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The world's best counterfeit games

The fan-made games that put the devs to shame

Words: David Houghton, GamesRadar UK

A big part of gaming culture went missing a while ago. Back in the '90s, professional, studio-developed games were only one part of the bigger picture. Thanks to lower development cost and the proliferation of capable home gaming computers like the Commodore 64 and Amiga, anyone with a bit of knowledge could get a game made and distributed, amongst their mates at least. The homebrew scene was huge, and top-notch games spewed out of bedrooms worldwide.Some even got picked up by big-name publishers and went stratospheric. See Worms as your example of that.

But as the industry went mega-budget, that sort of thing died down. Thankfully though, it’s now beginning to see a resurgence as the internet provides us with all manner of simple development tools and unlimited distribution. Thus, gamers are making games again, and a lot of them are taking their favourite franchises as inspiration. Completely unlicensed and unendorsed by the people in charge, remakes and new sequels are popping up all over the ‘net, and while a lot of them are obviously as fun as herpes, some of them are excellent. These are some of those excellent ones, our current favourite pick of the internet’s guerilla games.

Halo Zero

Ever wondered what Halo would have been like had it been released in 1992? No, us neither, but it probably would have been something like this. This side-scrolling little beauty set before the first game is essentially Halo: SNES Edition, but don't let its dimensional limitations put you off. While it's arguably a little simple in terms of gameplay, it's slickly made and plays beautifully, thanks to some intuitive and well-implimented keyboard and mouse control. And well, just look at it. As old school 2D graphics go, it's more than just a little drool-worthy.

 

Get hold of it here at the developer's personal site.


 
19 Comments
Order Comments: Newest First | Oldest First
wrathful  - 11 months 12 days ago 
wow .. that looks really boring
adertysohck  - 11 months 9 days ago 
- Comment removed by Community
Reported
X3ni92  - 11 months 9 days ago 
Interested in Metroid 2 Remake, but thats about it, sadly...
cobracommander0  - 11 months 9 days ago 
How can you leave out this game!!!!
http://www.barnettcollege.com/index2.htm
Indiana Jones point and click adventure remake!
Seriously. I thought this was a decent site. I signed up just to fix this egregious error!!!
RedOutlive10  - 9 months 15 days ago 
Black Mesa mod for HL2 indeed looks jaw dropping, better than many games out there (even if it's simply remaking an older game with a new engine), really promising stuff. By the way there's another trailer for it that looks even better.

And goddamn that Chrono Trigger 3D remake looked outstanding, too bad it got cancelled. C'est la vie.
GRwarrior  - 7 months 25 days ago 
oh my god that Chrono Resurrection was fantastic.
onesweetdream11  - 4 months 16 days ago 
square, so foolish in their age! they already knew that chrono trigger was good enough to resell without much content upgrade...but WTF! Tragedy is the right word.
r3ap3r  - 4 months 16 days ago 
wat would be pretty cool if they did a whole redone half life game with dlc packs and all.
baggins  - 4 months 16 days ago 
Why the heck didn't Square wait for those guys to finish and then say, "Sell us the game for $250,000 and we'll forget that we could totally pwn you in court"?

At least that way it would get released, Square would make money, the fans would rejoice and the developers could at least take solace in their hard work not being wasted.
reroxas  - 4 months 6 days ago 
Man I loved Chrono Trigger and I totally agree with baggins although 259k isn't alot a million would have been more than fair
reroxas  - 4 months 6 days ago 
Oops I mean 250 k sorry
w1n5t0n  - 4 months 3 days ago 
That Chrono Resurrection looked insane. They should have just changed some names of characters and places and told Square where to put their legal team. Especially after even the work it would have taken to make what they had, it kinda sucks that square didn't at least offer them jobs.
reyalejandro13  - 3 months 29 days ago 
I would love to play all of these games, but my computer sucks. However, I must say, one fan game I liked that wasn't on this list was the Pokemon Fire Red Hack that changed the game to be the Generation 2 games. It's pretty redundant with HG/SS coming out soon, but it was still fun.
Maximillion  - 3 months 27 days ago 
Anyone who is reading this you are fucking nerds man,seriously who goes here...only joking (NOT!)
Lavos  - 3 months 25 days ago 
Goddammit You now I'm mad about Chrono:Resurrection.
ready4war  - 3 months 15 days ago 
the halo game looks cool but its fake
seifer93  - 3 months 3 days ago 
Chrono Resurrection looks orgasmic (I just finished beating Chrono Trigger again,) I would have loved to play that. The rest of the games look really good too, I am about to start getting them all, with the exception of Sonic. I don't trust any sonic games anymore, fan made or not.
Felixthecat  - 3 months 1 day ago 
I want the Halo one!
noobastar  - 2 months 10 days ago 
Im both disappointed and angry that Chrono Resurrection never make it. :(

The evil wizards at squareenix just want to milk the classic franchise with more 'ports' and dull remakes.
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