The space time continuum is in trouble! Seems a South Korean government from an alternative universe has become a interplanetary super power, and worst of all, they've taken the legendary turtle-squashing Super Mario hostage! Something has to be done before all realities are consumed by the force that is Space Korea.

Up to the challenge? Of course you're not, otherwise you'd be the star of this disasterous series of broken computer games. It's up to the seemingly invincible time travelling duck Quackers Fransisco Duckworth III to save the day. Having been abduck-ted as a child by the Space Cats of Nebula 4, Quackers was accidentally given the powers to manipulate time and space, at the cost of his own sanity, which is rapidly deteriorating as time goes on. Thankfully, there's not a lot of time left, because endless time wars between Quackers and Space Korea have left the universe in tatters. Quackers no longer has legs, so he's had to attach himself permanently to a tank, and he has been joined by a selection of "friends", each with their own set of social issues.


The Super Hyper Paper Deluxe Mario Bros. Galaxy World Land 4 series is a selection of terrible games engineered by a man whos internet alias is also terrible - Black Squirrel. Critically acclaimed for their shocking production values, the series currently spans three and a half titles, plus several Christmas spin-offs. These games were built using the Clickteam product The Games Factory, an IDE that first appeared in 1995. As you can hopefully imagine, that tends to suggest they're not quite of the same standard as PC games you might find on a store shelf today, but as a video game enthusiast I will say one thing - there are much, much worse.

The series was built primarily out of boredom but also to demonstrate the power of imagination. As the title suggests, SHPDMBGWL4 started its life as a Super Mario fangame. If you're not familiar with fangames these are literally games made by fans to fill up the time between official game releases. Though many of these games have high production values and have even been noted by the gaming press, many a nasty habit of re-inventing the wheel time and time again without adding anything new or interesting. SHPDMBGWL4 is a parody of this exercise, and later games attempt to parody... everything, from UK politics to ROM hacks.

Rest assured that these games are by no means "good". The writing is hit and miss, the engines powering the game are swarming with glitches, the graphics are often atrocious and the level design is ridiculous. However, the later games have an overly complex "Stop 'n' Swop" system, which was based on a scrapped feature of the Nintendo 64 best-seller Banjo Kazooie. Rather than just relying on the user to discover six mystery "?" eggs and an ice key, the player is tasked to find a further six "!" eggs, Rice, Mice and Dice keys and various other pointless objects in order to see the "true" ending. The replay value alone has won the series several meaningless awards, because other games of this nature don't bother.

Unfortunately for you, the game is packed with references and in-jokes about topics nobody really cares about, but it does seem to have a small fanbase. Whether you'll actually enjoy these games is a matter for debate.


The games were built between 2006 and 2008, and enjoyed several months of being unfinishable. But even though I mostly abandoned them, SHPDMBGWL4's number one fan who goes by the name of "BanjoSonic", has fixed them up, shoved them all in one nice package and sprinkled in a few fun extras. His compliation, cleverly titled SHPDMBGWL4: Mega Collection is available to download below.




Recommended Specifications:
- A computer built this century
- A copy of Microsoft Windows (I can't remember if these things work properly with WINE)
- The ability not to panic when the game starts shaking and sprouting off extra windows
- Clickteam DLL files. Windows Vista and 7 users - place these in your Windows folder, not your System32 one.
- The patience to download 102MB worth of game.


The future of SHPDMBGWL4? It's not one I can comment much on. In 2008 I started working on another entry to the series, "SHPDBMGWL4 4" but due to the sheer size of the game I never got around to finishing it. These days I'm hoping to have a shot at making some real games by taking a course in computer games programming, but obviously with all the designers and programmers involved in the industry there's not much chance this series will make it to the big screen. There would also of course be numerous copyright issues and the name would have to be changed, though I can picture a 3D platformer featuring Quackers. Who knows what the future might bring?

SHPDMBGWL4 3 Walkthrough | SHPDMBGWL4 3 EX Walkthrough