Welcome back to the countdown everybody. If you need a refresher on last week, click here. Otherwise, the drill is the same: these projects were made by the fans for the fans, and some (most) of these games have lived on to be even better than the originals. Let's get into the top 5: 5. GARRY'S MOD Look, it's already time to talk about Valve again! One of the many modders that made use of the Source engine was a guy named Garry Newman. Using Half-Life 2 as his base, Garry didn't just add to the game or try to remaster, or even tweak, the core experience. He stripped away almost everything, kept the cutting-edge physics engine, and turned his mod into a sandbox with no rules and no limits. Garry's Mod allows players and modders to add literally any asset they want into the game, as long as it's compatible with the Source engine, and let chaos reign. You want rocket launchers that shoot marshmallows? You got it. You want Luigi holding up a McDonald's with a pistol? You've got that too. If you can dream it, you can make it happen in Garry's Mod. Valve partnered with Garry, and the game was officially published under their banner in 2006. It has since sold 10 million copies and been ported to every major operating system. But Garry's Mod isn't just a one-of-a-kind gaming experience; it's one of the biggest Internet phenomena in history, and the flood of viral videos made in the sandbox formed one of the backbones of a growing video-hosting site called YouTube. I'd be willing to bet that few searches on the Internet would yield a higher volume of results than "Garry's Mod videos," and there are still modders fooling around with it more than a decade after it was first unveiled. It's hard to say any more about Garry's Mod--the only way to truly understand it is to see it for yourself. 4. AM2R AM2R stands for "Another Metroid 2 Remake," but make no mistake: there aren't any others, at least not anymore. AM2R is a complete rework of Metroid II: Return of Samus on the Game Boy, usually one of the most forgotten in the series due to its primitive graphics, linearity, and lack of modern luxuries like a mini-map. Development started over a decade ago, when a guy named Milton Guasti—with no programming experience, mind you—starting messing around with engines for the game. He modded them to feel like Zero Mission. the Game Boy Advance remake of the original Metroid that has become the high-water mark for 2D entries in the series. He just wanted to have fun and learn something along the way. Well, it turns out Milton is a virtuoso. AM2R isn’t just one of the best fan remakes ever; it’s also one of the best 2D Metroid titles, full-stop. The controls are airtight, streamlined, and make use of some of the series’ best innovations (Power Grip, Spider Ball, etc.) to open up the map like never before. The graphics are top-notch, the ambience is absolutely perfect, and it captures the classic Metroid feel of discovery and isolation better than almost any entry since Super Metroid. Guasti set out to emulate Zero Mission, and in the end he may have produced the only 2D title in the franchise within the last 10 years that can rival it. When it dropped in August of 2016, the fan community went wild. Unfortunately, that’s when Nintendo got wind of it. Nintendo has made several of the greatest games ever made and are essentially the Disney of the gaming world, but they have an abysmal track record when it comes to caring about their fans over their bottom line. They continuously refused to come up with a competitive, modern online service for the Wii and WiiU, and only finally did with the Switch once they realized they could charge for it. They’re either unable or unwilling to meet the demand for their consoles, leaving loyal and would-be customers empty-handed in what looks like a deliberate attempt to keep sales numbers up throughout the year. And maybe no other company has a better history of destroying their fans’ passion projects. AM2R is yet another casualty. Soon after release, Guasti received a DMCA, but he resolved to continue working on the game and get it to a finished state. In Septemer 2016, though, the final takedown request came through, and production was forced to end—just in time for Nintendo to start working on their own remake of Metroid II. Hmm. Thankfully the game is still available in several locations online, and Guasti has a bright future ahead of him, being hired onto the follow-up of Ori and the Blind Forest, a hit indie platformer. It’s just a shame Nintendo doesn’t see the value in their fan projects—and speaking of… 3. PROJECT M If you’re reading this, I probably don’t need to introduce you to Super Smash Bros. The N64 version is a classic, but almost every Smash player will agree that Melee for the GameCube is both the best in the series and one of the greatest multiplayer games ever made. It came out in 2001 and is more popular in 2017 than ever before, thanks to its rise to prominence as one of the dominant eSports worldwide. When Nintendo followed up Melee with the highly anticipated Brawl for the Wii, it was… a major disappointment. Everything moved slower. Wavedashing, a maneuver that forms the backbone of competitive Melee, was removed entirely—and replaced by fighters randomly tripping on the ground for no reason. Several characters were outright broken, like the famously overpowered Meta Knight and Ice Climbers. Brawl was played competitively, and even made for some memorable matches, but many dreamed of an alternate universe where the game matched what the community wished for: an updated, optimized version of Melee. And so, as they often do, the fans got to work. They created Project M, a mod of Brawl so good that it completely replaced its source game on the national competitive stage. Aside from just recreating the same fast-paced feeling of Melee, it refined the gameplay to make actions like wavedashing and shield-dropping more consistent, remastered classic stages like the N64 Hyrule Castle, and even retooled some of the character movesets in order to balance the roster. From 2011-2015, the game was constantly updated and improved, and the community downloaded it over one million times. It’s one of the most definitive versions of Smash and potentially the second-best, only topped by Melee itself. And then, on December 1, 2015, Project M shut down. To this day, no one knows for sure why. The official reason given by the developers is that they wanted to focus on making their own IP, and that a long-theorized Nintendo cease-and-desist hadn’t in fact finally come in. But while the