Mario Royale Turns The Beloved Classic Into A Mad Race For Survival

Battle royales are one of the hottest things in gaming these days and almost everyone and anyone wants to make one. That's true for the big studios down to the lone indie developer. Most imagine creating new properties for a battle royale. Game modder and YouTuber InfernoPlus, however, tempted fate and Nintendo's lawyers by corrupting one of the gaming industry's most iconic characters and most-loved game and turning it into a sort of battle royale.

You'd hardly consider a 16-bit side-scrolling game to be a fit for the frantic and action-oriented nature of a battle royale. But that's what makes InfernoPlus' three-week project all the more intriguing. And he manages to tweak the familiar elements of the game to implement the mass murdering scheme.

Actually, you don't directly kill the other Marios. Instead, you use the environment to your advantage, like pushing turtles in other players' direction. The only time a player can directly stomp on another Mario is when they get a shining star.

Mario Royale is also a race for resources, as there will still be only one of those per level. It is also a race to reach Bowser, which is actually the condition for winning. Other than not dying, of course.

On the technical side, Mario Royale is impressive as well. It's written in HTML5 with a Java backend, written from scratch on three weeks. Unfortunately, given the franchise, it might take faster than a week to have it taken down with a DMCA.