Super Fighter M — A Bootleg Like No Other
Super Fighter M — All Star is a strange game, to put it mildly.
I first discovered it in early November when someone sent a photo in a group chat of Cappy from Super Mario Odyssey talking strangely to Mario. I figured it was an in-joke I didn’t get, and swiftly forgot about it. One week passes, and I open Twitter to see users posting screenshots of a mobile game starring Mario, Cappy, and… Cloud Strife? Evil Mario? Bowsette?
Sure enough, the screenshot I had seen earlier was from the exact same game: Super Fighter M — All Star (Or Super 3D Mario 文明大冒险 in China) by Cayman Games Inc. With finals coming up and a huge backlog of games looming behind me, naturally I had to play it right away. This is my bizarre journey exploring, reviewing, and interviewing the people behind this incredible bootleg.
Since the game is only available on the Google Play Store and I have an iPhone, I personally played it on Nox, which emulates an Android device. It’s not comparable to playing it on an actual phone, but it’s more than sufficient given the gameplay. One quick pre-generated account later and I was in, opening with none other than Super Smash Brothers Ultimate’s World of Light cutscene where everyone dies. Right off the bat, I knew I was in for a wild ride.
After the “borrowed” cutscene ended, Super Mario Odyssey’s main theme blares as Mario, Link, and Pikachu prepare to duke it out against Bowser, Mewtwo, and Donkey Kong on the title screen. Even a dragon was chilling in the background! It was getting fanfiction-y already.
Selecting “Log In” shoves you right into the action as Mario is proposing to Peach, only for Bowser to crash their special moment. One quick tutorial section later and Bowser retreats with Peach in tow. It’s up to Mario yet again to travel from place to place to find Bowser, rescue the princess, and put an end to whatever evil plan he has brewing. Cappy is also there on the side, acting as a guide to help explain the game’s mechanics.
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past 35 years, this should all sound very typical for a Mario plot. Except it doesn’t quite end there.
Clearing the first mission of Chapter 1 introduces some main mechanics and establishes the Broodals (Those weird rabbit bosses in Super Mario Odyssey) as main baddies. Nothing really out of the ordinary there. Mission 2, however, opens with a fight against Odyssey’s weirdly realistic dragon boss. But strangely enough, there’s a random washing machine in the middle of the arena. A bit odd, but surely it’s just a misplaced asset-
Cloud emerges, cleanly slices the Ruined Dragon, and jumps after its falling body with Mario and co. staring in utter confusion. Rabbid Luigi from Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle also pops out of the washing machine, with him boldly exclaiming that he’ll join the group. It is then established that the washing machine isn’t an ordinary appliance, but a mystical artifact that allows users to travel through space and time when supplied with coins or batteries. Bowser has used similar technology to amass an army constructed out of heroes and villains from across the multiverse, and created a galactic empire to rule over it with Peach in his space station. It’s now up to Mario, Luigi, Rabbid Luigi, and Cappy to warp through the space-time continuum so they can build up their own gang of heroes, find Bowser, and rescue Peach before it’s too late. If that sounds confusing to you, don’t worry, because I had a stroke trying to process it all.
Believe it or not, the plot actually calms down quite a bit after the exposition dump. There are a few minor conflicts here and there, quick one-and-done, “Oh no, Bowser got this important item! Oh wait, we got it back,” plotlines, and minor villains getting a spotlight, but it’s a shockingly smooth ride for the majority of the game’s story mode. I’d comment on the ending, but no one has ever seen it. Heck, it might not even be translated at this point given that the highest-leveled player is ~110, while you need a level of 135 to attempt the easiest difficulty of the final world. And yet, we’re not quite done. I’ve left out a crucial detail; the one thing that pushed me to try this game out as soon as possible.
The cutscenes are fully voiced. Or at least up until Chapter 6. Which, for a mobile game, is absurdly impressive due to how much storage voice clips can eat up. The playable roster also has a slew of lines at the ready for when they’re using special moves or doing random tasks. And man, did they hire some phenomenal voice actors.
In all seriousness, these were likely done by one guy and one girl judging by the similar-sounding tone all of the characters of each sex have. And while it would be easy to dunk on them for the dodgy quality, I can’t imagine these were professionals with high-quality equipment in a good studio, but rather some talented people who had no clue what they were getting roped into. They certainly have more range than me.
But enough beating around the bush, this is a game! So, what exactly does it play like? Despite what the name might imply it’s not a competitive fighting game, but rather an isometric beat-em-up with RPG elements. Or without the gamer jargon, it’s a top-down game where you go around fighting things. If you’ve played the popular Nintendo mobile app Dragalia Lost, it’s almost 1:1 that, but with Nintendo or Smash characters instead of original ones. There’s a basic 3-hit combo for low damage, a dash attack for damage and evasion, and three special attacks that vary per character. You can also bring a max of 4 AI companions with you, who attack on their own and have activatable special moves.
