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SuperMario 64 Coming To a Browser Near You!
Billly Gates writes Since Unity has been given a liberal license and free for non commercial developers it has become popular. A computer science student Erik Roystan Ross used the tool to remake SuperMario 64 with a modern Unity 5 engine. There is a video here and if you want to play the link is here. You will need Firefox or Chrome which has HTML 5 for gamepad support if you do not want to use the keyboard. "I currently do not have any plans to develop this any further or to resolve any bugs, unless they're horrendously game-breaking and horrendously simple to fix," says Ross.
you will be required to download the Unity web player in order to play the game.
I played it. It's pretty close to the original gameplay-wise for just a little hobbyist effort. I was impressed. My kid wants to keep playing it. It's just the first level kind of remade without any bosses. The balloon cannons shoot a little too well for my tastes (or I've just gotten slow). There didn't seem to be a key to "pick things up", including the bob-ombs, which are pretty darned fast and tough to get away from. The balls that come down the mountain don't sway from side to side, so they're easy to dodge, but the sounds associated with them were pretty cool.
Really, it's just a small proof of concept someone did with the engine using a game they were familiar with as a basis. It's not a rebuild of the entire game or anything remotely like that. Since Mario, the bob-ombs and the goombas are pretty obvious, as is the recreation of the first map in mario world 64, I'd definitely expect copyright issues. I don't think this passes the sniff test for a parody. It really just should have been shared privately and not released to the world, especially slashdot, due to such regulations. Really, just find a designer friend, buy them a bottle of captain, and let them throw ideas at you for a couple hours, you'll get plenty.
It's not directly linked anywhere, so here his is wordpress blog page about it, including source (Unity3D project). There's native clients at his link also, or you can download the /Web.html page and /Web.unity3d file from the webplayer version then edit the html to make the screen size larger (I altered it to 2500x1400, looks cooler larger).
It's hitting the nostalgia pretty well for me, having not played any 3D mario games since 64. The little bombs look awesome. The whole thing makes me want to make a small game in Unity, which is pretty cool.