Remember when you were sitting in Arby's with your folks, as a kid, and you'd get an idea? You know the one we're talking about: What if you mixed some of that sugar with some of that yellow-packet stuff, with a little ketchup, maybe some tangy Arby's sauce, and some of your Coke? A concoction would be born. It might be disgusting. It might be awesome. You won't know if you don't try.
The same thing happens to video game designers, sometimes. They'll see an engine they like, maybe a TV show they're fans of, hell, might just be a silly line of dialogue or even another video game -- and they'll mash 'em up. This time, with no parents to tell them not to, and a healthy dose of social awkwardness, the results are sometimes spectacular... ly bad. We've catalogued a few of these Frankenstein monsters for you here. Gaze and be amazed.
EarthBound as Tower Defense
Great news! The 16-year wait for somebody to turn EarthBound into a so-so tower-defense game is finally over! Okay, so the game itself is kinda mediocre -- its three levels (one per difficulty) are bland and its unit-upgrade system is predictable -- but it's a digital gingerbread house held together with love for the source material that serves as thick gobs of nostalgic frosting (Mmm, tasty nostalgia.) Stranger still, the original game's main character, Ness, is mysteriously absent from this homebrew, edged out by Mr. Saturns and Foppies banding together to prevent the dreaded Starmen from invading Eagleland. Gamers' undying passion for this dusty classic is indisputable -- good luck with those online petitions to get another sequel made, chums -- but this is clearly one of the most endearing/saddest homages to the SNES game. Interesting though it may be, sometimes the past is best left where it lies.
Download the EarthBound Tower Defense Game from Fileplanet
The Simpsons as Doom
Yes, that's right! You didn't know that Springfield's first family were converted into bloodthirsty demons and renders of the mortal flesh, did you!? Well, they were -- and all their weirdo neighbors and fellow townsfolk along with them. While this isn't exactly a game-to-game conversion (to be sure, there have been several games based on The Simpsons), it made our list from its sheer bizarreness, and the fact that it's actually kinda fun to play. Controls are pretty much the same as in the original Doom, although the weapons, enemies, and levels themselves are obviously vastly different. Not to mention the sound bites -- Ned Flanders, one of the game's tougher enemies -- shrieks "Whoa Nellie!" when you finally shove your last rocket-diddily up his yellow Christian butt and send him to the big animation library in the sky.
Download the Doom Simpsons Mod from Fileplanet
Left 4 Dead as an NES action-shooter
The whole 8-bit fixation prevalent in gaming lately is a little annoying and insincere, but this re-imagining of Valve's co-op, zombie-apocalypse FPS as an old-school NES game, by Eric Ruth is so lovingly made that we're willing to look the other way. The nearest approximation to the type of Nintendo game this emulates is Die Hard, though it's far better than that movie tie-in. (Don't tell Bruce Willis we said so.) All five maps of all four campaigns have been recreated here, and damned if the game isn't still a blast to play. They say the mark of a great song is that it still stands up when recreated in another style (like when Willie Nelson did a reggaeton cover of GG Allin's "Eat My Diarrhea" in the outtakes for Countryman) , so the same must hold true of games.
Download the Left 4 Dead NES game from FilePlanet.
Legend of Zelda/BattleToads/Contra/Mega Man/Castlevania/Monkey Island as FPSes
A lot of people like using the WASD keys, it seems, and not a gamepad to control their favorite console heroes. Popular action-adventure titles like the Legend of Zelda, and even beat-em-ups and platformers have been converted into the FPS format, with mixed success. The engine of choice for most of these seems to have been the Half-Life 2 engine, which did an awesome job of recreating the original town in Monkey Island (as a joke only -- it ain't playable), although a few earlier ones used the Doom or Unreal engines. While some of these conversions seem to make logical sense (Mega Man and Contra, for example, feature characters who primarily shoot stuff), none of them turned out to be particularly playable, as you can see from the video below. Is it just us, or is BattleToads just a little bit weird?
Crysis as Mechwarrior
Those of you familiar with the Battletech tabletop game will know that it has been converted into several video games over the years, perhaps the most successful being a first-person "sim" of the game's combat, with the player in the role of the pilot of a 60-foot high gigantic combat robot, called a 'Mech. These "Mechwarriors" go around and shoot each other with energy weapons and try not to overheat the fusion reactors powering their robots, and the whole thing is really fun and a perfect fit for a killer FPS engine like Crysis. This is one conversion that's actually worth playing -- and it looks damn good for a fan-made, too. Just keep in mind that it's online multiplayer only, so if you are forever alone, you'll just have to go back to playing against your cat in the tabletop version.
Download the Mechwarrior Crysis mod from FilePlanet.
We don't know about you, but we're pretty starving after tirelessly researching all these instances of gaming chocolate getting mixed up with fattening mod peanut butter. We're gonna bounce and head to the kitchen to mash up a Reese's peanut butter cup with some zesty salsa we just remembered we had.
Spy Guy says: Yup, that's a pretty whacked out bunch of mods right there, even by our standards. What's the freakiest mod you've ever played?
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