Mario Fan Games Galaxy

From Mario Fan Games Galaxy Wiki
MFGG's modern banner on the main site.

Mario Fan Games Galaxy (MFGG) is a freeware website that focuses on creating parodies and tributes for the official Super Mario Bros. series. The site is founded by the currently dormant Thunder Dragon, who still appears on occasion. MFGG is currently hosted by Retriever II's server, Taloncrossing, having been passed on from Willy Goldwater who hosted the site before. Previous versions of MFGG have been hosted on Penguinia, Masaki, EmulationZone, and CJB.

Content

MFGG hosts a plethora of fangames and resources is available for a variety of purposes, although the site retains its strong titular focus on Mario fangames. Users can download fangames submitted to the site, as well as download Sprites, Howtos and Sounds (both music and sound effects) as well as miscellaneous downloads, which can be used to develop their own Mario fangames. MFGG is supported by the userbase and if you have any content that you wish to submit but are unsure about anything with the submission process, take a look at our Submissions FAQ.

As the name suggests, all the games hosted are treated as "Fan" works (like "Fan-art" and "Fan-fiction"), meaning no profit is made from them. However there have been rare occasions where some games have been illegally sold through markets such as Ebay without the author's consent.

History

An early MFGG banner made by Kritter. This was the most widely used one between 2002 and 2004.
Another early MFGG banner that was also made by Kritter.

The main site began under Thunder's Dragon's personal development name, Bowser Technologies, which did not hold a particular focus on Mario fangaming - indeed, Mega Man, Sonic, and Doom also made their appearances - but still contained relevant material. Guests would communicate through the comments section of the Guestbook, before replacing this feature with an EZBoard forum.

Due to the site's generalized content, it was soon morphed into Mario Fan Games Galaxy. Thunder Dragon previously made an EZBoard for Bowser Tech months before MFGG was created, and therefore wiped out the forum, replaced the skin, and used the same EZBoard for MFGG. It has been that way since, having gone through a number of site redesigns to the current version; MFGG 2.0.

Originally the site had a very simple layout, with each game, lib or how-to listed on a single page. This was a huge strain on those with slow internet connections, so the site was re-designed by Kritter who offered to re-build it from the ground up. The site was reorganized for easier access and to improve the loading times, for example, placing sprites into "handmade" or "ripped" categories, which would then be sorted into "Enemies", "Backgrounds" and "Misc." etc.

Eventually in 2018 the main site was updated to resemble the new MyBB forums, and to be more mobile friendly.

The MFGG main site, circa September 2002.

Current Site Interface

Main article: Taloncrossing SMS

MFGG runs through on Taloncrossing Site Management System (TCSMS), a GUI developed by Retriever II through which users may submit, view, and download content. This software is also used on Metroid: Fan Mission, with permission from Retriever II, and was also used for a brief period at Zelda Fan Games Network before the site re-design. The purpose of both sites was to originally do the same things MFGG does, but obviously for different Nintendo franchises.

TCSMS has been met with generally positive reviews and may eventually be released publicly. While Retriever II is no longer actively working on TCSMS development, Guinea and HylianDev are working on an improved version of the mainsite, generally referred to as MFGG 3.0. No release date is currently scheduled, however.

Community

MFGG has developed a strong community over the years, mainly at the MFGG Forums. However, after the events of MFGG 2.0, an almost entirely new community was created through MFGG's new site comments system. Departures of ShadowMan and various others from the forums but not the site has widened the gap between the two communities. The main site's comment system is not as strictly moderated as the forums', and a good chunk of these users are very young or are not native English speakers. As such, many forum members see the main site's active members as immature and uneducated. However there is a strong connection between the two because many of members are active on both forums and main site; and some of the site staff having Moderator or Administrator powers on the forums.

See Also

External Links