If you frequent on the popular flash media website Newgrounds between the years 2006 to 2012, there’s a good chance you’ve heard or watched the fan made series Super Mario Bros. Z. This animated series that acted as a crossover between both Mario and Sonic franchises became a massive hit and is still held as one of the best fan-made web series for gamers all over. In order to deliver fans new episodes, the original creator decided to re-open a Patreon page after Nintendo filed a takedown on the initial Patreon.
As mentioned, the original run of the Super Mario Bros. Z web animated series ended in 2012 and lasted about nine episodes before the creator, Mark Haynes grew tired of creating episodes thus discontinued the series. While refusing to give the rights to anyone else, it became apparent that Mark still had some interest in finishing the story. Although we wouldn’t see any updates on the matter until 2015 when Mark confirmed that he planned to reboot the series rather than continue the story.
Some of the reasons Mark gave for the reboot was that he felt the animation for some of the episodes could have been better and there are a few story plot changes he would like to see unfold. A total of forty-five episodes is in the works which will be broken down into three seasons along with one movie. However, here comes the tricky part. Super Mario Bros. Z is a fan-made project that is not licensed with Nintendo nor Sega in which case this story will not be canon.
When Mark first alerted fans that he would bring a reboot to the popular series he did so with the announcement of a Patreon page. This was a means to earn money monthly to help continue the show with ease rather than becoming burnt out when creating the series just as he did back in 2012. Although, the Patreon page was taken down by Nintendo but now Mark has unveiled that he has started up a brand new page whereas of writing this, a total of ninety-five patrons have joined in with a monthly donation of over $1,200 is going to the help of creating episodes.
We’re curious as to how long this Patreon page will last before it gets the takedown notice by Nintendo once again. Fan-made projects are tricky as IP owners can easily stop these projects from making it out to the public and it’s certainly a big issue when these projects earn the creators money. As for now we’ll have to wait to see how things play out for Mark Haynes and his Super Mario Bros. Z web series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5-ErbSrTOc
