When it comes to video game mods and ROM hacks, we’ve seen some truly insane things in the last few years. There’s A Galaxy Story, which remakes Super Mario Galaxy in Super Mario Odyssey’s engine. There’s Super Mario Sunshine 64 and Super Mario Sunshine DS, which remake Super Mario Sunshine as a mod of Super Mario 64 or Super Mario 64 DS respectively.
Plus there are ports of just about every Mario Kart track under the sun to Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Seriously, modders for the former even went as far as to remake one of the Grand Prix routes for said game, complete with the ability to drive between tracks!
But nothing is more insane than what people have done to remake the original Super Mario 64. It’s been ported to GBA by at least two people. There are projects to remake it as a mod for Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Super Mario Odyssey…
And now there’s a project to remake it as a Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask hack too. Take a look:
Yeah, Juno’s Augmented Nonsense hasn’t just imported the level models and called it a day. Oh hell no.
They’ve done everything to merge the games. Enemies like Goombas, Koopas, Bob-ombs and Chain Chomps? Imported into Majora’s Mask, and killable with any of Link’s items. Major mechanics like the race with Koopa the Quick? Present and accounted for, complete with dialogue and a Power Star at the end.
And in a previous video (not shown on YouTube), they even did things like recreate the intro with Peach’s letter, and include a working fight with King Bob-omb that functions exactly like it did in the original game:
It’s honestly kinda insane, and shows just how far mods for Majora’s Mask have come here.
What’s more, it’s only the latest in a line of Mario related mods from this creator too. Indeed, not only have they got this game merger project in the works, but they previously added Mario into Majora’s Mask as a selectable mask too:
Yeah. Not only can you travel to Peach’s Castle and get the Mario Mask by playing the Song of Healing to a dead Mario, you can use it to add Mario 64 physics and movement into Majora’s Mask too, letting you do things like ride the Snapper enemies like Koopa Shells!
It really does feel like a fever dream, and the kind of thing you’d see in some magazine April Fool’s Day joke at that. Like, imagine going back to the 00s and telling people there was a game that had Mario running around Termina or Link exploring Peach’s Castle. Everyone would think you’d gone crazy.
But this is what modern modding is like now. It’s not just sticking character models into existing games or retexturing a few things here and there. It’s completely changing the underlying mechanics of a game so thoroughly that it doesn’t even feel like the same title anymore. The likes of Super Mario World, Super Mario 64 and N64 Zelda games aren’t so much games you mod now, they’re effectively game engines you can build whatever you like in.
Either way, that’s a project that looks to merge Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask together, and how its creator has completely remade everything from Bob-omb Battlefield in the latter game’s engine. It’s still in the early days dev wise, but based on the progress so far, this could be one of the most technically impressive mods ever made when completed, and a huge step forward for both communities as a whole.
Still, what do you think? Are you excited to explore Peach’s Castle and the worlds within it as Link? What other games do you think could be merged together this way?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below, or on our Discord server today!
Source:
Yes This Is Majora’s Mask (Juno’s Augmented Nonsense on YouTube)