Web Animation / Gaming All-Stars

In a World… where hundreds of characters from dozens of video game franchises coexist, evil abounds, and the malevolent souls all seem to crave one thing: trophies, hapless characters who, upon dying, turn into figurines that can be collected, but can be resurrected if given a hard tap (Just like in The Subspace Emissary). To them, it's an insignia of dominance and power, a de-facto currency of bad-guy bragging rights. Too bad it isn’t that simple, as baddies compete brutally with each other, and the goody two-shoes attempt to dispatch them.

Produced from 2012 to 2013 and released in May 2013 by Gamingallstarsgmod (Formerly Supersmashbrosgmod), Gaming All Stars: The Ultimate Crossover could easily be the most elaborate instance of Garry's Mod in existence, consisting of roughly 4 hours’ worth of story, split up in three giant chunks. About a year later, he decided to give the series a new coat of paint, releasing it as an episode-based animation titled Gaming All Stars Remastered. After he finished that in 2016, he began working on Gaming All Stars 2, with even higher quality animation and more well-defined storylines than Remastered. Alas, the creator suffered a dreadful arm injury in late 2019, forcing GAS 2 and his other projects (Funny Game Moments, Nintendo Chronicles) to undergo significantly longer upload delays.

For context, the series begins with Mario dealing with King Bowser and his goons as usual; after getting separated from his friends, however, the bigger picture is gradually revealed, with him and many others teaming up with or fighting against characters from a bevy of gaming walks of life. Sonic and Alex Mercer vs Porky Minch? Check. Crash and Spyro vs Shadow Mario? Check. Mario, the Heavy, and John Marston vs the Babylon Rogues? Checkaroo!

Gaming All Stars: The Ultimate Crossover can be viewed here, here, and here. Meanwhile, the movie version of Remastered can be viewed here, or, if one wants to view the series episode-wise, here. The first episode of 2 can be viewed here.

---

Tropes included in all iterations of the franchise:

