The Super Mario franchise has ventured into various genres in the past, but it is hard to imagine Nintendo ever creating a first-person shooter. The upcoming Super Mario movie is generating a lot of excitement. Mario + Rabbids was certainly a surprise when it was announced, delighting many fans with its XCOM-style tactical turn-based combat. The Super Mario RPG developed by Squaresoft (as it was known before the merger that formed Square Enix) for the SNES is still remembered fondly by many, too, but Nintendo has always seemed averse to first-person shooters.
Mario is one of the most iconic characters in the history of video games. The character is so popular that fans celebrate Super Mario each year on March 10, otherwise known as MAR10 Day. There have been many fan-made games as well as mods for existing games based the Mushroom Kingdom and its characters which sometimes draw the ire of Nintendo. The unofficial game that envisions the world of Super Mario as a first-person shooter has so far avoided Nintendo's heavy-handed approach to anything and everything that it deems harmful to its intellectual property since it first launched on MAR10 Day in 2020.
The Super 1-1 Challenge turns the World 1-1 of the original Super Mario game into a time trial first-person shooter. It challenges players to reach the end of the level as fast as possible while collecting all the gold coins along the way. There are also hidden red coins for the player to collect. The Super 1-1 Challenge has just received a new update featuring improved visuals and gameplay just a few days late for MAR10 Day.
The existence of fan-made games is something of a natural phenomenon for popular characters and franchises. Fan creations are a part of gaming culture, like this chart that claims to show the most popular Super Mario character in each US state. Those who are interested in creating games would draw inspiration from their favorite titles and characters, after all. It's clear that Sean Noonan, the creator of The Super 1-1 Challenge, put a lot of love into the game he created.
It would be interesting to see how other levels from would look in the style of The Super 1-1 Challenge. There could even be a climactic boss fight with Bowser, the main antagonist in the Super Mario franchise. Perhaps one day this can come to fruition, so long as the humble fan creation doesn't incur the wrath of Nintendo's legal department. It certainly isn't the first Super Mario fan game, and it is very unlikely to be the last.
Source: Sean Noonan Itch.io