3D destroyed dozens of beloved characters back in dark days of the late nineties, now known as the “Plague Of Broken Polygons”, forcing them into a third dimension they weren’t ready for. The N64 Castlevania was a catastrophe of careening cameras and clumsy controls, and we’re going to have to pray our secret NES shrines forgive us for even mentioning the Playstation’s Mega Man Legends. But now we have professional 3D rendering tools, an army of innovative internet fans, and people who still love what made the titles good in the first place. Here we see how they’ve brought the old days onto modern game servers.

1. Super Gordon Bros

An awesome modification that’s half parody, half retrostalgic, showing exactly how things look for the Mario Bros in their flattened world. M0rtanius’s Super Gordon Bros teleports Gordon Freeman into World 1-1 of the greatest platform game ever made and it’s a view like no other.

It’s an incredibly fun little level despite being dangerously close to fan-fiction - but with the HEV suit coming out of the mushroom question block, and even the ability to “use” a pipe to enter the underground coin room, it’s about a minute of incredible joy. You can even load the level into a HL2:DM server for some side-scrolling shooting insanity. Not exactly the most balanced (or even possible) level but an awesome idea for a fun clan-server event.

Watch it here, or download it here.

2. TF2 Mario Kart

I don’t think we’re in Dustbowl any more

Teleporting Team Fortress 2 into a game where Mario was adapted into racing - this map involves more worlds than a Starfleet war. The team deathmatch level thrusts players into a psychedelic world of memes, mario karts and moving vehicles. TF2 servers running the map are usually heavily 4channed (meaning they’re not homes of fine teamplay or even coherent thought) but as long as you’re ready to mute the worst of the micspammers you can derive insane enjoyment from this lunatic level.

In fact, I don’t even want to know where we are

Get the files here, and thank the awesome Xenon for making it.

3. Half-Life Vania

We’re back with the best, with M0rtanius taking us to Transylvania - and giving us a crowbar. The instant you spawn you’re transported back in time, not to the days of Dracula, but the 8-bit eighties. The music immediately engages your grin response and the attention to detail is fantastic: you get power-ups by breaking candles, scanners patrol hallways in the classic sine-wave pattern, and the hidden healthpack is still in the right place for those who know where to smash up the wall.

It’s a Source server fantasy for anyone who’s taken the long road through gaming: if you’ve ever blown on a cartridge to make it work, if you’ve ever sighed and started again from the beginning after dying on the last level, if you remember the first time you saw something in 3D, then these treats are for you. And your friends. And the Garry’s Mod server applications are only limited by your imagination.

Watch it here, get it here.

The best thing about having your own server is that you can take some of the greatest games ever made, and play them exactly how you want. Some scum won’t stop using rifle grenades on CoD4? Kick him! Want to play Well despite nobody in the world liking that map? Go ahead! And thanks to the hard work of modding community FPSBanana, you can redecorate in ways you never thought possible:

1. The Glorious Francis Heavy Skin

In the best cross-over ever (until the Portal gun turns up in Half Life Episode 3), Left4Dead’s Francis can escape the infected - to a TF2 server. This skin retextures everyone’s favorite weapon-wielding Russian into Mr “I Hate Everything” himself. Install it client-side and only you’ll be able to see it, but if you host a TF2 server you can upload the upgrade for everyone to enjoy!

I hate RED!

Just imagine if Francis could take Natascha to fight the Horde - why, he’d be invincible! For about ten seconds. Then he’d run out of ammo and die, but man, it would be so sweet up till then!

2. That’s Not A Knife, THIS Is A Knife!

It’s a fact that Counter-Strike servers are still the most popular around. It’s also a fact that the most popular skins are all insanely detailed knives and weapons, which would be more worrying except the whole point of the game is “Use knives and weapons.” If you’re the kind of CS server master who can run around eliminating enemies with nothing but a knife, you should definitely make it a nice one. The terrifyingly specific “M9 Probis III” knife is the most popular.

I’m the one holding it and this thing terrifies ME.

3. Tuxedo Sleeves

Slick stunt-style shooter The Specialists may not have a Source upgrade, running off the original Half-Life engine, but it still has class. Modder “Jeffysan” certainly thinks so, tweaking the code for nothing more than giving you trendy tuxedo sleeves as you obliterate the opposition.

