Fangames (or, in Japan, Doujinshi) are typically games, made by fans, featuring popular video game characters. Sometimes the gameplay style of the games in question is as close to the original as possible, but often times have unusual twists or are different altogether. In many cases, the programming is so poor that the fangame does not play as well as the original. This is the case, for instance, for many Sonic the Hedgehog fangames, which fail to capture the gameplay physics and style of level design of the originals.

For instance, Sonic the Hedgehog has an incredibly large fangaming base (possibly the largest of all game series, with other popular series like Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda and Mega Man following closely). Most of the games featuring him try to emulate the classic Sonic formula like Sonic Time Attacked or Sonic Robo Blast 2 , but others, like Sonic Brick , do something different entirely (in this case, a Breakout clone). This holds true for all series that there are fangames for.

Fangames are made with a variety of tools. Common ones would be the Clickteam line of products (such as Multimedia Fusion), by Game Maker, or by pure code (with such programming languages as C++ or Python).

Some companies go out of their way to shut down fangames, declaring them copyright infringements. Such shutdown has been believed to have a chilling effect on free speech, where amateur developers can't predict what a court will find as fair use. Other times, companies have endorsed fangames, such as the Metroid fangame sponsored by Nintendo. Very few companies have ever officially made comments on fangaming, however; one company that has is Capcom, who formally stated that fangames of their products could be made.

Much like fanfiction, there has been criticism of fangames. Some fangames are poor imitators of their source material, while others put a great deal more emphasis on cinematic cutscenes than on the gameplay itself.

External links

• Sonic Fan Games HQ
• Sonic Robo Blast 2
• Mario Fangames Galaxy