Video Game / Super Mario Bros. Crossover

Super Mario Bros. Crossover (Also known as Super Mario Crossover due to space limits) is an Adobe Flash game by Exploding Rabbit (initially comprised solely of Jay Pavlina, but has expanded to include more people, with Zach Robinson contributing additional graphics to Version 2.0 and Blaine Hanna taking over as the lead developer after Version 3.0). Basically, it's the original Super Mario Bros. (and ever since a few updates Super Mario Bros. Special and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels) but with Mario's brother Luigi having his Divergent Character Evolution from the later Mario games, as well as Bill Rizer, Samus Aran, Mega Man and his rival Bass, Simon Belmont, Link, Ryu Hayabusa, and Sophia the 3rd as additional playable characters, retaining the moves and physics of their source games. There's also a variety of art styles to choose from and alternate level design based on the difficulty.

Being based on Super Mario Bros., most of the tropes present there apply here.

Not to be confused with Mushroom Kingdom Fusion, which is a different game entirely.

After 3.1's release on December 16th, 2013, the game was considered to be finished. However, many years later, Jay Pavlina announced that Version 4.0 was in development and that a playable demo was out for testing. Unlike all versions before, 4.0 was to be coded in WebGL and built on top of Unity, since web explorers are no longer supporting Flash. Unfortunately, an update to that post stated that it's been canceled.

---

This game provides examples of:

