Super Mario Metroid Mega Contravania Gaiden Bros. 2

So a little while back a guy named Jay Pavlina (alias Exploding Rabbit) created Super Mario Bros. Crossover, a fan-made replica of the classic sidescroller that lets players plow through the Mushroom Kingdom as Mario… or Mega Man or Samus Aran or Simon Belmont. Earlier this month he launched version 2.0 of Super Mario Bros. Crossover, and it is bigger and better in just about every conceivable way. See for yourself:

Click here to play it, or here to read up on the development of the game from the man himself. In-depth impressions after the jump!

While I never got around to spending much time with the original Super Mario Bros. Crossover, after checking out the trailer I had to dig into the sequel. The roster of playable characters is awesome:

Mario
Luigi
Link
Samus Aran
Simon Belmont
Mega Man
Bass
Bill Rizer (a.k.a. “Contra Guy”)
Ryu Hayabusa (Ninja Gaiden)
SOPHIA III (the bizarrely-named tank vehicle from Blaster Master)

Looks like the guy from Adventure Island will be spending another night at home weeping into his Hot Pockets.

It’s basically a who’s who of NES superstars, and they all come with the control quirks, powers and abilities of their respective games. Wall-crawling, hovering, double-jumps, crazy weapons… if the character you’re playing as can do it in their respective game, they’re doing it in SMBC2. Mega Man and Link play like Mega Man and Link, not like Mario cosplaying them. So what was an incredibly familiar game becomes a fresh new experience. There’s something geekily surreal about blasting koopas with missiles and then morph balling out of harm’s way.

Samus normally hunts the most dangerous aliens in the universe. Now she's going to hunt frowny mushroom-men.

Jay really did his homework in this respect. Super mushrooms, fire flowers and starmen still exist and serve a purpose, even if you’re not playing as an Italian plumber. Rather than making Ryu double in size or start throwing bouncing fireballs, the classic Mario power-ups grant the other characters their signature weapons and abilities. Link can get bombs, a bow and arrow, and shoot beams from his sword, Simon can upgrade the range on his whip or pick up classic Castlevania sub-weapons like the boomerang or holy water. Even after all this, it’s not like Mario and Luigi are chopped liver--they’re still the only ones that can defeat enemies by jumping on them, and two of the few characters that can bust bricks with their heads… not to mention the brothers have superior jumping abilities.

Link taking it upon himself to introduce Mushroom Kingdom inhabitants to the concept of stabbing the hard way.

I was taken aback by the level of customization available in SMBC2. Each character has a handful of alternate looks you can cycle through by pressing the x key on the character select screen. Most are variations based on different games in the characters’ respective series, but some are a little more creative. One of Link’s alternate costumes is Dark Link, Samus can prance around the Mushroom Kingdom in her “Justin Bailey” onesie, and Bass can be swapped out for Dr. Wily.

One of Bill Rizer's alternate costumes is the popular character Other Contra Guy.

And of course, the customization doesn’t come close to ending there. The levels’ graphics can mimic either the original or Super Mario All-Stars versions of Super Mario Bros.. Or Super Mario Bros. 3, or Super Mario Land 2… which can either be colorized, or gray-scale, in true GameBoy fashion. You can give the same treatment to the baddies as well. The music is even more varied, featuring tunes from all of the above-mentioned Mario titles, plus music from each playable character’s respective games, plus original music! Jay estimates there are around 800 different pieces of music tucked away in SMBC2. 800. Eight hundo. That’s an eight and two zeroes. Damn.

No matter what universe he's in, Mega Man has the best jumping animation ever.

Jay really strongly recommends playing this with a gamepad, but as a guy who spent a lot of time in his high school AutoCAD class screwing around playing the non-crossed over Super Mario Bros. on an emulator, I can safely say that SMBC2 plays pretty damn well on a standard keyboard too. For a game cooked up essentially by one guy, the controls are sharp and spot-on.

Crossovers are nothing new. Regardless of whether they’re awesome (King Kong vs Godzilla, Marvel vs Capcom) or awful (Alien vs Predator, Mortal Kombat vs DC), it’s easy to write them off as a quick, lazy way to grab people’s attention. Super Mario Bros. Crossover slaps that assumption aside, using the mash-up to reexamine a classic, present a fresh new gameplay experience, and pay tribute to a bygone era of gaming in just about the coolest, classiest way possible. SMBC2 fits right in with Abobo’s Big Adventure as a must-play for any fan of 8 and 16-bit gaming.