It’s pretty straightforward stuff. There are status conditions that exist, but they’re so insignificant that they might at well not even be there. It’s admittedly pretty bland. An archetype system exists to classify units as attackers, healers, tanks, or controllers, but it’s so minor and controllers do so little that it’d be better to avoid them altogether. Healers can also pose a threat since they can swiftly recover entire enemy forces, but otherwise the game boils down to, “Do you have more power than the opponent? Yes? You win.” There’s also an “element” system that helps you deal and resist more damage, but it’s only explained in a tucked away menu.
New AI characters can be unlocked through the washing machine when supplied by batteries, which are obtained by beating levels, completing objectives, or can be purchased with diamonds (The premium currency of this game). In other words, it’s a gacha game. For those who are unaware, a gacha mechanic is an extremely common trend in mobile games where you use a roulette system to randomly get a character or item by paying it with premium currency (Something that’s rare or you can purchase), with more extreme games in the genre being pay-to-win.
You’ll either get the character themselves or shards to upgrade them, with the rarest SSR variant only having a 3% chance to appear. For every 50 pulls you don’t get an SSR Hero, the 50th pull is guaranteed to be one. Very typical mobile game shenanigans. And believe me, you will need SSR heroes if you want any chance of making progress, so expect to make heavy investments into the gacha system. Gear can also be obtained from the washing machine when supplied with special coins, but you’ll mostly obtain it by playing through levels.
Power is also a tricky subject matter, mainly because there’s no easy way to explain how it works to a newcomer other than, “If your numbers are higher, you’ll probably win.” How do you increase it? Well, there are over 30 different ways. Buckle up.
It starts out simple with the concept of gear, player level, and upgrading your attacks. The AI companions also have their own level and upgradeable skills for light customization, but they require EXP mushrooms (Items earned by completing levels) to level up. This expands into badges to build, boosting skills, Kirby Jewels, transfer rules, coin packs, artifacts, almanacs, ascension, apparel, awakening, augmentation, salvation, disenchanting… romancing?! And those are just a fraction of the overwhelming number of ways to boost that little number in the corner of your screen, all for seemingly nothing.
But the absolute worst part — the nail in the coffin that makes this borderline unforgivable — is that it simply isn’t fun. The developers could’ve had 50 different ways to strategize and customize your lineup if it was actually thought-provoking and engaging to work with. But all these boil down to is having the resources to upgrade a specific stat on the best characters you have. You don’t have them? Then it’s time to grind.
It’s fully possible to go days without making any actual progress in the story mode due to hitting a brick wall that can only be solved by repeating the same stages over and over again. Artifacts and Kirby Jewels (They’re basically the same thing under a different name) have unique stat attributes, but each character can only equip one of a specific type, so there’s no wiggle-room to experiment other than how the devs wanted you to. Want to try making Peach into a brick wall healer? Too bad, the game says you can only have one HP Star, but three relating to critical hits and crit resistance. It’s like a D&D game where the DM realizes that their players are overpowered, so artificial limits are placed on them to compensate.
To close off this miniature rant, there’s one last critical issue that, no matter what, is inexcusable. While playing the game, you may have noticed that transitioning from menu to menu will result in the menu flickering off, showing your characters on the battlefield, and then going to the intended screen. In other words, the game is still rendering you playing in the background, even if you can’t see it. This isn’t a simple bug, but rather, a significant memory leak issue that plagues the entire game.
To quickly sum it up, memory leaking is when an application leaves something running unintentionally in the background that eats up RAM, which can cause massive slowdown if not shut down accordingly. Early on it’s not too noticeable, with the game running at a smooth 30 frames per second (A common standard for many games). But from what I can tell, getting further along and unlocking new areas worsens performance exponentially as time goes on to the point of it being unbearable.
My best guess as to what’s happening is that once you unlock an area, the developers created a cheap solution that always leaves it running and has that screen pop up when selected. Early on there isn’t too much to load. One 3D menu, a few 2D menus, and the game itself; pretty light. But when you get to a higher level and have menus layered on top of menus — a decent amount with rendered 3D graphics — it becomes borderline unplayable. As of writing this article, my main profile is level 61, and I maintain an average of 12–15 frames per second. And since your attacks are tied to the framerate, it’s almost impossible to progress normally unless you have an incredibly beefy computer/phone. This is a serious issue that is impossible to ignore.
That isn’t to say there aren’t enjoyable moments, however. Whatever great strategy you can come up with, the developers are well aware of its existence and aren’t afraid to throw it back at the players for the occasional challenging boss battle. As one-note as your characters may seem, there is synergy between party members that leads to thought-provoking combinations. And while the pacing does slow down significantly after chapter 10, the developers attempted to balance it out with several multiplayer and side-modes (Both competitive and cooperative) to test your strategies against the world.
