6 years ago, inspired by the Mario Quest games over at MFGG, I began a fangame of my own following the style. For reasons that remain unknown today the file became corrupted and I had to stop my work on it. I have almost no memory of the first predecessor to LotFP except that Mario faces trouble in a saloon, and instead of pendants, they were stars, directly copying SMRPG.

Months later, I started anew with a completely different plot. Since the central idea of SMRPG was to collect a number of magic objects, I followed the same formula; The Pendants themselves came from A Link to the Past. I didn’t want to directly copy SMRPG again with stars as the plot device, and I couldn’t think of any other objects to collect, so I settled with Pendants, and chose the number 5 because it was different from 7, and 5 was my favorite number. Thus emerged Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Five Pendants. Some of the beginning plot actually came from a series of comics that me and a friend drew in middle school, involving Mario. It was around this time I opened up Gimenez Games, my first website, and posted the 1st and only demo for LotFP.

Alas, as a kid in middle school, like all kids alike, I had a short attention span and very little patience. Plus I had no one to show my progress and have it appreciated. It’s also worth mentioning that I was horrible at math and failed pre-algebra in 7th grade so that also took a toll on my progress. I set the game aside with intentions of returning to it “in a week”, but I forgot. My computers have always had poor care and management, me, being the only one in the house who knew how to get by on a computer; they crashed and in one rare and bad case, wiped all my data, including LotFP.

Though the nameless Mario RPG is lost forever in both physical and mental state, I still remember it due to it being the first; the second version of the official LotFP I have to remind myself it exists by digging around in my computer’s “Old Games” folder. It is the only previous version that I still have the original .gam file to; I’ve transferred this folder to my other computers for reference and remembrance. This version never got far, it never even made it past the meteor, which for some reason I changed the plot: Mario Enters the GIANT meteor and navigates through a maze inside full of deadly smoke. As I type this, I guess I often forget this because I make myself forget this version ever existed. I date this at the latest, from around 2005. Again, my attention span and impatience kicked in and I shoved this aside, and started tinkering around with RPG Maker.

June 2008: At the U. Quicky posted a topic about our old internet days. MugenMidget posted his old website ala InternetArchives, and I suddenly remembered Gimenez Games and looked it up through that. I posted the link, and with his help, I had recovered the original LotFP. The smile it gave me, playing through it again, made me yearn for one last attempt at a remake. With the encouragement of my friends at the U, I accepted the challenge once more, and began.

This 3rd incarnation,  has been started on,  but is on hiatus (explained below why).  The plot is exactly what it was in the original LotFP, with few minor changes to it, and some major gameplay and graphical changes. A Joypad is strongly recommended, as I’m using a control scheme mimicing the Super Nintendo Controller. Only SMRPG styled sprites and backrgrounds I plan to use, even if I have to custom make my own, and when I do, they don’t exactly match the style but whatever!. N00bish Flash animation skills replace the N00bish MS Paint Skills for cutscenes. Minigames every once in a while to mix up the gameplay I also plan to add in; inspiration comes from Daniel Wilson AKA PressStart. I have people who can appreciate and expect me to finish, and that itself is motivation enough to start working on it again soon;  it’s on hiatus because of another project that I see myself finishing faster and easier.

Update: After reading through this, I feel it may confuse the reader so I made a timeline. I know I seem real pretentious in this but it’s the closest thing I have to my first fangame.

early 2003- Nameless SMRPG FanGame
late 2003 – Super Mario RPG: LotFP
late 2004 – Super Mario RPG: LotFP (2)
2008 – Present -Super Mario RPG LotFP (3)