The most famous character in computer game history has to be without doubt Mario Mario, who with his brother Luigi Mario have taken the world with storm. Their reign includes numerous games from platformers like the Mario Bros and Mario Land series, and later Mario 64 and Luigi's Mansion, to sport and driving games like Mario Tennis, Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros.
All these games are official Nintendo games released for their relevant consoles. But it hasn't stopped there, many freeware games creators have tried to reinact the Mario magic, not the easiest feat by any stretch of the animation. And for an example of one of these attempts look no further!
Mario Upgrade is a basic platform game where you control a Mario lookalike, trying to navigate him through several fairly large levels. So, he looks like Mario - any other similarities? Well, no. The levels look too plain, the control method (particularly the bizarre jump method) feels wrong, and there are no bad guys whatsoever! So this is obviously not a straight Mario rip-off then?
Wrong. It must be, just a really poor effort at one. But leaving that alone, is it an enjoyable play? Well, yes and no. It got me hooked for a bit, but I put that down to my naivety, that the fact it looked like Mario, therefore it has to play like Mario. Unfortunately not, and no matter how far I got, it still didn't get any better - I just expected more, a boss perhaps. Perhaps they should of called it Mario Downgrade, or Mario Very Early And Unreleased Beta Version.
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