There are online arenas where you control your main character, a ranked battle system where you assemble a team and have it fight against other players’ squads, online-only levels, raid bosses, and more. It’s an extraordinary amount of effort for a non-AAA mobile game — let alone a bootleg. So, why did these developers pour an insane amount of effort into what could easily be banned and deleted in an instant? Truth be told, I really don’t know, but almost all signs point to one fact:
It wasn’t originally a bootleg at all.
And I don’t mean that they stole or ripped off another mobile game and made it into their own, I’m saying that it was something completely different, but was changed to be Nintendo-themed to become profitable. And while there isn’t explicit evidence of their reasoning, there are signs that it was radically different to begin with.
For starters, the game’s icon. At first glance, you might think it’s nothing more than a decoy to throw off Nintendo Ninjas from recognizing stolen assets, but take a closer look at the screenshots displayed on the Google Play Store.
That’s right, it’s him. There are Mario assets slapped on top of the screenshots, but there’s no mistaking that’s the same protagonist. He can also be found as a costume for Tanooki Mario, being dubbed, “The Tanooki of Steel.” My guess is that they didn’t want to throw away their old work entirely and left him in as an easter egg. But enough of Protag, let’s go back to those screenshots.
In spite of the low resolution, you can clearly make out a completely original pirate-esque enemy listed as a level’s boss, as well as what appears to be another completely original character wielding a bow fighting unique enemies. None of these can be found anywhere in the game, and there would be no advantage in using them as a decoy if images of Mario are more front and center in the marketing. At some point, this was definitely another game entirely.
Unfortunately, however, there isn’t any actual footage of the original game in action (or at least any under an English name). Whatever remains of the initial project has since been buried, and that’s honestly a shame given how much time and effort the devs would’ve had to spend making an original game with its own lore, only to be scrapped and have stolen assets slapped onto their hard work. It’s quite sad, really, especially since this is all illegal.
While this project certainly has redeeming aspects, its bootleg origins, shoddy translations, and shallow upgrading severely holds the game back from reaching its full potential. Which is tragic, because the people who designed the game clearly have a lot of talent and potential. With some tighter focus, more resources allocated towards localization, and more diversity when it comes to combat, Cayman Games could have an AMAZING mobile game on their hands. But wait, allow me to backpedal a bit here. Just who or what is Cayman Games Inc?
While I couldn’t find a proper answer, that in of itself says it all. Cayman Games has little to no search results that are actually relevant (And no search results if you include the “Inc”). While you can find them listed on indiedb and moddb, the only piece of information listed is that they developed a now-delisted game called Rebons — assuming it’s even the same company. Their Twitter account has been mysteriously shut down, and the only way to contact them is through their Facebook page and… Gmai account. Not Gmail, Gmai. Which has since been erased from their page. Needless to say, Cayman Games is most likely nothing more than a facade to avoid legal trouble.
In spite of trying to eliminate practically every trace of themselves, the person running their Facebook page is shockingly active and very polite. This got my gears turning, so I bit the bullet and shot them a message asking if they would be willing to answer a few questions. To my astonishment, the PR person responded in under 4 hours, and this was the result:
Landon: While the app has been out since late 2019, how long has it been in development for?
Cayman Games: More than one year.
L: What was the inspiration behind the game?
CG: Smash Fight.
L: How did your team come up with the plot?
CG: Normal to think.
L: There’s been a bit of a jump in popularity recently by English-speaking players. Has your team been surprised by a sudden increase of traffic?
CG: Yes.
L: What plans do you have for future expansions (that you can reveal right now)?
CG: Release the iOS and new version.
L: Are there any plans for Cayman Games Inc. to make new games, or do you plan on putting all of your energy into Super Fighter M for the time being?
CG: Yes, many new games.
L: Is there any way I can get into contact with the voice actors for the game, or is that private information?
CG: Not sure…
And last, but certainly not least:
L: It’s rather ambitious to have a mobile game be fully voiced. Have there been any troubles with the project?
CG: Original painting.
I can’t help but feel like there was a language barrier between us. That being said, the person was super polite and responsive! And in case you were wondering, no, I could not locate any of the voice actors. The player base wasn’t sure who they were, and the developers seemed extremely reluctant to mention anyone involved (And to be fair, I can’t blame them since it might trace the game right to their doorstep).
That being said, it is exciting to see that they don’t intend on stopping at Super Fighter M. I still stand by my criticisms of the game tenfold, but starting from the ground up would be a great way for them to fix the memory leaking, make a more well-balanced game, and, y’know, not have it be illegal. The team behind the game has genuine talent and skill on their hands, and it would be a shame for them to stop at a bootleg game most people laugh at and swiftly forget.
By now I’m sure you’re wondering, “Is this game any good?”, or, “Should I play this?” And the answer is yes! But there’s also no way I can endorse this project from both a legal and moral standpoint, at least financially. If the team were to ever make an original project, I’d say give it a chance to see how they’ve improved. If you want a good laugh, play the game until Chapter 6 or watch a let’s play on YouTube. For now, I wish Cayman Games Inc. the best going forward, and hope that they can create something truly special… or at least legal.
