Fan game
A fan game is a game created by the fans of a work that is explicitly based on said work. In terms of the Super Smash Bros. series, this results in low-budget, non-profit games that imitate the gameplay of the series, while simultaneously allowing fans to create and use characters and stages without having to hack an existing game. Fan games tend to be created in environments such as Flash, Game Maker, or Clickteam Fusion, and as a result, are almost exclusively sprite-based. Although the games often feature trademarked characters, settings, music, and other such aspects, their lower production values and presentation causes fan games to be considered legal under parody or fair use laws.
Projects that involve modification of the actual games in the series can be considered a type of fan game, such projects like Project+, Smash Remix, Brawl-, and HewDraw Remix. Such projects, however, are often considered separate from typical fan games, due to their differing development; fan games are generally created from scratch, whereas mods involve modifying an existing game.
Notable fan games[edit]
Super Smash Flash 2[edit]
Super Smash Flash 2, commonly abbreviated as SSF2, is a fan game made in Adobe Flash, and developed by the Super Smash Flash 2 Team, led by Gregory "Cleod9" McLeod, and published by McLeodGaming. This is one of the most popular fangames with a long competitive scene. SSF2 follows much of the same mechanics as Melee, but differentiates itself by having a 2D pixel art style and much looser content criteria for inclusion of characters who have never appeared in the official game, including playable characters from anime series, such as Monkey D. Luffy, Naruto Uzumaki, Goku, and Ichigo Kurosaki. There are 47 playable characters in total, 16 of which have never appeared in the official games. It is available as both a web browser game and as a downloadable game for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. The first demo, version 0.1a, was released on December 25, 2007. The most recent version, Beta 1.3.1, was released on August 12, 2021. The developers would go on to make another platform fighter, Fraymakers.
Super Smash Bros. Crusade[edit]
Super Smash Bros. Crusade, often abbreviated as SSBC or Crusade, is a fan game originally released on January 2nd, 2010 with the latest update being on August 8, 2024. Crusade released for Windows using the Game Maker 7/8 engine. Originally a project started by Team Phalcon, consisting of Phantom7, Falcon8r, and Dr.MarioX. Crusade has a large number of fighters with over 77 playable characters, 88 if including variants, with 38 of them appearing in the official Super Smash Bros. series, though several play very differently. Up to six players can be played simultaneously. Compared to SSF2, while Crusade contains more characters, the polish of the game in general is lower. Notably, the character inclusion decisions contain very unique and bizarre characters such as Porky, Weegee, Gooey, Snivy, Heracross, Tetromino, and Agumon.
Super Smash Land[edit]
Super Smash Land is a fan-made demake of Super Smash Bros. released on September 14, 2011, by Dan Fornace. The game copies the style of gameplay of Melee with six playable characters and 11 stages. The game's visual design resembles the graphics for the Game Boy and was developed with GameMaker 7. The platform fighter game Rivals of Aether, released in 2017, was similarly developed by Fornace.