• Adaptational Wimp:
  • In their home series, the Rabbids are usually shown to be pretty durable, but here, it doesn't take much more than a pickaxe to the head for Steve to kill one of them.
  • In Super Mario Galaxy 2, Cosmic Clones are nigh-invincible and only vanish after the player grabs a star. In this series, they are easily taken out by Toejam & Earl, a far cry from the Mario doppelgangers' original incarnation.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Doshin the Giant serves as this to The Great Mighty Poo, fatally squishing him before arriving to rescue Donkey Kong and his team.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Many of the antagonists’ one-winged angel forms count as this (E.g. Giga Bowser in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered, Zarok’s cobra form in 2), as well as villains who are already gigantic in the first place (E.g. The Negativitron and Ralph]] in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered.
• Big Bad: The G-Man in The Ultimate Crossover, Colonel Mael Radec in Remastered, and Zinyak in 2. Each of them is presented the most prominent threat of the story, though Dr. Eggman could also be considered this for the former two due to him generally being the most active villain in the overall story, and receiving significantly more screen time than either G-Man or Radec.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Given how a large portion of the heroes introduce themselves this way (Especially in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered, it would be redundant to list every example. Some of the more notable ones include:
  • The Heavy joining Mario and John Marston against the Babylon Rogues in “Heavy Weapons”.
  • Kirby effortlessly defeating Shao Kahn before joining Mario’s group in “Outworld.”
  • A Yellow Colosi/Group of Yellow Colosi rescuing Tails and Amigo from an enraged Big Daddy by levitating it just before it can attack them, in “On The Loose”.
  • The Hocotate Ship landing on top of a Burrowing Snagret just before it prepares to eat Mario in “Rise Again,” then later in “Dino Crisis,” when Louie inadvertently docks it on top of an unsuspecting General Scales.
• Big Bad Duumvirate:
  • A three-member one forms between Eggman, G-Man, and Neo Cortex in The Ultimate Crossover, all coming together during the finale to trap the heroes in the moon, not knowing they are being manipulated by a greater evil.
  • In both The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered, there's a Greater-Scope Villain example between Andross and Polygon Man, who both conspire to trick the Big Bad into giving them awe-inspiring power, trap the heroes inside the moon, and eradicate life on Earth by unleashing an untold number of monsters upon them.
  • Meanwhile, in 2, one occurs between Zinyak and Crypto, who form an alliance on the basis of their hatred against humanity.
• Big Bad Ensemble:
  • Eggman, G-Man, and Cortex, in The Ultimate Crossover. Remastered, contrarily, has Eggman and Radec.
  • 2 has Zinyak and Shinnok, two disparate antagonists who both hold their own grudges against the human race.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Polygon Man can do this to his victims by turning them into crystalline slaves; upon transformation, the person's mind is massively disoriented and their personality vanishes with it.
• Central Theme:
  • For The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered, to what extent will villains go to display their dominance over others?
  • For 2, the power of great human beings (and other Earthlings) when they unite against those who wish to enslave or annihilate humankind.
• Characters Dropping Like Flies: Happens to heroes and villains alike, ultimately culminating in [[spoiler: the climax, in which Master Hand’s subspace bomb eradicates everyone inside the moon.
• The Chessmaster: Andross. While the remainder of the villains capture other characters as trophies and attempt to establish themselves at the top of the barrel, this character waits for one of them to force the moon to plummet to the Earth and allow him to unleash titans onto planet Earth. While doing so, he makes arrangements with Polygon Man to lure the main antagonist by having Polygon Man claim that he’ll provide them a boost of energy to help them trophify the heroes. Once that's taken care of, Andross finally reveals himself and manages to kill nearly every hero standing against him.
• Colony Drop: Andross' ultimate scheme is to send the Termina Moon hurtling toward Earth to trophify every hero.
• Crossover: Between so many video games!
• Death Is Cheap: Due to the existence of trophification in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered, most characters can be revived if their trophy is touched by someone or something with enough force. However, there are some exceptions like giant-sized, non One-Winged angel monsters , enemy mooks, and Sims as well as a few other outliers like Pyramid Head and Danny Lamb, the trophies in Eggman’s vault, and characters corrupted by Polygon Man.
• Demonic Possession: 02’s Dark Matter henchmen mind-control a handful of innocent Sims in “City Invasion”, which turns them into destructive maniacs.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: The tyrannosaurus-like Diablo in “Modnation”, whose specialty in attacks is fire breath.
• Disc-One Final Boss: 02, the spearhead of the infiltration in “Great City Invasion”.
• Excuse Plot: Video game characters all live together on Earth. Oh no! The villains want to capture characters in a display of power! Heroes team up and bad guys form alliances and stab each other in the back. What's this?! A Physical God has played all the other bad guys like a fiddle, traps the heroes inside the moon, and starts an apocalypse, because that is what irredeemably nasty villains do.
