Super Mario bros. Z.png

YouTube is home to a number of excellent fan projects dedicated to classic gaming franchises, including plenty in honour of Nintendo. A particularly popular and short-live series from 2006 has now returned to join the ranks, and is already finding an audience.

Super Mario Bros. Z is a project from digital artist and sprite animator Mark Haynes (AKA: Alvin-Earthworm). It brings Sonic and some of the SEGA cast into the Mushroom Kingdom, with plenty of witty storytelling; below is Haynes' own summary.

Metal Sonic has gone rogue and turned against Dr. Robotnik. Fusing himself with all of the older Sonic robots to become a new super robot called Metallix. After nearly taking all the Chaos Emeralds, he goes on a genocidal spree in Mobius, killing nearly all the Sonic characters with the exception of Sonic and Shadow. Being hopelessly outmatched, Sonic and Shadow, in a last ditch effort, use their powers to teleport all the Chaos Emeralds to an alternate universe. That universe happens to be the Mushroom Kingdom. The Chaos Emeralds are scattered throughout the land and the combined forces of Sonic, Shadow, Mario, Luigi and Yoshi, must find them before Metallix gets to them.

The show has now returned with a full episode that's combined the first two into an improved package. Intriguingly, Haynes has also launched a Patreon page that has quickly amassed over 500 patrons and $5000 per episode. The only fuzzy area, perhaps, is that it's described as a "non-profit fan crossover movie project", and we're not sure how that applies when patronage is sought.

In any case it's a fun and accomplished animation show - check it out below and let us know what you think.

With thanks to Allav866 for the heads up.