What do you hate to see in fangames?

Thiss topic is basicly about what you hate in fangames. Yeah, I suck at intros to topics, but atleast it sorta explains the topic, if the title didn't.


Well, I hate...

-Bouncing ball movement bosses that aren't even a ball. Especially ones that go too fast.
-A certain midi (Don't have a link, sorry) of the SMB overworld. It's a great midi, but about every fangames around the block uses it if they have that song. I mean, out of all the SMB overworld midis in the world, why always use that certain one?
-Single colored BGs.
-Boss health meters that use MMF's standard gradient healthbars, especially if there's no little box surrounding it. It just rarely fits in.
-Really cheap bosses. (There are more of these in real games, but they're still annoying.)

Built-in TGF/MMF platform movement unless you actually fix it to the point where it's usable

The game-making programs pre-made backgrounds and sprites. They are just crap. just crap.

- Stretched out sprites to make them look really bad.
- An engine where you cannot even touch the enemies or you die.
- Coins or blocks that are in a row and not even spread out evenly.
- Loads of holes and platforms that you can barely jump across.

Fan characters.

-Huge pits with tiny platforms over them. THEY ARE NOT FUN. THEY PROVIDE THE BAD KIND OF CHALLENGE, THE FRUSTRATING KIND.

-Tiles that don't line up properly and look messy

-Out of place characters like Sonic the Hedgehog

-Shoddy level design

-Levels that consist of a long stretch of flat land with the occasional enemy

-Levels that don't even attempt to have eye candy

-Ridiculous difficulty levels. Please, give the bosses less hits and make their attacks do less damage, have less enemies, don't include so many sneaky death traps, don't let Mario die so easily, and for goodness sake, LESS BOTTOMLESS PITS (or better yet, none).

-Repetitive nature. I'd like to see more variety in gameplay style, and stages. And it wouldn't be a bad idea to make your stages a little shorter. Ridiculously long levels only add to the repetitiveness (you've played Sonic Heroes, yes?).

-Poor level design. I don't care how well your fast-looping static engine performs, if the levels aren't any fun to play. Be sure to include fair, varied level layouts for your stages. And it wouldn't hurt to make them look a little better either. I swear, some of you toss your levels together in a few minutes and call it a day. For me, it usually takes a few days to get even half of a single level done, but the end result is usually worth it.

-Poor collision detection. Mario hammers Piranha Plant, Mario dies. Is it really that hard to center a smaller, invisible object above Mario that takes the hits?

-Cheesy dialogue scenes. Especially those where Mario is given lines. I wouldn't have a problem if these scenes were actually well executed - meaning, I would like to see characters with more personality. Heck, in many of the said scenes, the characters have no personality whatsoever. Also, if you insist on using story scenes, it wouldn't hurt to think of better plots with greater depth.

Amen to that

-Mario swearing if it isn't done in good taste or enhances the joke in the scene.

- Adding to the cutscene thing...overdramatic dialogue. Look at the Paper Mario games or MLSS, see how light hearted the dialogue is? That works a lot better than having Mario spout off monologues about vengeance and stuff.

- Also, Mario swearing. Ridiculous.

- I'm not a fan of the darker Mario games personally, but that's just me.

- People, you don't have to do everything in your power to kill Mario, especially within the first few levels. So many fangames I've seen try to throw enemies and difficult traps at you at every turn. Challenge is good, but we really don't need to go into level 1 and immediately be faced with hordes of powerful enemies and bottomless pits. Pace yourself. Save the hard stuff for later levels, and don't go overboard with it even then.

Remember, high difficulty =/= fun. Balance it. Don't make it too easy either, but it's okay to have some ridiculously easy levels at first as long as they're fun. With good level design and some eye candy, you can make even an easy level fun to play through. Especially if you add hidden things, because then players can just blow through the level, but finding 100% of secret items might be more of a challenge.


-Overdramatic plots. This is just another personal preference of mine, but I think a lot of plots people come up with seem really out of place for a Mario game.


-Mismatched graphics, SMRPG + Super Mario World just does not mix well, you need to decide what style you want and stick with it. You can get away with mixing graphics from different games though, especially stuff like Allstars and SMW which mixes fairly well.

-Generic levels. Try to use more creativity, we all expect the usual grassland etc., but throwing in some unique levels wouldn't hurt. I'm really attracted to unique level archetypes, and even something simple can make it unique. Doesn't have to be super elaborate. Just be creative.

Agreed, that it just shows how smart they are and lacks officialness, and I like my games to be as official as possible.

~ The premade bgs from Game Maker. (They just ....... never work.)
~ Crazily impossible games. (Don't get me started on those.)
~ Endless Games (All those are badly made.)
~ Non BG games. (That just makes them look ..... ugly.)
~ Non music games. (We all want to hear somthing for our ears to enjoy.)
~ Having no twists in the game. (That just makes it predictable.)

I'll have to think of more later.

These two would actually be okay (well, not quite the first one) if you have really developed a storyline and it actually ties in with the Mario theme.

Yeah. Superstar Saga had a pretty nice plot with a few twists, but still fit in well.

SPOILERS FOR PAPER MARIO 2
Spoilers:

Paper Mario 2 had a pretty good twist with the treasure behind the Thousand Year Door being a demon and not a treasure at all, and that worked out fine.

I'm talking about stuff like...the plot of the game involves Mario weeping over his dead brother Luigi before setting out to murder Bowser.

...even though that's kinda what happened in the Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom flash movies but somehow they made it work out pretty good, haha.

This post has been edited by Klobber on Jan 23 2006, 05:08 PM

What's wrong with having fan characters? (Unless they are just cheap edits/recolors, then I see what you mean)

-Overused music
-No sfx for 90% of everything
-****ty engine that makes the controlling ANNOYING
-Midis that are pure crap
-Major sprite clashing
-Music clashing (meaning, this level has a midi but the game over theme is in wav)
-Bad framerate
-Impossible bosses/levels
-Horrible sprite edits
-Sprite stretching
-Corny dialog
-Characters that doesnt fit
-NPCs that looks just like the heroes but recolored (Seriously I have seen crap like this in rpg games)

This post has been edited by Naoshi on Jan 23 2006, 05:00 PM

You see that part I put in a spoiler tag? Do that.

And I actually thought the story for RotMK was kinda awkward (what with all the fake Flash animated weeping), but eh.

K, Your screwing with a games universe, in my opinion, you should stay the **** out.
It's not your universe...

Well, yeah, angst storylines don't do well.

Although Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom was good.

The game came out in 2004, there's a certain point where you start assuming anyone who's going to bother to play the game will have already done it...but okay, spoiler tag, will do.

ROTMK was awkward at points and certainly something that probably wouldn't have worked as well in a fangame, but I still found lots of it amusing.

~ This midi being used

(Only download if you want to listen to junk.)

Attached File ( Number of downloads: 20 )
 mariobrosovwrld.mid