• Greater-Scope Villain: While Dr. Eggman is the most influential and up-front antagonist in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered overall, Andross is the baddie pulling all the strings. Only after his plan is set in motion does this character finally pose a direct threat to the heroes.
• Useless Protagonist: Almost all, if not all, of the characters were basically useless throughout the The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Goro, Booger Meister, King Boo, and Mephiles, in spite of their treachery, manage to get away with it in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered.
  • Papu-Papu, the tribal chief who stands in Captain Toad's path and summons Tikimon to prevent his party from retreating, joins the unpunished villain bandwagon in 2.
• Killer Gorilla:
  • George, a once-human mutant taking the form of a colossal simian, serves as a major obstacle to Ness’ team.
  • Pipitron G, one of Specter's most dastardly minions, is a brutish white ape who only serves to stand in Mario's way, thus making her an example.
• Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: Even though the lava in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered looks realistic on the surface, once Bowser falls into it and re-emerges after turning into Giga Bowser, it splashes as if it were just really hot water with flames coming out of it.
• Lone Wolf Boss: The vast majority of villains in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered aren’t connected to or even aware of to the Greater-Scope Villain.
• Maniac Monkeys: Specter and his ape army, and Andross in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered. The former returns in 2, this time aided by Pipotrons Yellow, Blue, and Red.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: In a similar manner to the Super Smash Bros franchise, but with even more franchises involved.
• Mêlée à Trois:
  • Fox’s Team vs The Polar Bears (A group of independent antagonists dwelling in the tundra) vs The Badniks (Who are commandeered by Dr. Eggman)]] in “Shadow Moses”.
  • In the Remastered version of “High-Poly”, there’s the heroes vs Eggman’s Shadow droids vs the Fighting Polygons, (Under the leadership of Polygon Man).
• Monster Clown: Needles “Sweet Tooth” Kane, one of the few characters in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered who manages to outright kill a character for real rather than trophifying them.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Goro and Kintaro in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered, along with Tikimon in 2, all have four arms and are rather menacing threats to match.
• Nuke 'em: GUN resorts to this after the flood of villains in S3 E7 becomes too out of control for them to shoot down normally, forcing them to drop a hydrogen bomb on the city the monsters were invading. Not only does this obliterate the whole city, but it results in the heroes being mass-trophified, only being saved when Marcus Fenix arrives after the events of the nuking.
• One-Winged Angel:
  • Any final smash that involves the character gaining a massive boost in stamina (Or in the case of Remastered, spontaneous transformations that don’t require a smash ball except in the finale), such as Super Pac-Man, Super Sonic, and Invincible Crash.
  • Perfect Chaos in “City in Chaos,” the result of Chaos having absorbed all seven chaos emeralds.
  • The souped-up Giga Bowser in “Limbless Hero” and “What I’m Made Of”
  • Also in “What I’m Made Of”, there’s Monster Nitrus Brio and Metal Overlord.
  • Beast Ganon, Ganondorf's transformed form, counts as this in “Demon King”
  • In 2, there’s Zarok’s giant snake form in “Spirits and Spells.”
• Scaled Up: Metal Overlord (Draconic robot who starts off as the Hedgehog-like Metal Sonic) in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered, plus Zarok in his serpent phase in 2.
• Summon Bigger Fish:
  • Upon encountering Falco and Donkey Kong, Booger Meister flees and commands the Great Mighty Poo to dispose of them before they can catch them. Ironically, the GMP himself ends up becoming a victim of Always a Bigger Fish to Doshin after the latter squashes him.
  • In 2, Papu-Papu summons the formidable idol god Tikimon to prevent Lara, Harry, and Captain Toad from making out of his tribal grounds alive.
• Taking You with Me: Andross utters this to Mario, Sonic, and Crash as they prepare to land their final attacks on him in the ending, knowing they would be killed by the exploding Subspace Bomb alongside him.
• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Expect to see several of these, given the nature of this series. To list a few, there’s Link and Monkey vs Whomp in The Ultimate Crossover and Remastered, as well as Kratos vs Scorpion in 2.
• The Collector: Ganondorf and Eggman does this by having a collection of trophies, the former capturing and collecting other's trophy with the help of Zant, while the latter also capturing and collecting other's trophy, but this time having the trophies unable to be revived.
• The Unfought:
  • The protagonists never get a chance to directly fight Big Bad G-Man in The Ultimate Crossover.
  • Radec in Remastered only gets it slightly better in that unlike the G-Man, when he's Polygonized, he's still capable of posing a threat to the protagonists. Not that it stops him from being one-shotted, though.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • Polygon Man does this to Eggman, Cortex, and G-Man in The Ultimate Crossover and Radec in Remastered by manipulating them into a promise of ultimate power so Andross could pull the moon into Earth’s orbit.
  • The Remastered equivalent adds another layer above it: When Eggman arrives to meet Radec before going to the Moon, he pulls his firearm out, offs Eggman, and yanks his Dark Cannon away. After that, he knocks Razorbeard (his own partner-in-crime until then) into the wayside because he has no intention on sharing Polygon Man's power with anyone else.

