Do fan games look a lot more impressive nowadays or what?

[CM30]

Maybe I'm just a bit old now, but I remember when fan works used to look... a bit more rough around the edges so to speak. Cut off tiles, weirdly set out backgrounds and objects, out of place music, simple attack patterns. Kind of like this:

Now on the other hand... works seem to look a whole lot more professional than they used to. Paper Mario 3d Land may well compete with Thousand Year Door or Sticker Star on production values alone, and it definitely outdoes the latter in gameplay:

And Mario 64 HD... wow:

So yeah, anyone else impressed how far fan games and game mods have come in the last few years or so?

 

[benoit489]

Those kids making the crappy fan games went to college and learned a thing or two about cohesive art themes. I'd be more inclined to touch Paper Mario 3D Land or SM64 HD than one of the millions of Super Mario World hacks.

 

[CM30]

That's kind of harsh, given how much work we've been spending on Mario's Nightmare Quest recently. But yeah, the likes of Mario Infinity and Universe were a bit rough around the edges...

 

[benoit489]

Sorry, no offense meant, there are just a ton of those hacks out there. Seems like SMW is one of the most popular games to work on.

 

[CM30]

You can blame Lunar Magic and how easy it is to use for that. Same goes for similar engines like Super Mario Bros X.