigi, Peach and Toad as playable characters with their own stats, ones that even affect how certain Power Ups work (e.g. The Fire Flower had different fireball stats of speed, gravity, and bounce height depending on the character). I also did doodles* of revamped versions of Power Ups like the Bee Mushroom (which would’ve combined elements from Mario Galaxy and the Bee transformation from Banjo-Kazooie), as well as new Power Ups such as “Gnome Mario” (unfortunately I can’t recall what it did).
*I don’t currently have those doodles on hand so you’re gonna take my word for it.
Untitled Basic Mario Time Travel Test: (Date of Cancelation: 2016):
Not to be confused with a much later test I did involving Time Travel in Super Mario World, this was just a simple test for a Mario fan game which would’ve incorporated the Time Travel mechanic from Sonic CD. It was drawn in a very rough style, and I believe I still have the project file on my Google Drive. The test featured a Mario World-esc checkpoint that when triggered took Mario to the “Bad Future“, where all of the background objects would be more roughed and scratched up*.
*It somewhat resembled the other dimension theme from Super Mario Bros. Dimensions.
Angry Birds X (Date of Cancelation: 2017):
Angry Birds is probably one of my favourite game franchises besides Mario and others, so it’s not a surprise to know that I’ve wanted to make an fan game of the series for a long time. The fan game was meant to have a unique artstyle which would’ve been a combination of the Pre-Chrome/Chrome* artstyle and the Toons* artstyle, and be pretty much a “dream Angry Birds game”, if you will. The only thing I had made for the game were sprites, mockups and doodles**, I had never programmed a single thing for this project.
That said, the project has gotten somewhat of a revival recently, in the form of Angry Birds Slingshot Frenzy, which had not only released a demo of sorts on a GitHub site but is currently in development in a new engine to be more accurate to the AB Classic engine.
*Pre-Chrome is a name given by fans to the artstyle of Angry Birds games from 2009 to 2011, Chrome is the artstyle used ever since the release of Angry Birds Chrome and Angry Birds Rio, and Toons is the artstyle used for not only Angry Birds Toons but also for most of the “cinematic” animations for various Angry Birds games ever since 2012, with it also being used in-game later on for games such as Friends, 2, Star Wars II, Stella, Transformers, and others.
**Once again I don’t currently have those doodles on hand so you’re gonna take my word for it.
MarioCraft (Date of Cancelation: 2017):
A simple mashup of 2D Mario and Minecraft. I don’t have anything else to say here other than it was inspired by LevelUP’s series of the same name, and featured an attempt at creating online multiplayer (I think that portion crashed and burned though*).
*That said I did manage to make a much better attempt at it later on, in the form of a basic Super Mario Bros. 2 multiplayer test.
Untitled Waluigi Joke Game; Early Plotline (Date of Restarting: 2017):
I’ll discuss the proper of this game later on, but for now I’d like to talk about it’s early plotline.
Waluigi’s story is pretty much the same, Ostrich’s is a bit different, and Wario’s probably didn’t even exist at this point.
Ostrich’s story would’ve been having him being kicked out of MFGG for a brief period for mass @everyone’ing the MFGG discord (which was based on an actual event that I caused and I honestly regret doing so). In this version the MFGG is portrayed in a rather bad light, and I think I made the early plotline describe it as a “cult” of sorts, with them worshiping Mario*, who by the way is evil in this version. I believe I was a bit upset when coming up with this plotline, so that might explain the really strange elements.
*I actually made a sprite of Mario for this version but I unfortunately don’t have it anymore. (..There is a pattern emerging, I swear..) Just know that it was one of Neweegees’s custom Mario sprites, but with the 3DS era of Mario & Luigi shading applied to it, and not in a good manner.
I don’t remember anything else from this version, so let’s move on.
Super Mario Bros. Deluxe Redux (Date of Cancelation: 2017):
This was a attempt at making a mashup of SMBDX on the Game Boy Color and the All-Stars version of SMB1, but it didn’t do a good job of doing either. The artstyle was based off I think one of the most popular Mario fan games of all time (at least according to the MFGG main site), “Super Mario Bros. DDX”. In a first of of the fan games on this list, I actually released 2 demos for people to try out. It went pretty poorly. Not only did the game not have the features from Deluxe (at least not in the released demos), but it also didn’t look very good or play very well. It also didn’t help that the fan game was a remake, and remaking official Mario games was not the best idea considering all those DMCA takedowns.