• Abandoned Info Page: As of the end of August 2013, the wiki for the most part is pretty outdated.
• April Fools' Day: On April 2012, the game was updated with a skin inspired by the Atari 2600. However, it also came with a massive downgrade — all the other skins were removed, there's only one soundtrack to listen to, the "Single Character Random" game mode is removed, and you can't play as Link, Ryu, Bill, or Samus (thus rendering the Classic Samus cheat useless). Version 3.0 later added the Atari skins and soundtrack to the official game, including new Atari skins for Link, Ryu, Bill and Samus.
• Artifact Title: An inversion! The first iterations of the game didn't have Luigi in it (although he was planned). Only much later on did he finally make it in, now rendering the Super Mario Bros. title accurate.
• Ascended Glitch: As of 3.0, it is now possible to jump over the flagpole in the original Super Mario Bros. maps, since there were certain areas in Special and Lost Levels that require you to jump over the flagpole in order to reach them.
• Audience Participation: Most of the skins, features, and characters were all decided by fans. However Author Appeal plays a big part in this.
• Bag of Spilling: Whenever the game has a major update, all previous save files are rendered incompatible, thus forcing every player to start over.
• Behind the Black: Hard map difficulty is all about mooks waiting beyond the edge of the screen to catch you as you land.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Sort of. Bowser is replaced with another antagonist depending on what enemy skin is being used. The Zelda II: The Adventure of Link enemy skin replaces him with Ganon (or if you want to be technical the Great Moblin) ^note  despite Ganon only appearing in the Game Over screen as a silhouette in that game, the Super Mario Bros. 2 enemy skins^note  both NES and SNES versions replaces him with Wart, the Castlevania enemy skin replaces him with Death^note Word of God has confirmed that Dracula will not be present, despite being the Big Bad and Death being The Dragon, and the Blaster Master enemy skin replaces him with... some weird monster dude thingy^note  this monster is an original sprite; bosses in Blaster Master were not only fought in top-down areas, but they were also gigantic, and due to NES limitations, were as a result fought over a solid black screen. In versions 3.0 and upwards, the Demon Returns enemy skin replaces Bowser with... a vampiress.
• Boring, but Practical: In earlier versions, Goomba Stomp worked quicker than most character's weapons (without a Fire Flower) against most mooks; 2.0 goes around this aspect by having everyone but the Mario Bros. be unable to stomp. Fortunately, 3.0 features a cheat (which is one of the immediately available ones) that enables everyone else to stomp enemies again. Mario's better jumping tends to make him the easiest character to use, as the stages were designed with him in mind. Among the other characters, the best jumpers are about on par with Mario (though Ryu, Mega Man, and Simon all have ways to deal with their subpar jumping height.) With the timer turned on, Mario and Luigi also help get through the longer levels, being the only characters able to run.
• Boss Subtitles: This is how new characters are introduced in the trailers, a la Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
• Bottomless Pit Rescue Service: The "Bouncy Pits" cheat, which also affects mushrooms and enemies. It works on all pits, including pools of boiling lava.
• Cap: In older versions, the score counter maxed out at 999950. The 3.0 update later increased it to 9999999.
• Continuity Nod: Special and the hard/easy maps add a powerup that increases the time you have. This powerup, like most of them, can change appearance depending on what skin you're using. In the Super Mario World skin, the powerup is represented by a green berry.
• Couch Gag: The game's Start Screen always loads up a different map skin. Complete with matching skins and interface.
• Crossover: It's in the name; characters from different series appear.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: When playing on a keyboard with default controls, Z jumps and X runs or performs an attack. Translating this into NES controller format, that would equal B jumping and A running/attacking.
  • In later versions, editing the controls does not change the controls for the menus, Z will always accept and X will always cancel.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • In underground levels that have access to Warp Zones, the block right next to the pipe that takes you to the normal path is indestructible in order to at least have a way to play through the game normally, even as characters that easily destroy blocks.
  • Given the levels were made for the Mario Bros., many jumps are impossible for most of the other characters. In that case, elevators are added in their playthroughs in order to help them across (although not for the Mario Bros., so they'll have to get through the jumps proper). However, since some platforms tended to make things too easy for some characters, the platforms for goals were converted into falling platforms and underwater platforms to get bonus coins were cut.
  • The map skins have a "corresponding" character skin, such as Mario's sprite from Super Mario World in the map skin of the same game. This map turns World 7 into a ghost house, and if you play as SMW Mario with this on, the Ghost House theme plays. But this would seem odd if you used another skin, since World 7 by default isn't ghost-themed, right? Well, simply playing on it with another graphic skin causes the regular "ground" theme to play instead.
  • Normally, there's only one music per character used as a castle theme. However, when using the Zelda II map skin, if you have the music options set to "Map", the final level plays the Great Palace theme instead of the normal Palace theme.
• Difficulty Levels: As of Version 3.0, there are two types of difficulty settings: Map Difficulty and More Settings. Map Difficulty changes the levels with Easy, Normal, and Hard. More Settings, however, averts this, as it allows you to customize general game behavior.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Luigi has his own character slot with his own skins instead of sharing with his brother, and he has his low traction and high jump from The Lost Levels. And if you beat world 8-4 as Luigi, you'll rescue Princess Daisy instead.
• Dungeon Bypass: Link and Samus (through morphball) can quickly beat 3-2 of Special by going through the small space above the warp pipe, skipping most of the level. Like most if not all shortcuts, this was prevented in the hard mode.
  • Ryu Hayabusa's ability to climb walls can help reach the block ceiling of some levels and skip lengthy sections of them. Most notable in Special 6-2 which would otherwise be a Pipe Maze. Subverted in some levels after finding out the blocks are unbreakable and the pipe must be reached the normal way.
• Easier Than Easy: Playing the game with the Map Difficulty set to Easy and setting up the other difficulty settings accordingly.
• Easter Egg:
  • As the character select music of the Super Mario World skin is the Special World music, the Super Mario Bros. theme will play if it loops nine times, as it did in Super Mario World.
  • Like in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, if you get a Game Over as Mario or Luigi in either their SML2 skin or their space suit skin and then idle on the continue screen for about 3 minutes, Totaka's Song will play.
  • World 4-2 of Super Mario Bros. Special has a hidden warp zone that leads to World ?. However, this is not an actual world. Going inside the warp pipe brings the player to a Bonus Stage called the "Exploding Rabbit Room" (according to the Exploding Rabbit Wiki). In this room, the words "Exploding Rabbit" are spelled out in coins, along with a few hidden boxes. It is also currently the only level that has the Exploding Rabbit Power-Up, hidden in a block, which gives the current character all his/her power-ups (for Samus, Ryu, Simon, and Bill, it will give him or her a random Power-Up). However, this also counts as an Ascended Glitch, as this pipe was also present in Special; it originally just had the player wait until time ran out if entered, as the pipe didn't go anywhere thanks to a programmer oversight.
