#4 - Super Mario Bros. Crossover

Here we have a modded version of the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES. These guys at "Exploding Rabbit" (for the record that's kind of a fucking stupid name) have taken a bunch of old school characters from NES era gaming, and compiled them into this game. This could have easily been cheesy, or stupid, but instead these guys have managed to put together a pretty sweet game. Now, if you've played all the way through the original Mario Bros. there's not really a whole lot to be had here with the exception of playing these classic levels with all of these different characters. Maybe it had been a while since I've played the original, or maybe this game just has some quality level design that makes these levels fun no matter how old they get. Either way I had one hell of a good time playing this game! My favorite part of the game is that these aren't just skins, slapped over the game. Each of these characters plays as they would in their original game. Not only that, but they upgrade as they would in their game. So Mega Man or Link, they don't just grow in size as they grab a mushroom, or just launch fireballs when they grab a flower, although Mega Man does now that I think about it. So when you're playing as Simon his whip upgrades to the morningstar, and when you're playing as link, his sword launches the laser sword deals that his sword used to back in the day, despite how little sense it made now or then. The biggest problem with this is that if you don't like how a character played in their game, you're not going to like them in this. Simon for example is no less of a pain in the ass to handle here than he was in Castlevania. They include mario in the game too, but where's the fun in that? I pretty much almost never used him unless I was at a part that I needed his specific jumps for.

Now Maybe the grass is always greener but I kind of wished they had included some levels from a few other games. I mean how much fun would it be to fight Mega Man Bosses as Mario, or to fight Death in Castlevania as Link. Now maybe this would have fucked with the formula that I already mentioned about the Mario levels being timeless, but who knows? That's my point. This game could have been boosted from fun flash game, to epic crossover. But on the other hand it could have been taken from a successful project to an extremely over-zealous failure. Who knows... Despite that, Exploding Rabbit has managed to make a pretty kick ass game here, despite that stupid name (let's face it, I've heard much worse.) If you want to check this game out for yourself, you can play it here. and I highly recommend doing so!

That's right, Mega Man's going to get it on with Mario's lady!