Those reasons, along with me wanting to focus more on Super Mario Generations, were the final nails in the coffin for this project.
Untitled Mini Sonic Project (Date of Cancelation: 2019):
I really wanted to make a Sonic fan game at some point, thus causing this project to start. The first idea was that it would’ve taken levels from other Sonic fan games and give them the “Mania“ treatment. That idea received a quite mixed response from Sonic fan developers (specifically ones from Sonic Retro). Some liked the idea, others thought it was lazy.
The game’s artstyle was what would happen if you took Sonic Pocket Adventure on the Neo Geo Pocket and gave it the Sonic Mania colors, shading, and smoothness(?).
I had recreated Green Hill Act 1 as a test level for making sure the engine felt right. At a later point I decided to scrap the “use levels from other fan games” and instead make my own. The only ones I thought of before canning the project were a Green Hill-like Zone and a Zone that was based off the scrapped Wood Zone from Sonic 2 combined with the Fairy Godmother’s potion factory seen in Shrek 2 (yes I’m serious). The Green Hill-like Zone was the only one I actually put in the game (other than the test level) before canning it.
The project was scrapped due to both a lack of motivation, burnout from working on this and Super Mario Generations at the same time, and the whole “laziness” vibe the project was emitting according to Sonic Retro users.
With that said, recently I have decided to revive the idea again in a different manner, but I’ll get to that later..
Somari: the Genesis Remaster (Date of Cancelation: 2019):
This was an attempt at recreating the infamous Sonic the Hedgehog NES bootleg “Somari” in the style of Sonic 1, with the level designs and music* changed to match the bootleg.
*The music was taken from Lu9’s Somari Genesis soundtrack on his YouTube channel, and I did give him credit.
With that said, I was actually planning on making it have a different story; It would’ve went something like this:
Mario and Luigi arrive at Professor E. Gadd’s lab for a experiment. While checking the tests, Luigi accidentally turns on a machine which sucks Mario into a simulation of Green Hill Zone. While there he bumps into Sonic and accidentally collects the 7th Chaos Emerald in the process. Dr. Eggman arrives, steals the remaining 6 (not noticed the missing 7th) and Sonic chases after him. Mario is then told by E. Gadd (through a communicator of sorts) that he’ll have to beat the ‘Game’ and collect all the remaining Emeralds in order to escape. Cue gameplay.
Due to both a lack of motivation and technical issues (the plugin I was using to make the Sonic movement wasn’t ported over to Construct 3, and other solutions weren’t there at the time), I scrapped the project.
Untitled Mario 2D Artwork-based Fan Game (Date of Cancelation: 2019):
This was more or less a tech demo for a possible Mario game using the artstyle of the 2D artwork, which was made in a sort of dumping ground project file I labeled “All Mario Engine*”. The tech demo included some basic Mario stuff, plus having the camera zoom out like in Rayman Origins/Legends, as well as having a mechanic of going from the foreground into the background similar to VB Wario Land on the Virtual Boy. I was planning on possibly expanding this as a follow up to Super Mario Generations, but I ended up scrapping the idea due to it being too ambitious for one guy to do. This fan game may or may not have used elements from Super Mario Kingdoms, such as the idea of Luigi, Peach and Toad being playable, but honestly I don’t remember anything else.
*Not to be confused with another “All Mario Engine” that was made for another software.
Untitled Waluigi Joke Game (Date of Cancelation: 2020):
Now, this was a weird one. Inspired by Super Mario 64: Really Good Edition, it was basically one of those jokes games were it looked bad but played decently. It would’ve featured 3 plotlines for it’s 3 playable characters (I don’t remember of I’d shared that on the forums so I’ll describe it now):
Waluigi’s story: Waluigi wakes up in his house to find that Wario is gone and a letter was received from the mail. It was a letter from Masahiro Sakurai saying that he won’t be featured as a fighter in Smash Ultimate and was again relegated to an Assist Trophy. Enraged, Waluigi sets off on a quest to complain to Nintendo’s HQ about the ordeal.