Tropes specific to Gaming All Stars: The Ultimate Crossover

• Bears Are Bad News: Bearminator, a submarine-piloting polar bear who interrupts Link and his gang from proceeding any further, prompting them to evade his gunfire as they work to sink him.
• Downer Ending: With a tinge of Bittersweet. After witnessing the remainder of the heroes getting dispatched by Polygon Man and Andross, Master and Crazy Hand create a devastatingly powerful bomb to destroy the moon, intending on stopping Andross in order to alleviate the Earth of the apocalypse he caused. While the people of Earth are indeed relieved of their troubles, the explosion ends up killing Mario, Sonic, and Crash as well, prompting the people to mourn them and all of the heroes who entered the moon to combat the ultimate evil.

Tropes specific to Gaming All Stars Remastered

• Adapted Out:
  • G-Man, one of the primary antagonists in the original version, and a staple of Garry’s Mod animation, only makes a cameo as a trophy, and is replaced with Colonel Radec.
  • Wart and King K Rool, whose introductory cutscene is completely cut out as well. The former is replaced with Smithy, which makes more sense considering he’s the one in charge of the Axem Rangers, not Wart, while the latter makes an appearance in Gaming All Stars 2 as Captain K Rool.
  • Globox, Mumbo Jumbo, Ripto and Gulp all vanish due to their cutscene being removed. GASGM has confirmed the reason for this is because their scene was created last-minute, and felt it should be axed once once production of the reboot finished.
• Adaptational Karma: Admiral Razorbeard. While he manages to flee with his goons prior to the final battle in The Ultimate Crossover, he isn’t so lucky in Remastered when a power-hungry Radec decides he no longer needs the robo-pirates’ help and turns him into a trophy.
• Death by Adaptation: Quite a few characters who lived for a good portion of the plot in The Ultimate Crossover are given the boot here, such as Glover and Fancy Pants (the former only shows up as a trophy, getting knocked into lava during the Giga Bowser fight).
• Demoted to Extra: The Colossus Monk (Or in this case, their entire race) ends up staying behind rather than tagging along with Tails.
• Hit Stop: As Banjo lands a hit on Nightmare, time seemingly slows down and both of their voices deepen. This happens again later when Giga Mac wallops Mewtwo, just before the impact of the punch sends it flying.
• Sequel Hook: Following the events of the moon exploding, the items left to honor the champions suddenly vanish, leading to a scene in which Mario and several other major protagonists come face-to-face with Zinyak, which foreshadows the events of Gaming All Stars 2.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Vexx, Cole, Knuckles and the Ninjabread Man all survive for a longer period of time here than they did in The Ultimate Crossover.
• This Was His True Form: After Crash and Spyro take down Bowser Jr. in Shadow Mario form, he transforms back into Bowser Jr. when trophetized.
• Your Head Asplode: The fate of Polygon Man, who overheats and splits into dozens of shards after Captain Falcon attacks him with a Falcon Punch in the final battle.

Tropes specific to Gaming All Stars 2

• The Bus Came Back: Kratos, after initially appearing in “Limbless Hero” to slay Giga Bowser and never receiving any more screen time after that, returns as one of the main protagonists (Alongside Mario and Master Chief).
• Fusion Dance: Cortex, N.Gin, Dingodile, and Tiny merge into Megamix near the end of "High Seas Hi Jinks", all thanks to a deflected plasma blast.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Specter, Quan Chi, and Needles Kane, antagonists whom all make their first appearance in Remastered and walk away relatively scot-free, are finally given their just-deserts upon reappearing.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Sure, Crash manages to rescue his friends from an oncoming beam attack, but once it hits Cortex, he and his cronies become one, resulting in an even more dangerous threat than before.
• Prison Episode: “Breakout” involves a mass prison escape led by Michael and Trevor as one of its central conflicts.
• Sadistic Choice: In "High Seas Hi Jinks," Crash Bandicoot and his team confront Dr. Neo Cortex, who attacks them with a powerful energy shot. Either the bullet could have blown the whole team to smithereens, or it could be recoiled back onto the opposition, with the unintended consequence of Cortex being combined with his minions into a formidable mutant.

---