By Nelson Schneider - 12/14/14 at 01:21 AM CT
The fan communities of ROM-Hackers who take existing games and transform them into new experiences to be played via emulators have long been at odds with the companies that sell the base games that are the hackers’ medium. Between Square Enix shutting down the likes of “Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes” and “Chrono Resurrection,” and Nintendo ruffling its feathers over the fanslation of “Mother 3,” as well as completely original fangames like “Metroid: SR388,” “The Legend of Zelda: Outlands,” and “Super Mario Bros. X,” to name a few, it’s clear that these companies perceive their games only as products to be controlled and not the cultural phenomena they actually are.
While Nintendo may say that they don’t want to shut-down projects made by fans out of love for their IPs, very few of these projects manage to avoid being hit with cease and desist orders. Nintendo purports to only throw the book at fangame projects that don’t treat the source material with enough respect, but with their own inconsistent quality and the fact that some of these fangames look (or ARE) outright fantastic, it seems more like Nintendo has developed a habit of putting the kibosh on fangame developers who are doing a better job than Nintendo itself! Garbage quality ROM-hacks never generate enough buzz to attract the Big N’s attention.
While Nintendo has been turning a cold shoulder to fangames, they have also taken a page from the fangame playbook in the creation of the upcoming 2015 release, “Mario Maker,” especially now that the build-your-own-‘Mario’-stages game will feature modern (“New Super Mario Bros. U”) graphical asset as well as retro (“Super Mario Bros.”) style and Golden Age (“Super Mario Bros. 3” and “Super Mario World”) style assets.
While I’m sure that the inclusion of a range of art styles has gotten some ‘Mario’ fans excited, I’m concerned that everything that comes out of “Mario Maker” will end up being “New Super Mario Bros.” flavored. The preview video of “Mario Maker” in action doesn’t show several of the older (but still quite fun) mechanics whose absence I have harped-upon in all of my ‘New Super Mario’ reviews (things like sloped ground and the ability to throw shells straight up), which leads me to believe that Nintendo is still content to let Mario & co. stagnate instead of trying to perfect the 2D ‘Mario’ formula in the manner of “Super Mario Bros. X.”
I honestly don’t know what to expect from “Mario Maker.” Based on my experience with user-created content in Sony’s ‘LittleBigPlanet’ franchise and well as my experience with ROM-hacked versions of “Super Mario World,” nothing good will come from leaning on fans to create their own content. At best, we’ll get endless parroting of World 1-1, at worst, we’ll get a bunch of ROM-hack style Rage Platforming like that seen in "Super Mario Bros.: Frustration." I want to believe that Nintendo is capable of 1-up-ing (hurr hurr) “Super Mario Bros. X,” but I don’t think “Mario Maker” is the game to do it.