Ostrich’s story: So, remember that one joke comic I had made which featured my Avatar (the Ostrich with the blue shoes) stealing the golden statue of Thunder Dragon? Well in this game he’d do that again. He’d enter the outlands of MFGG, where most of the staff would talk about stuff. In order to get into the place he’d posses MorsGames and attempt to pass himself as him. After equipping a Vanish Cap he attempts to take out of a glass container, but triggers the alarm, causing the MFGG staff to come rushing over and getting him caught before he’d managed to steal it.
After getting pushed by PedigreeTheHusky/SonicProject (the joke was that he is a guard dog), he accidentally launches not only himself but also a MFGG Time Capsule towards the Nintendo HQ. Ostrich lands a few miles away from the outlands, and Waluigi runs into him. After pulling him out from the ground Waluigi attempts to continue on his way when Ostrich realises what he’d done and then tells Waluigi the consequences of his actions. Waluigi doesn’t care in the slightest, but decided to let him tag along since the two are heading towards the same location, that being the HQ of Nintendo.
Wario’s story: So, before Waluigi wakes up Wario is watching TV. His stomach starts to rumble, leading him to declare “It’s Pizza Time!“, only for him to find out he is low on cash. Remembering that his and Waluigi’s rent is due as well, he tries to come up a way to make some quick money fast with the least effort. The TV then shows a Bloomberg report about Nintendo’s current stocks and financial reports, leading him to decide to rob the company of their money. He then leaves the house, and goes off to Nintendo’s HQ.
After a little bit progressing his story, he eventually ends up in a city a long while away from Nintendo, and having ran of out money he’d be willing to cough up, he tries to raise some extra dough by creating a bootleg Mario game (cue Vinesauce jokes). Waluigi and Ostrich end up finding him, and they all team up to go to Nintendo HQ for their own selfish interests.
The gameplay would’ve incorporated elements from Banjo-Kazooie/Banjo-Tooie, and in general be a somewhat decent collect-a-thon and open-world joke game. I cancelled the project due to it becoming too ambitious, and looking back on it I honestly feel that the plot would’ve gotten dated fast.
Waluigi Joke Game Sequel/New Super MFGG Bros. Concept Revival (Date of Cancelation: 2020):
Considering the Waluigi Joke Game itself was canned, the fate of this one is a pretty forgone conclusion. The game was not only mean’t to be a sequel to the Waluigi Joke Game, but was also an attempt to revive the MFGG community fan project New Super MFGG Bros. (it was a Mario like game where you’d play as various MFGG members, and it kept restarting development but never really going anywhere).
The playable characters (or at least the ones I can remember at the top of my head) were Ostrich and.. SonicKade2048/Kirb*; Ostrich would’ve kept his moveset from the Waluigi Joke Game, while Kirb was to a have a more Sonic the Hedgehog styled moveset with the Spin Dash and other such moves.
The only other thing I can remember about it was that the story would’ve been taking place during the events of the Untitled 2D Artwork-based Fan Game, and that it would’ve involved the evil inverted versions of certain MFGGers** causing mayhem, but that’s really it.
*Kirb, if you are somehow reading this, let me just say that I thought it was a good idea at the time and I have no idea how well it would’ve went had I went forward with it.
**I honestly don’t remember much of the event that happened but IIRC VinnyVideo and possibly other staff members were copied by other MFGG users who made their avatars and name resembled the copied members but their profiles pictures were color inverted and their names were changed as well.
Paper Mario: The Well-Crafted Journey (Date of Cancelation: 2020):
This was a Paper Mario joke game conceptualised by my brother JC/GreatDestinationTracks3 and programmed by me. It was to have been a fan-made sequel to Paper Mario Color Splash, and would’ve played similar to the N64 and GameCube entries of the series, and include some elements from later installments.
The story featured Mario & Peach returning to the Mushroom Kingdom (after the events on Prism Island), only to discover a odd doorway. A Toad (who is supposed to be Feist T. from Paper Mario) tells them about how the door leads into a strange and scary world, and that one time a Toad went inside it and did not come back, so ever since that incident, they blocked it off and forbid anybody from going in it. Later on, Peach is kidnapped by a buff Koopa-esc creature (named Trayvorx) and taken to the doorway, leading Mario to rush after. While in the weird world, Mario would meet odd characters (including a punk turtle, a dragon with a big nose, a crazy slug, a red boomerang bat, an anthropormorpic hammer, a butterfly with big hands, a water droplet, a rabbit with robot arms, a robot that shoots tea, coffee and milk, and a yellow vacuum cleaner) who’d join in his party.
