Nostalgic Elation — the Super Mario Crossover 67
eldavojohn writes "Sure, they're stepping all over proprietary rights and copyright, but something must be said about the amount of bliss-filled nostalgia inside Exploding Rabbit's Super Mario Crossover. If the plumbers never really did it for you, you can now kill those goombas as Link, Mega Man, Samus, Simon Belmont, or Contra's Bill. Goodbye jumping and spitting; hello slicing, whipping, and shooting. Is this one of the early firsts in the new genre of video game mashups?"
That ain't nothin' (Score:4, Insightful)
There's ton's of copyright infringing material all over the net. Check out Super Mario Bros Z [videogamelan.com] or a simple google search [google.com]. Most of them are well done, but I'm sure no-one asked Nintendo or Sega if it was okay.
Cute, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Video-game mashups (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh... Super Smash Bros.?
Re:Inaccuracies (Score:2, Insightful)
And are you really complaining that he didn't go out of his way to implement a BUG? World -1 is an interesting bug, sure, but it adds uh, let's see, JACK EFFING CRAP to the actual game.
And this is why Flash... (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is why Flash will always have a place on the web. There's so much attention these days on Flash as a video player (and how HTML5 will make it all obsolete) but Flash's real strength lies in the ability to produce things like this - there's no (good) alternative. The same goes for all the millions of animations out there (Newgrounds, Homestarrunner etc).
Re:That ain't nothin' (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not asking for perfect. Just reasonable copyright laws that are beneficial to society and allow the copyright holders to make a reasonable living providing us with art to enjoy, which includes video games Mr. Ebert.
Super Mario Brothers is easily 20 years old. What this gentlemen did is pretty damn fantastic in my book and a wonderful example of what a creative person can do availing himself of preexisting content and combining them in interesting ways.
To say it is in society's best interest to provide Nintendo and Sega the legal entitlements to prevent the creation of such art after two decades of profit earning opportunities is simply crazy.
It simply cannot be in society's best interest, EVER, to lock up all the art, technology, content, etc. for decades, and centuries, and possibly forever. A civilization based upon that would crumble into a worthless pathetic division of the people who control the IP and the slaves who work for them.
My suggestion of a maximum of 10 years for any copyright, and maintaining the current 20 years for patents (getting rid of software/business method patents) might be a bit too much for some, but for fuck's sake... do those cocksuckers over at Disney really need to keep their legal entitlements 70 years afterwards? 200 years afterwards?
The fact you say, "in a perfect world" as if it is some unattainable dream like riding a purple Unicorn is saddening. No, it should be a dream, or a wish upon a star, but just a reasonable legal foundation for a society that this kind of art be allowed to flourish.
Re:And this is why Flash... (Score:3, Insightful)
The short of it is that Adobe's tools for Flash creation are simply outstanding. HTML5/Canvas/JS is like Assembly compared to it. I doubt very seriously that Super Mario Crossover couldn't be implemented in them, but who would want to?