Nintendo is unquestionably the most popular video game company in the world.  The Switch is more popular than racism, YouTube is swarming with twenty to thirty-something year old white men making hundreds of Nintendo retrospective videos, and Mario’s got a great butt. With that kind of success and popularity, it’s inevitable that some out there might want to jump on that buttwagon.

Sometimes these are entirely legitimate means, which is how we’ve ended up with two or three articles a day on popular gaming sites announcing a Switch port of a game you’ve never heard of. Others, well, they’re slightly less… legal. And where is everyone’s favorite place to try and make a buck while jumping on bandwagons and trying to skirt the law? Why, that’s right, it’s our old friend Kickstarter.

Back to the Dumping Grounds

As you could imagine (or know if you’re familiar with my work), Kickstarter has seen plenty of hucksters and frauds trying to pass off either some Nintendo-related fan game or mod or inspiration, only to either be shut down by a DMCA claim, or their own incompetence. Then there are the folks who outright use screenshots and videos from Nintendo games in an effort to fool some poor idiot into giving them money.

In today’s video above, I sit down and take a look at the many, many examples of people either trying to milk the success of Nintendo, or are otherwise too ignorant to know you can’t put a Pokémon game on Kickstarter. My god, were there a lot of Pokémon games.

One of the best Nintendo-related Kickstarter rip-offs: “Learn to build AR Duck Hunt in Unity 3D.” What a beautiful piece of art on the futility and joy of life.

So sit back and watch (maybe on your Switch) and watch us go through the likes of Super Mario Bros. Z The Movie, Zelda Black Knight, and whatever this Duck Hunt AR monstrosity is supposed to be. Enjoy my suffering! I hate you.

About the Author

Josh Griffiths

Josh Griffiths is a writer and amateur historian. He has a passion for 3D platformers, narrative-driven games, and books. Josh is also Cliqist’s video producer. He’s currently working on his first novel, and will be doing so on and off for the next decade.

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