On one hand this is wasted effort - it doesn’t affect the game, and you barely see it. On the other hand, it makes you feel that tiny bit more like Bond and is therefore absolutely essential.

4. Band of Brothers on the Day of Defeat

Day of Defeat servers get some pop culture love with a TV-upgrade, swapping out one of the skins for Ronald Speirs. If you just asked “Ronald Who?”, you don’t watch Band of Brothers and can move on to the next item. Fans may wish to have a look at this fun skin:

5. Dead4Left

Technically the easiest mod on the list as it only copies the survivor skins over the infected, but come on, that’s pretty fun looking. It’s also a bit of a cheat on our part - the mod is single-player only, so you can’t run it on your L4D server, but we figured it was more than cool enough to let people know. And you just know that the community are working on a full multiplayer infected/survivor switch.

6. The Most Terrifying Mod Ever

Say goodbye to Silent Hill, because this is the most mentally scarring videogame you’ll ever see. That chick from the Ring could get on BitTorrent and come out of every computer in the country, and it’d only be a welcome break from the screaming. Of course it’s for L4D servers, and we warn you: don’t scroll down if you’re eating:

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

How can the Boomer be made so much more terrifying by putting more clothes ON? What horrible inversion of fashion, flesh and mortal sanity makes a spraypainted thong worse than infected nakedness? We don’t know, but we salute Darksider1972 for advancing the frontiers of Lovecraftian insanity to find out.

You’ve seen some sweet sights on your Source server - a fully-charged medic dropping to your headshot, the blind side of a terrorist on Bomb Site B, the UDamage when you’ve got a full rocket clip - but some people take it to the next level.  The “Somebody who isn’t actually playing would watch it, repeatedly” level, even though watching someone else play is usually the most frustrating thing outside a Chinese finger trap at the urinal.

1.  Combine Nation

Pretty much the only good thing about reality TV is the parodies - and what’s a better parody of real life than video gaming?  We’ll tell you what: video gaming with the Metrocops of City 17 as they deal with barnacles, insurance fraud, and their own idiotic members.

Combine Nation gets bonus points for resisting all the obvious gags - there’s no silent Gordon Freeman, no “From the nameless grunt’s point of view” killings by the player, there isn’t even a gravity gun.  They do include the “What happens if a Metrocop sneezes” bit, but it’s thrown in as an aside - not a single joke forming the focus of an excruciating five minute scene, as with so many fan-made creations.  Take time off from your HL2: DM server to go see.

2.  Ignis Solus

It also features somebody actually winning on 2Fort, and we think that’s an amazing enough to deserve mention all by itself.

3.  Maintenance Man

The story of an unlikely hero thrown into circumstances far beyond him, struggling against impossible odds (and heavily armed enemies) to save his world.  Who cares if he’s a bad guy?  Maintenance Man is about a gravity-gun-equipped janitor out to clean up Gordon Freeman’s mess, and since Gordon blew off the entire Dark Energy Reactor assembly and fatally destabilised the Citadel core, that’s a “mess” on par with the Death Star explosion.  Yes, he’s the guy who has to fix the results of Half Life 2.

Maintenance Man features incredibly skilled camerawork - they manage realistically gritty camera shakes, despite using virtual cameras on virtual actors.  These guys make something so pretend look so real they could probably sell you unicorn insurance.  They’ve also got perfect timing (the weak point of all wannabe Source server directors) adding wonderful little moments of humor and character in the midst of a serious story.

4.  Freeman’s Mind

You may have noticed that all three of the above were made by Lit Fuse Films.  We’re not going to lie to you: that’s because Lit Fuse are simply the best outside of Valve, and any list of the best Source machinima will always just be “Lit Fuse + a couple others”.  If they don’t get hired to do some serious (and well paid) production then there is no justice in this world.  Now, on to the “couple of others”.