DMCA itself maybe never materialized, it was clearly a result of the threat of legal issues. Scattered members of the team have stated this, and happenings within the Smash community seem to back it up. Twitch originally allowed Project M streams, but suddenly began phasing them out. GimR, the brain behind VGBootCamp, the premiere Smash streaming and video hub, distanced himself from the project for fear of legal action. So much as writing the words “Project M” on the Nintendo Miiverse forum is enough to get you banned for “criminal content.” The cease-and-desist letter might not have actually come in the mail, but community leaders were able to see the writing on the wall. Project M is still available for download, and still played in tournament to this day. It stands on its own as a top-tier Smash Bros. game and is responsible for introducing many players to the competitive scene. Though the developers had more in store before its untimely end, their achievement ranks among the very best fan mods ever made. 2. DEFENSE OF THE ANCIENTS Welcome to the mod that created the MOBA. Way back before Warcraft was a World, Blizzard specialized in real-time strategy games. In 1998, they released the famed StarCraft, and one day a custom map called “Aeon of Strife” popped up on the servers. It was a neat little idea, with two high-powered characters on opposite sides of a three-lane area trying to push into their opponent’s territory, aided by a stream of weaker AI soldiers. Some people played around with it, but it was largely forgotten, especially after Warcraft III dropped in 2002. A kid named Kyle Sommer didn’t forget, though. Under the name “Eul,” he recreated and updated “Aeon of Strife” in the Warcraft III engine, and released it as Defense of the Ancients. The rest is history. For nearly a decade after release, DotA rose in popularity, gaining exposure through early eSports tournaments and featuring in the debut of BlizzCon in 2005. When Eul stopped updating the game, fans and developers lined up to take up the mantle, including a guy named Steve Feak, or “Guinsoo.” He was responsible for several major revisions, and eventually the player base rose to exceed 10 million. This caught the eye of then-indie game studio Riot Games, who hired him to aid in their pet project, a MOBA-style game called League of Legends. I think you know how that turned out. In 2009, care of DotA fell to a developer named IceFrog, who then received a call from a software developer that was interested in creating a sequel. Any guesses as to who that company might have been? It’s Valve, of course. They trademarked the name, hired IceFrog, and announced DotA 2 in 2010. It released in July 2013 and held the true honor of being the first game to utilize the Source 2 engine, a big deal at that point. It was the first game to ever pass one million concurrent players on Steam, the third-most watched game on Twitch ever, and the most played game on Steam for four years until PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds burst onto the scene a few months ago. eSports has quickly become one of the biggest international industries, and an enormous part of that success can be traced directly back to DotA. Prize pools for DotA 2 and League of Legends frequently exceed millions of dollars, with viewership in the tens of millions. They’ve brought legitimacy to competitive gaming, selling out Olympic arenas and being broadcast live on ESPN. Companies are still trying to emulate its success—Blizzard only just released their own copycat called Heroes of the Storm in 2015. It’s hard to think of one single fan mod that has created as many significant ripples in the gaming world as Defense of the Ancients. Except for one. 1. COUNTER-STRIKE In 1999, two gamers named Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe released a mod of—say it with me now—Valve’s Half-Life, a good-guys-versus-terrorists deathmatch shooter called Counter-Strike. No other fan creation, and possibly no other game of any kind, has had as significant an impact on the culture of gaming as this.
For one, the polish of Counter-Strike was, at that time, virtually unmatched. Built on the same principles of seminal multiplayer first-person shooters Quake and Rainbow Six, the speed and fluidity of the gameplay was almost balletic, and it immediately became the premiere PC shooter of the new millennium. The generation that made up the first gamers, children during the home gaming revolution of the late 80s and early 90s, were now teenagers and college students, and Counter-Strike became ingrained within the culture. Ask any PC gamer of age at that time and they’re certain to have a cherished memory or two of LAN parties in dorm rooms or garages. When Valve bought the rights to the game—and Gooseman and Cliffe as well—it was no big shock. What was shocking, however, was the depths to which they would eventually go to make Counter-Strike one of the most company’s most central franchises. The game has seen multiple iterations since, including Counter-Strike: Source, which Valve used as the coming out party for the Source engine. Global Offensive is the current version, and as of this month, Twitch’s fifth most popular game. The franchise has become more synonymous with Valve than even Half-Life, and to date has sold more than 25 million units. It was also among the first games ever played competitively, dating all the way back to the 2000 Cyberathlete Professional League, widely considered the predecessor to modern eSports. To this day it’s one of the only eSports that can match DotA 2 and League of Legends in popularity, and one of the few to share the distinction of having been broadcast on major American TV networks. It pioneered features that we take for granted now, such as a spectator mode, and paved the way for other shooters like Halo and Call of Duty to enter the competitive scene. Counter-Strike teams have also been present in all of the major eSports coalitions in history, such as last decade’s G7 and the current World eSports Association (WESA). It’s hard to overstate the influence that Counter-Strike has had on gaming, from a technical, cultural, and competitive perspective. It’s iconic, beloved by millions, helped create competitive gaming, and figures to be part of the lexicon for years and years to come, as long as it continues to succeed on the world eSports stage. Seeing as it’s potentially the greatest first-person shooter ever, it’s easy to name Counter-Strike the best fan mod or remake in history.
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