Fangasm: Super Smash Land

Super Smash Land
1-4 Players
System: PC
Developer: Dan Fornace
Year of Release: 2011
Download Here

The concept of the "demake" has always fascinated me. Trying to take a modern-er game and scaling it back to a previous generation can be an interesting experiment, both as a final product and as a learning process for the creator. Dan Fornace took his love for Super Smash Bros and trimmed it down to what is essentially an original Game Boy game. And it works.

I haven't had the chance to play this with a controller yet, and personally have never been great at using a keyboard for, what boils down to, platforming games. So it felt a little bit harder than it probably actually is to me. That being said, it is still delightful that this guy was able to make Mario, Link, Kirby and Pikachu all play well and feel like their N64 counterparts while remaining true to Game Boy limitations. I don't know if on the programming side this game would run on an original Game Boy, but it's close enough that it isn't important to me.

The game is broken up into Arcade, Endless and Versus modes, the latter two of which are pretty self-explanatory. Arcade is like a shorter version of the N64 entry's Arcade mode, with three one and one battles, a multi-man match and a final battle against, at first Mega Man. In my two attempts I haven't managed to beat him yet, but I know he's unlockable, and Vaporeon is as well which is a neat addition. Mega Man seems like a really good character (or at least his AI is) and I briefly saw Vaporeon in the Saffron City stage. You can really tell this game was a labor of love.

This is a small game, and there isn't much more to say. It's a free, gimmicky (not used in a negative way) demake of an excellent game that manages to play really well despite the "hardware limitations". I highly recommend checking this out if you have some time to kill, any fan of the Super Smash Bros series, and Nintendo overall, really owes it to themselves to check this out.