No Mario's Sky No More, DMCA's Sky Rises

Whether or not No Man's Sky is the best game of 2016 really depends on who you ask. Most will, however, agree, that it is at least the most talked about. It's hype even resulted in an indie title so popular that it actually landed on Nintendo's radar and on its lawyers' plates. And so the game formerly known as No Mario's Sky has been taken down by the all powerful DMCA notice. And in its stead is a very similar game, just with different characters, called, what else, DMCA's Sky.

No Mario's Sky was described as that mashup you've always dreamed of. Which practically meant taking Super Mario's side-scrolling platform game play with the procedurally generated content and exploration style of No Man's land. The initial launched version of the game actually featured the iconic Mario, or his semblance, in a pixelated world modified with alien colors and modified Moombas.

It wasn't exactly a surprise that Nintendo eventually sunk its legal fangs, especially considering how popular the game got. ASMB Games revealed they indeed received a formal DMCA takedown notice, which they had little choice but to follow.

But instead of putting all that work to waste, ASMB did what any game developer would do. Change the names and sprites of the characters. So now you have a spaceship pilot named "Finn" and the princess to be rescued is Mango. The art assets have also been tweaked to give the game a more sci-fi streak compared to the Mario-esque first version.

ASMB also injected a bit of humor and rebelliousness into the new version, now called DMCA's Sky. The first level is called DMCA-DMCA and has some similarities to the first level of the first Super Mario Bros. game, at least in layout.

The game, DMCA's Sky, that is, is free to download for Windows, Mac, and Linux. While there might be some copies of No Mario's Sky floating around, do be aware that not all of them might be harmless.

SOURCE: ASMB Games