F3 2023, the E3-like presentation for romhacks and fangames by Kaze Emanuar, releases its yearly announcements.
While E3 has been dead for quite some time, other events, both official an fanmade, have been taking the spotlight for announcing new games and fangames alike. This is the case for one such event, titled "F3", hosted by Kaze Emanuar of Super Mario 64 hacking fame, who started doing an E3-like event, but for romhacks and fangames that the community has been working on their spare time.
F3 has been going on for some years now, and in each one Kaze showcases a lot of games, mostly focused on Super Mario 64 hacking, but not limited to it, since recent F3 events have showcased romhacks from even older or newer consoles, and also other franchises like Zelda and EarthBound. This year sees another outing of F3, and with it, we get a whole new set of fanmade hacks and titles that are being worked on.
The stream begins with Paper Mario 64 projects:
- A romhack based on the Paper Mario 64 decompilation project, which adds all of the sequel's; The Thousand Year Door, items, recipes, badges and other mechanics backported into the 64 original, as well as new areas, enemies, bosses, NG+ and much more.
- Another project based on Paper Mario 64. It looks like it will try to implement things seen and experienced from The Stanley Parable into PM64, titled "The Paper Parable".
- Starting with Majora's Mask - The Missing Light Arrow, which adds clues, some areas with low gravity, Fierce Deity anywhere, and more.
- A trailer for Ocarina of Time: Chaos Edition, showcasing a whole slew of crazy stuff in-game, all in the vain of glitchy or buggy mechanics, giving the hack its proper name.
- Arms Remix, a mod of Arms for the Nintendo Switch, with new characters, new arms, new looks for stages, and more.
- Asterix and Obelix: Cesar's Challenge, with new enemies, a new level, big fights, fight challenges, new puzzles and much more.
- Crash Bandicoot: Back in Time shows 10 traditional levels, with 30 collectables, side scrolling challenges too, a time trails mode and apparently "infinite" custom levels, with a custom level editor of sorts.
- Pikmin 216 offers enhanced overworlds, custom caves, familiar treasures, set for release on September 2023.
- Beginning with a Super Mario Sunshine mod, taking place in an icy environment and then shifting to a cruiser based on what looks like the Daisy Cruiser boat from Mario Kart: Double Dash, and other stages are also seen. "Super Mario Eclipse", with new characters to play as, including Mario, Luigi and Piantissimo, and also new moves. Available now.
- A new project based on the Shining Star series for Super Mario 64, with stages and levels from all the Shining Star series available, with 70 stars, over 40 levels and challenges, 2D B-side missions, 60 new songs, a light Kaizo difficulty and more. "Shining Star: Another Dimensional Incident" coming this winter.
- An interesting one, which sees Mario in the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas setting, with all of his abilities to take on the gangs and streets of San Andreas. "Super Mario 64 in GTA San Andreas" Los Santos release, coming "when it's ready".
- "Level Share Square", a service/community where people can create, share and save their own custom levels from a variety of different Super Mario titles, both official and unofficial ones, for players to experience.
- Next we have a port of Super Mario Maker... for the Nspire calculator? Players can create and share their creations for the calculator.
- Rhythm Heaven: Re-Megamix, a full CTGP-style sequel to Rhythm Heaven: Megamix with custom games, ported remixes, ported games, all new games, new remixes, a new set of endless games, new campaign and challenges.
- Pokemon Cross Stadium is a hack of Pokemon Stadium 1, introducing entire new moves for rental Pokemon based on all generations of the franchise, new sprites for moves and categories, a physical/special split with Gen 1 mechanics, Dark, Steel and Fairy types added, UI info for moves, stats and other things, improved AI, Metronome wars and more.
- "Hat Kid steals the Declaration of Independence: 3King Slayer", a mod for "A Hat in Time" with 4 new bosses, 3 playable characters, and a full combat overhaul inspired on Devil May Cry, and it also includes fishing. Coming 2024.
- A new Sonic fangame, with an artstyle akin to that of Mania but lighter in colours, really colourful, mechanics and entirely new stages. Titled "Sonic and the Moon Facility".
- A new modpack for Mario Kart: Double Dash, "Mario Kart: Double Dash Extended" with 16 retro tracks, new karts, 4P Grand Prix, 200cc mode. V1 is available for download now.
- A new modpack for Mario Kart Wii, with new code extension, retro mode with every SNES and 3DS track, Battle Mode with most SNES and 3DS arenas, 200cc and 500cc, custom music for every track. "Mario Kart Midnight" with the 2022 tracks from v1 available now, and v2.0 with the 2023 tracks coming on early 2024.
- The ultimate DMCA royale is back, with "Mario Royale Deluxe", adding mod skins, inedit levels, a level creator. Can be played right now by visiting the marioroyale.com website.
- A mod for the original Super Mario Bros. based on the Deluxe re-release for the GameBoy Color based on the PC decomp, "Super Mario Bros. Ultra Deluxe" with an overworld map for level transition, 2 player coop, a lot of new mechanics, enemies and levels. Coming soon.
- Donald Duck's Going Quackers 64 had wrong midi imports when released back in the day, and with this new patch, the developers aim to fix this. "Music Repair Patch" does just that, and allows for the proper instruments and pitches to playback, based on the PC release of the same game. Coming soon.
- To go alongside the previous patch, an HD texture pack is also being worked on for Donald Duck's Going Quackers. Now available.
- Banjo Kazooie: Quest 4 Kurkoins is a new mod in development, with entirely new levels, characters, jiggys and other things to collect. Coming soon.
- Banjo Kazooie: The Corrupted Jiggys is another mod for BJ, which will feature 97 jiggys, 920 musical notes, 9 new worlds, 4 new transformations, new music and story, and a secret world after obtaining 100%.
- Mushrooms VS. Goombas is a fangame in the same vein as "Plants VS. Zombies" and it's grid-like pattern gameplay, where the players uses Mario power-ups, like Mushrooms and Fire Flowers, to defend against an entire horde of Goombas and other Bowser's minions. Demo 1 with the first world is available, while Worlds 2 & 3 will come in September.
- "Super Mario Bros. Z: The Game" is a fighting game based on the popular SMBZ show, with 8+ characters to be played as, as well as iconic attacks and crazy combos from the show. Community modding will also be possible.
- "Project Reality" is a Luigi's Mansion (2001) mod, as an alternate sequel to Super Mario 64. Compatible with real console, it sees Luigi in a whole new ghost-catching adventure, with entirely new areas and settings to explore. Coming October, 2023.
- A new trailer for the upcoming "Kaizo Mario Galaxy", which follows the trend of extremely difficult levels (to the point of frame perfection) for Mario titles. Available now.
- "Neo Mario Galaxy", a new mod for Super Mario Galaxy 2, gets a new trailer, with levels returning from other Mario titles, like some of the courses from Sunshine and also the Observatory from Galaxy 1. Final update will release on August 25th, 2023.
- Some gameplay footage is shown of something that look like Ocarina of Time in its beta form, very similar to the Spaceworld images and videos from back in the late 90s. Simply titled "Zelda 64", it could probably a full-on recreation of the Spaceworld '97 demo and images we got to see into the Ocarina of Time engine.
Let us know and comment what other project not featured in the F3 you would like to see.
