Although Nintendo has become better recently when it comes to fair use, they are still sadly behind everyone else and the latest example is the fan game entitled Super Mario Royale. Throughout the years, anytime anyone used any of Nintendo’s Intellectual Properties (aka IPs) for a fan-made game that the creator isn’t looking to make a single penny off of, Nintendo would just go after them. For whatever reason, they are still stuck in the 80s and 90s when it comes to this stuff … and it has driven me a little crazy with how they conduct themselves when it comes to fan-made projects.
The original creator of the fan game is a YouTuber who goes by the name of InfernoPlus. It looked like the original Super Mario Bros., yet took that original platformer and turned it into a survival/battle royal game. Basically, built his own code for the game and used just the assets of the Super Mario Bros. for this web browser game. You could even use a controller (including a PS4 controller) to play! It plays identically to the original, except with 98 other players able to steal your power-ups. Players don’t interact directly with each other but instead, interact with each other through the gameworld itself. In other words, you wouldn’t be able to stomp on your opponent’s head to knock them out of the competition, but if you hit a Koopa shell and it went off towards someone else, that will knock them out. It’s the same thing with power-ups as anyone can hit that block to summon a power mushroom or fire flower, but only one person will obtain it at the beginning. The star is unique though as it is the only way to make you tangible in someone else’s game … meaning if someone has that power up, you can be knocked out of the game. To win, you have to beat Bowser before anyone else and only the top three spots count. Add all these components together and you get a highly challenging and competitive version of Super Mario Bros. that was written from the ground up in html5 and used a java server back-end. The entire game was made and completed in three weeks.
Four days after the game went online though, the creator was hit with a DMCA by Nintendo. Since then, he has replaced the assets with original ones. So, this got me wondering how and why Nintendo goes after these creators when they are just making these games for fun — not for any profit. I know they claim that developers like InferoPlus hurt their IPs, but there is no evidence to back that up. On top of that, it’s a huge missed opportunity for Nintendo to pick these small developers up and pay them for making the game and editing it for their own platforms. A good example of this would be Sega coming to Christian Whitehead and Stealth with the Sonic Mobile games and then Sonic Mania. Knowing that, Nintendo has eased up on YouTubers creating “let’s plays” and it has become better … but hopefully, this will too happen or at least Nintendo will stop issuing so many DMCA’s because it paints a bad image for themselves.
Stay tuned for more, here at GamingLyfe.
