Fan Games
What Are Fan Games?
Fan games (often called "fangames") are unofficial video games created by enthusiasts as tributes to existing franchises, such as popular series from Nintendo, Sega, or other developers. These projects are typically non-commercial and made for fun, creativity, or to fill gaps in official content—like imagining "what if" scenarios or remaking old titles with modern twists. Fans use tools like game engines (e.g., Unity, Godot, or RPG Maker) to build them, often incorporating elements inspired by the originals while respecting fair use guidelines.
Unlike official games, fan games aren't sold for profit and can face legal challenges if they infringe on copyrights (e.g., using protected assets without permission). However, many thrive in communities like itch.io or Game Jolt, and some even get developer blessings or inspire professional work. On this wiki, we document them to preserve their history and encourage collaborative editing.
Brief History of Well-Known Projects
Fan games have roots in the early modding scene of the 1990s, when players modified games like Doom (1993) or Quake (1996) to create new levels or total conversions. These mods were precursors to full fan games, as tools became more accessible.
In the 2000s, software like RPG Maker enabled easier creation, leading to projects inspired by series like EarthBound (e.g., early fan remakes around 2000). The internet helped distribute them, fostering communities.
Notable modern examples include:
- Black Mesa (2012, full release 2020): A fan remake of Half-Life (1998) that updated graphics and gameplay, eventually sold on Steam with Valve's approval.
- AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) (2016): A polished remake of Metroid II (1991), praised for its quality but taken down by Nintendo—highlighting the legal tightrope fan creators walk.
- Pokémon Uranium (2016): A complete fan-made Pokémon game with original regions and creatures, developed over nine years by a small team.
- Pizza Tower (2023): Started as a Wario Land fan game but evolved into an original indie hit, showing how fan projects can launch careers.
A Note About Running Older Fan Games
Older fan games often run into problems when attempting to run them on newer hardware. Below is a list of fixes and patches that will allow you to enjoy these titles.
Klik 'n Play
These games were designed to run on 16 Bit windows hardware and, sadly, are incompatible with 64 bit Windows operating systems. There are 2 ways to get these working:
- WineVDM: This is an application that you can install to run 16-bit applications on 64 Bit Windows platforms. If you don't have it installed already, this app requires Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2017 (32-bit) in order to function. This is the easiest method to run older games.
- VirtualBox / QEMU/KVM / VMware Workstation: These are essentially "Virtual Machines" that you can install and run older operating systems on. These are harder to setup than WineVDM, but is recommended for users that run Linux or don't want WineVDM installed on their machines.
Some games may not run without the required DLL files. Either extract these to the game folder or System32 if you're using Windows.
GameMaker 6
Game Maker 6 games unfortunately had major issues running after the roll out of Windows Vista. This has been addressed in future iterations of the tool, but games exported using GM6 had to be patched to run on newer OSes. As such, the GM6 Converter Tool is a definite must. This will read the game EXE and patch it to run on Vista and newer version of Windows. Note: SFGD will always attempt to place pre-patched EXEs into the game zip archive, but the tool is here just in case.
The Games Factory / Click & Create / Multimedia Fusion
Every once in a while, we'll come across games made with the above mentioned tools that require a specific .DLL file to run. We've created a ZIP containing all of these DLLs. Either extract them into the game folder, or into your System32 folder if you're running Windows.
RPG Maker
Some games have trouble running on modern hardware without an external Runtime Package installed beforehand. The RPG Maker website has [legit versions available](https://www.rpgmakerweb.com/run-time-package), but a lot of earlier fan games were made using... less legitimate means, making the official RTPs incompatible without some extra legwork. For those who wish to skip the hassle, these RTPs have been uploaded here.
English
Japanese
Browse Fan Games
For more exploration across the wiki, check out these sections:
- Fan Games by Series - Fan games organized by the series they are based on.
- Fan Games by Developer - Fan games organized by their respective developers.
- Fan Games by Platform - Fan games organized by the platform they run on natively.
- Fan Games by Engine/Framework/SDK - Fan games organized by the engine/framework/sdk they were made using.
- Fan Games by Status - Fan games organized by completion status.