If Lit Fuse are the cinema, Freeman’s Mind is the stand-up.  It’s at the opposite end of the technical spectrum - it’s just the someone talking while playing Half Life with the HUD off, and if watching that sounds like the seventh circle of Hell it’s because you haven’t heard him.  Gordon Freeman’s muteness is the most overplayed joke in gaming history, slightly less original than Seinfeld asking “So what’s up with airline food?”, but Ross Scott gives a genius reason: he’s an idiot.  A brilliant, ridiculous, idiot who’s massively entertaining for everyone but downright hilarious for those who’ve played through Black Mesa’s “unique” architecture.  If you’ve ever even heard of crowbars, go check it out.

5.  Escape From City 17

Ultimately, and we do truly mean “ultimately” because it ends everything you ever thought you knew about the genre, there’s Escape From City 17.  Which is quite frankly unbelievable, as in the-first-cowboys-to-see-a-motor-car-, witnessing the start of a new technological era ,-unbelievable.  Merging the Source SDK, Half Life 2 sound effects and real actors in a way that would make major production companies jealous, its insane quality propelled it to the top of the internet so fast it made Zero Punctuation look like a livejournal.  Released one day, an official Steam update announcement the next - and that’s about as high as you can go, Valve-wise, short of owning a crowbar and joining the BLU team.

The makers, the awesomely talented Purchase Brothers, claim that the whole thing cost about $500 - and if that’s within even a factor of a thousand of being true, you’re watching the next generation of film right here.  The first episode alone kicks the hell out of most of the starting series, online or off, and they’re just getting started.  It remains to be seen whether the headcrabs will be the undoing of their limited budget (zombies are harder to recreate than metrocops), but they deserve every click and comment the community can give them.

Deathmatch Classic certainly lives up to its name: seven years old and there are still people logging onto Steam - you know, the place with the finest and most polished multiplayer shooters ever made - and playing this antiquated tribute to Quake.  It’s so Ye Olden Times you could run it on a calculator, but it turns out that no matter the polygon count shooting at people
is still fun.

A lot of fun.  But there are a few things you’ll need to know when you log onto a Deathmatch Classic server.  You’re engaged in truculent time travel here, and some things aren’t what you’re used to:

1.  One man’s modification
People still sticking with this when things like Team Fortress 2 are available are impressively dedicated to what they like: expect to download a horde of customized map and sound files, as hardcore users tweak their servers to their exact standards.  Most of these are designed to obliterate whatever pet peeve the host hates, so expect spawn-immunity and anti-camp-countdowns.  The bulk of the rest will be dedicated to making this as close to Quake as humanly possible.  ID Software’s magnum opus still lives strong in gamers’ hearts, and many will do whatever they can to keep playing it (except for actually running the original, which has an engine so dated you could probably find dinosaur bones in it).

The upside?  If you host your own HL:DC Server you can set it up how you like it.

2.  True Deathmatch
NO-ONE is on your side.  Deathmatch does exactly what it says on the tin and everyone you see is trying to kill you (and more importantly, so are the ones you can’t).  You might think you’re used to that, but these are people who’ve been here since 1996 in some cases, so while you’re still getting used to the distinctive “Brown and more brown” Quake graphics the score leader will have lightning-sniped you from midair while invisible.  This isn’t Call of Duty with alternate routes and camo - this is you and twenty murderers in an open room filled with an improbable amount of firepower.

3.  Unbalanced Weapons
Everyone trying to kill you wouldn’t be so bad - it turns out a lot of games have that idea - except you’re appearing with a wimpy shotgun and anyone who’s been alive longer than five seconds has a better weapon than that.  The old-school gameplay mechanics include balance-breaking items like Quad Damage and the Lightning Gun, so if you see somebody glowing purple and spewing thunderbolt death think of them as an angry Thor and run like hell.

Why put up with that?  Because it’s incredibly fun when it’s your turn.  Exploding enemies just by looking at them generally is.

4.  Bunny-hopping
A heavily-armed three-hundred pound space marine leaping and prancing like his feet are on fire is an odd sight, but in Quake-like games they’re exploiting the game’s physics to move faster than running and make themselves far harder to hit.  Oh, and sometimes their feet actually will be on fire:  Old school levels include huge lava floors, “haha you fell off” ledges, and various other items modern games have evolved out of.

Keep these simple tips in mind and you can have an awesome time.  Just remember: rockets beat shotgun, and Quad Damage beats everything.