Trayvorx was said to be a former elite Koopa Troopa who experienced some mutations of sorts after he was banished into that world for attempting to overthrow Bowser. Trayvorx plans on using Peach’s happiness to fuel a machine in order to take his ultimate revenge on Bowser and his minions. Meanwhile, Bowser lands into into the weird world himself, after getting bamboozled by a TV game show offer(?).
The game’s plot was also supposed to take place during the Untitled Waluigi Joke Game, with some sequences causing certain events to unfold in either game. An example was that after beating the first boss, a Evil Cow was to have fallen and crush the boss. The cow itself came from the first boss of the Untitled Waluigi Joke Game, and came down after Waluigi managed to defeat it. Another sequence was to have Paper Mario pull a switch which didn’t seem to have done anything, only for the camera to pan over to Waluigi, Ostrich, and Wario, and showing that a trap door was activated, leading all 3 to fall through separate pipes. Other examples exist but if I’d list them I’d be way too long so I’ll move on now.
The game was canned due to multiple reasons, those being technical issues (I had no idea how to properly program a turn-based JRPG), JC losing interest in making the project (it was because he became multi-fandom at that time), and that it was becoming too ambitious.
Super Mario: The Talking Mushroom (Date of Cancelation: 2021):
This was another joke game idea from JC/GreatDestinationTracks3, created long after The Well-Crafted Journey got canned. It would’ve been a typical Mario platformer, but with the gimmick that Mario can’t collect any Mushrooms at all. The story would’ve went as follows:
Mario is at Peach’s Castle when Bowser launches a surprise attack. Bowser knocks Mario far far away, leading him to hit his head on a boulder, losing most of his memory (such as his moveset). The only thing he remembers is that he has to save Peach and stop Bowser. The one-off banjo-playing boy from that one episode of Jimmy Neutron would’ve taught him the typical Mario moveset along with new moves from his Internet Cafe. He’d also tell Mario that’d he is a talking Mushroom and thus shouldn’t eat any. After which Mario sets off to stop Bowser.
The gimmick of not collecting Mushrooms means that Mario only had 1 hit point, and getting a Fire Flower, for instance, would only give him 2 hit points, and if he’d get hit he’d turn back into Small Mario, so it would’ve worked more like SMB1 in the damage department.
The game was only a concept, and did not have any art or programming done for it, though when thinking about how it would’ve looked I always thought that Mario would use his Mario Land 2 sprite.
Super Mario Generations (Date of Cancelation: 2022):
Alright, here it is, the thing you’ve probably seen coming. Possibly the fan game I was most hoping to actually finish and release, but alas, it never did. They are many reasons; creative burnout, lack of proper Mario knowledge needed for a project like this, coding issues, bloated unnecessary stuff that was hogging priorities, and possibly other reasons I can’t currently remember.
I had been working on this fan game ever since 2015/2016, so it has been in production for a really long time. You could even say it was stuck in development hell. One of the things that happened as a result of this long development is that the musician for the fan game, GamerInGeorgia, left the project. I did respect his decision, and looking back he really dodged a real sinking ship there.
The last time I updated the was this demo: https://mfgg.net/index.php?act=resdb&par...2&id=37236
On June 29, 2022, I attempted to possibly try restarting the project from scratch using the Unity game engine, in order to properly tackle the Sonic Generations inspired gameplay; Classic Mario would’ve been in 2D.5, while Modern Mario would’ve been in 3D. However, due to technical issues regarding my old Mac OS running a version of Unity that couldn’t get the visual scripting tool to work, I instead had to try and use C# to code everything, and after a few frustration inducing minutes, I eventually decided it wasn’t worth the hassle to revive this project*.
*Note, I have actually used the newer version of Unity and it’s visual scripting tool alongside C# on a more higher end computer, and that was a fairly pleasant process.
With that said, I do honestly hope that one day someone else could revive this project and probably do it’s concept justice (not as a Sonic Generations mod though, that has already been done).
BONUS ENTRY 1: Super Mario Flashback: Really Good Edition; Arguably Better Version (On Hold):
So, this is meant to be the 2nd release of Really Good Edition, which will feature some more features from the real SMF, including but not limited to;
Certain abilities (like the down slide), the Super Star Power Up, various sprite work tweaks, some quality of life improvement, and worlds from early demos of Super Mario Flashback, such as Yoshi’s Island, Cool Cool Mountain (which was accessible by pressing the C key in the star selection), and others.