• Fake Difficulty: The Bullet Bill cannons fire at erratic intervals.
• Fan Remake: Doubles as a Polished Port for Super Mario Bros. Special.
• Follow the Money: On the easy maps, if there is a single coin floating in the air by itself, chances are that there is an Invisible Block just underneath it.
• Foreshadowing: Beat any castle level as Luigi, and Toad's quote will mention "your princess" instead of "our princess". You rescue Princess Daisy at the final castle instead of Peach.
• Genre-Busting: Some characters' original games were not platformers, but were adapted to the platform genre.
  • Link, being from a top-view adventure game, was given physics to match those of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
  • SOPHIA III and Samus, both from games in the Metroidvania genre, were both adapted to a more "point A to point B" style of play.
  • Ryu and Bill were both adapted to platforming as opposed to the "Run and Gun" style of their original games.
• Hard Mode Mooks: It's possible to change the settings to replace the Goombas with not only Buzzy Beetles (as in the original game's second quest) but also with Spinies and with a completely new-to-the-original-game enemy, Spike Tops (which act as both Spinies and Buzzy Beetles at once).
• Harder Than Hard: Playing the game with the Map Difficulty set to Hard and setting up the other difficulty settings accordingly. Have fun dying.
• Invincible Minor Mook:
  • In the difficulty settings, you can replace the Goombas with Spike Tops. They can still be killed off by Star Power or Samus' Missles, though.
  • Special (and the hard maps) adds Barrels and Fires from the original Donkey Kong. The former actually acts much like Spike Tops (in fact the Super Mario Bros 3 skins replace them with what seems like bulkier Spike Tops) and can still be killed by misiles, however the Fires are almost completely invincible.
• Jump Physics: Even though the stages are all designed with Mario's jump in mind, all characters retain theirs.
• Konami Code: How you can quickly unlock cheats in Version 3.0 onwards^* Originally, you need to enable and disable the "Classic Simon" cheat five times, followed by the press of the Special Button. By the way, the "attack" and "jump" buttons take the place of B and A, not the actual B and A keys.. The title screen fanfare from Contra plays when you select "Enter Code" in the Cheats menu as a hint for which Classic Cheat Code you need to use.
• Leitmotif: Each character skin comes with the musical score from their original game, although it can be set to match the map skin, a certain game's score or just randomized.
• Marathon Level: World 8-1 is still as long as it was in the original, which means a lot of trouble for every character but the Mario Bros., as they're the only ones who can run. Fortunately, unlocking the "Infinite Time" cheat is as easy as completing the first level, providing an easy way to escape the dreaded time limit if you don't want to speedrun with the other characters in this level.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Characters from multiple different video games appear.
• Medium Blending: Depending on how you set the graphic options and the character skin.
• Musical Nod: The Atari skin uses many songs from different Atari 2600 games (although some of them are just chiptunes).
• Musical Spoiler: When selecting the "Enter Code" option on the Cheats menu, the music changes to the title theme from Contra. It's the Konami Code.
• Nintendo Hard: It can be hard for the other characters to adapt to some of the harder Super Mario Bros levels.
  • In the 2.0 update, all characters lose their power ups and abilities upon taking damage, except on Very Easy. And then there's Bill...
  • Also, the 3.1 update includes levels from Super Mario Bros. 2. And that's the Japanese one, by the way. If you thought those levels are already as hard as they are as Mario and Luigi, then try playing through those levels as everyone else — or even better, playing through them with the Map Difficulty set to Hard...
  • Speaking of the hard maps, one might expect the game to start out with only mild and minor changes to add a little more challenge, slowly curving into something much harder. Nope, on the first level of the SMB set there's a Lakitu at the first half, Paratroopas positioned in awkward places over pits, and an ending staircase where every other block column is a tiny bottomless pit, and every other column out of what remains is a Bullet Bill cannon.
    • And that bonus room that serves as a shortcut to the end of the level? It now exits into the pipe before the entry pipe to said bonus room.
    • Remember the first Super Mushroom of Super Mario Bros? Inside that arrangement of 6 blocks ingrained forever into the collective gamer mind? Well, in Hard Map difficulty, it's a Poison Mushroom now.^note The actual Super Mushroom is on the top block
• Poison Mushroom: The Trope Namer shows up in The Lost Levels as usual, but it also shows up in the Hard Maps for the other two sets.
• Power Creep, Power Seep: Used and averted. Each character's weapons are greatly nerfed, but characters do retain their jump physics.
• Product Placement: Downplayed. Mario and Luigi's "Modern" skins say that the skins are designed after Super Mario 3D World (although the "Modern Mario" skin is more reminiscent of the Mario sprite used in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door)
  • Also, the first loading screen advises players to support the official game releases.
• Ratchet Scrolling: Removed by default, though it can be turned on in the Cheats menu (listed as "Classic Screen Scroll", which is available from the beginning).
• Remake Cameo: The Hachisuke (also known as the Hudson Bee and "Hu-Bee") is a one-time Power-Up in Special, although it changes depending on the skin.
  • Every level in Hard Mode has one Hachisuke.
• Retraux:
  • The Atari skins for most characters and the Atari map layout. The choice of musical score turns it into hilarious Stylistic Suck.
  • The Super Mario Bros. 2 skin necessitated new graphics, such as ? Blocks and Fire Flowers, due to that game lacking such elements.
• Save the Princess: While originally you were always saving Toads and Peach like in the original game, the 2.1 update changes them to characters appropriate to each playable character.
• Schrödinger's Player Character: The Toad inside each castle and Princess Peach turn into characters/objects from the game the current player character belongs to, and the "Your Princess Is in Another Castle!" response changes accordingly. Even if the new Toad or Princess are characters the player can control at any given moment.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: The various cheats and difficulty options make opportunities for quite a few of these. The game's forums provide a few examples.
• Shout-Out: The character select screen from version 2.0 onwards resembles that of the ones found in the Super Smash Bros. series.
  • From 2.1 until before 3.0, Luigi's Peach skin has her saving Mario.
• Silliness Switch: There's an "Invisible" skin that gives the game the appearance of the original game, but with all possible ground, platforms and footholds removed in addition to enemies. There's also a cheat to replace all enemies with Hammer Bros. Finally, you could set all possible options to random^* that would be "Music Console" and "Music Set" under "Sound Options", and "Map Skin", "Enemy Skin", and "Interface Skin" under "Graphics Options" and play "Single Character Random" mode. Each time you play this way is essentially a new adventure.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: In either the Atari version of the game or when using the Atari map skins and characters in the latest version, the music that plays whenever you encounter Bowser is... "Fever" from Dr. Mario?
• Timed Mission: Like in the original, levels have time limits by default, but it can be turned off with a very easily unlockable cheat (just beat a level).
• Turns Red: The Sidestepper enemies in the Special maps^note  as well as in the other map sets on Hard Mode become angry and double in speed as they lose health.
• Video Game Demake: The Atari 2600 skin is an in-universe example.

