A couple of years ago I came across a flash-based browser game called Super Mario Bros. Crossover. It was a clever game set to the original Mario Bros. in which you could instead play with other characters like Samus, Link, Mega Man, and others. Several friends and coworkers spent some time playing and it was quite good.
This week creator Jay Pavlina (with help from Zach Robison on graphics and Mathew Valente on music) released version 2.0, and it looks great. The game boasts new environments and levels, great sound effects and tons of music, new characters and loads of character skins, and is playable now on Exploding Rabbit. This version sports better graphics and animations and is more akin to a Super Nintendo game. The returning characters look great and even better than they previously did. Levels and environments seem to come from each of the 2D Mario games from the NES and SNES, and it even looks like there are some custom ones.
If licensing and copyright issues weren’t a problem, I’d love to see this game as a downloadable title on PSN or XBLA, or at least playable with a controller.
I’m about to give it a try, you should too.
Sources: NeoGAF, Exploding Rabbit