Currently progress of this on hold due to me prioritising more important projects such as Mario’s Rather Unusual Trilogy and Angry Birds Slingshot Frenzy, which are fan games I am currently working on and would like to release (update in the case of the first entry of the trilogy, Mario’s slightly Unusual Boss Rush). It is also on hold due to some odd technical issues; for some reason the game lags a lot in the program editor, and at the moment I don’t feel like trying to see what the root cause of that is.
Now, I don’t really feel like cancelling this project at the moment; it’ll really depend on whether or not I’ve released the entirety of Mario’s Rather Unusual Trilogy, and if I’ll have the free time to clean up the fluff in this project.
With that said, I find it kinda ironic that a fan game meant to parody Super Mario Flashback, which is currently on hold due to technical issues regarding Game Maker Studio*, has now ended up in a similar situation of being on hold due to, albeit different, technical issues.
*Mors did a tweet as well as a Discord message stating this as one of the main reasons.
Anyway, that was pretty much that.
Random note I felt like putting here:
For some reason I really liked the idea of games taking place during other games, and that may have been the reason I created a “Stop ’n Swap” thread in the Developer Discussion forum (I might’ve wanted to implement such a feature for the Untitled Waluigi Joke Game, The Well-Crafted Journey, the Waluigi Joke Game Sequel, and the Untitled 2D Artwork-based Fan Game)
BONUS ENTRY 2 (Reviving Various Ideas and Concepts):
For the third entry of Mario’s Rather Unusual Trilogy (Mario’s VERY Unusual Final Frontier), I thought of reviving various elements from all of the previously mentioned Mario fan games. The game’s main artstyle and most of the code was brought over from Super Mario Generations, optimised and cleaned up to now fit my higher standards.
The idea of playing as Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad, along with the Mario Odyssey styled gameplay from Super Mario Kingdoms and the 2D Artwork-based Fan Game was finally put to good use here, Wario, Waluigi and Ostrich* are playable with most of their moveset from the Untitled Waluigi Joke Game ported over (with some tweaks), Yeth** is a playable character (an concept originally from Somari: the Genesis Remaster), a world based off the concept of scrapped ideas/content is planned as the 2nd to last world before the final boss, a bonus world with a boss based on a idea from The Talking Mushroom is also planned, and a lot of other ideas I’m currently planning on implementing in a manner that is doable and not too ambitious.
*Ostrich and Yeth are bonus characters with currently no impact on the plot
**Yeth is a character from a ROM hack of Sonic the Hedgehog 1 of the same name which became somewhat of a meme thanks to YouTuber AntDude’s coverage of it.
Oh, and remember that Mini-Sonic project I brought up, saying how I’m reviving the idea again in a different manner? Well now I’m currently prototyping it as a possible spin-off entry of Mario’s Rather Unusual Trilogy called Sonic’s Foray into Random Zones, with the same basic concept of the Rather Unusual Trilogy, that being crossing over worlds and fighting bosses from different media. That project I’m still on the fence about though.
With all that said, that is all of the cancelled fan game projects I can currently remember at the top of my head. Now I guess it’s other folk’s turn to post their own canned projects.
Other socials?:
Sonic Retro
NCFC
YouTube
List of projects currently in development* (pictures of logos will probably be added later):
Mario's Rather Unusual Trilogy (Mario's slightly unusual Boss Rush, Mario vs. Some Unusual Foes, Mario's VERY Unusual Final Frontier)
Sonic's Foray into Random/Unusual Zones (spin-off of Unusual Trilogy)
Angry Birds Slingshot Frenzy
Super Mario Flashback: Really Good Edition
*assuming I don't abruptly cancel them
Sonic Retro
NCFC
YouTube
List of projects currently in development* (pictures of logos will probably be added later):
Mario's Rather Unusual Trilogy (Mario's slightly unusual Boss Rush, Mario vs. Some Unusual Foes, Mario's VERY Unusual Final Frontier)
Sonic's Foray into Random/Unusual Zones (spin-off of Unusual Trilogy)
Angry Birds Slingshot Frenzy
Super Mario Flashback: Really Good Edition
*assuming I don't abruptly cancel them