Mario is the most recognizable video game character in the world. There’s almost no competition, either. This short, mustachioed, hat- and overalls-wearing plumber has spread across the globe through games, TV shows, movies, comics, cereal, toys, clothing, and basically every other possible form of media and merchandise. He’s many people’s first exposure to gaming, and despite being in dozens upon dozens of games, rarely appears in a game that isn’t at least good if not amazing. He revolutionized the platformer, did it again with the shift to 3D, and has maintained the crown as the peak of both creativity and satisfying controls for both genres ever since. He’s even spawned an entire cast of friends and foes that have gotten their own games and series.
For all the great Mario games out there, fans will always want more. That, or they want to evolve and expand on concepts Mario only touched on, or maybe never even tried at all. Nintendo even gave us tools to create our own Mario platforming adventures in Super Mario Maker and the sequel, but long before those titles hit fans were crafting their own fan-made games.
Note: Mario fan games are not officially approved by Nintendo and therefore within their legal rights to take down. Fan games that use copyrighted material, such as Mario characters, cannot be sold or used to make any profit. If you are looking for more information on how to find, download, or even make your own ROM hacks, check out the resources found in Mario Fan Games Galaxy.
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Psycho Waluigi
Way before his strange, meme-fueled rise in popularity, hardcore Mario fans saw the potential in the lanky, mysterious side character known as Waluigi. One fan even went far enough to create an entire 2D platforming adventure starring Luigi’s counterpart titled Psycho Waluigi. This game isn’t just a standard Mario-style platformer, only with Waluigi swapped in instead of Mario, but is more comparable to how the Wario games added a new mechanic to the character in addition to running and jumping like normal. The game has a near-perfect Super Mario World pixel art style, and could easily pass as a game that came out on the Super Nintendo. It’s a full, complete adventure, too, and considered perhaps the best Mario fan game ever made, despite not starring a typical protagonist.
Psycho Waluigi introduces a new power to Waluigi to set him apart from the rest of the cast in the Mushroom Kingdom. In this interpretation of the character, Waluigi has psychic powers he can use to grab objects and enemies in the level and launch them as projectiles. In a way, it’s a bit like Kirby’s powers of inhaling things and spitting them out, but with Mario levels and physics. Set in a new kingdom called Unconcia, you will guide Waluigi through more than 30 stages, each with a high score to try and beat. If you manage to beat the high score and earn the gold crown on each level, you can gain access to even more secret, more challenging stages. This fan game is a full on adventure that matches Nintendo’s own output in quality, design, art, and length. Psycho Waluigi is a must-play.
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Super Mario Bros. Crossover
Mario, and his franchises, have done crossovers with nearly every major franchise at this point between the Smash series and other titles. However, there’s never been a crossover where other characters have entered into Mario’s home turf of pure 2D platforming. Those have always been reserved for the plumber brothers, Peach, and Toad for the most part. A fan wondered what it would look like if they not only brought in other characters into a Mario game, but kept their mechanics as faithful to the original as possible. Super Mario Bros. Crossover was originally launched as a flash game and was updated and expanded to include new characters, levels, and even graphics over a few years. It was intended to get a final update for WebGL, but was unfortunately canceled. Thankfully, the game lives on with alternative players.
Take the original Super Mario Bros. game from the NES, but add a character-select screen that includes Link, Mega Man, Samus, Simon Belmont, Ryu, and other iconic video game characters. Each one you pick plays exactly like they do in their respective games, such as Link attacking with his sword and Mega Man shooting yellow pellets. The goal, stages, enemies, and everything else are all identical to the original game, but the way you go through them with different mechanics feels like a fully fresh experience. Stages play far differently when you can whip enemies ahead of you as Simon Belmont, or climb and jump off walls as Ryu Hyabusa. It’s a blast to play as each character and go through all eight worlds and face Bowser at the end.
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Super Mario Bros. Dimensions
Many, many fan games like to call back to the old 8-bit Mario days. Not only because that is a somewhat easier style to recreate, but also because it was home to some of the best official games in the series that inspired people to create games in the first place. What sets the best 8-bit fan games apart is how they evolve that formula, though. Any game can just remix levels, but the best introduce new mechanics, such as with Super Mario Bros. Dimensions. Taking the appearance of Super Mario Bros. 3, this fan game is a fully complete game that adds a new mechanic in a meaningful way, but also a level of polish a lot of fan games lack.
The twist in Super Mario Bros. Dimensions is, obviously, the dimensions mechanic. While platforming through the stages, at any point you are able to switch dimensions at the push of a button that will alter the appearance and layout of that stage. This is fun to play with on its own, but will also make you think about how you approach different obstacles in a completely new way to a typical Mario game, or even any 2D platformer really. There are over 50 levels to complete, hundreds of collectibles, secret levels to unlock, easy and hard modes, and a nice little story. You can play as either Mario, Luigi, Toad, or even Toadette. The game also creates some new characters, like Maria and Luise, cousins of the Mario brothers.
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Super Mario Brothers Odyssey
This fan got at least one thing right when making his fan game, which is the title. Super Mario Brothers Odyssey, at least the first chapter anyway, was released in 2014, long before Nintendo would take on the same subtitle. That coincidence aside, this game is nothing like the real Super Mario Odyssey, but instead is a much more ambitious reboot of sorts of the original Super Mario Bros, with further chapters intended to do the same for subsequent Mario games in the series. Unfortunately, future chapters were canceled by the creator. Regardless of future content, this first chapter is still a complete package worth playing. Even if you’ve played the original game to death, or perhaps especially if you have, the changes and improvements this fan game provides are all done with the love and care that you would hope.
Super Mario Brothers Odyssey’s most major addition to the original game is the inclusion of actual cutscenes. The story is the same, Mario and Luigi are trying to save the Mushroom Kingdom from Bowser, but these cute little scenes help tell that story within the game itself instead of the manual. The whole game is given the 16-bit, Super Mario World, graphical look, with plenty of brand new sprites and levels thrown in, plus some power ups and items that were only introduced in later Mario games. You can play as Mario and Luigi, but also unlock additional characters, alternative skins, and secret levels.
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