Character Tropes:

• Brought Down to Normal: Inverted. When v1.1 came around, Bill was the only character (besides Mario) not to get some sort of gameplay improvement.
• Charged Attack: Mega Man's Mega Buster and (prior to v2.0) Ryu's Windmill Shuriken.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Certain skins (such as Quick Man, Proto Man, and Pit) play differently than their parent character, essentially making them new characters built on the same base.
• Double Jump:
  • Simon has one to compensate for his short and awkward jump. Comes out of nowhere (Maria and later Metroidvania player characters would have a double jump, but Simon wouldn't have it until Harmony of Despair, which was released after this game).
  • Bass also has the double jump ability from Mega Man & Bass, that is unless his Quick Man skin is used.
• Goomba Stomp: As of 2.0, only Mario and Luigi can do this without getting hurt.
  • Link can do this with a downward thrust.
  • 3.0 introduces a cheat that allows everybody to do this.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: The 2.0 update included three playable villain characters: Dark Samus, Dark Link, and Dr. Wily, as skins for Samus, Link, and Bass, retrospectively. You can also play as six Robot Masters ^note Cut Man, Ice Man and Fire Man (all three for Mega Man), Quick Man, Gemini Man and Skull Man (all three for Bass).
• Moveset Clone: Mario and Luigi share similar abilities. Mega Man and Bass also share the same weapons as each other except their default busters and Rush Coil.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Bill has become this in the 2.0 update. No matter what difficulty is being played or what powerups he has, he will always die in one hit.
  • Everyone becomes this on Very Hard difficulty.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang: Link's special weapon.
  • Ryu's Windmill Shuriken can stretch one's Willing Suspension of Disbelief: No matter how long you keep dodging it, it will keep attempting to come back to you.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Arguably Simon's entire purpose. Except the odd underwater stage where the angle of his axes deals with the highly annoying bloopers perfectly. On the other hand, his axes also have a wider arc than the Hammer Bros' hammers. Plus there's his whip, which eventually becomes super-long and flaming. And as of v1.1, an option exists that lets you control his jumps more easily.
  • These days it's a "classic Simon" option in which having it off makes it easier to control his jumps.
• Sword Beam: Link's Fire Flower ability.
  • In later versions, it's tied to the red ring power up.
• Underwear of Power: As Samus, getting a Fire Flower used to change her sprite to the "Justin Bailey" armorless version, along with upgrading her weapon to the Wave Beam... That was in an earlier version. Now, it's averted, as she gains her Power Suit when she gets a Super Mushroom (and the Justin Bailey suit is, as of 2.0, a skin).
• Walk, Don't Swim: Only Mario, Luigi and Sophia the 3rd can swim. Everyone else has this trope applied to them, giving you a whole new challenge tackling the water levels.
• Wall Crawl: Ryu and Sophia can cling to walls, just like in their original games. (And ceilings, in Sophia's case.) However, as of 2.0, Sophia needs to find power-ups to do this.

---