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Super Mario Bros. CrossoverIf you're a gamer of a certain age, the levels of the original Super Mario Bros. are as familiar as the streets of your neighborhood. As kids, some of us could beat level 1-1 with our eyes closed ... literally. Well, a new Flash game called Super Mario Bros. Crossover has taken that familiar game and put a brilliant new twist on it: you don't have to play as Mario.

In Crossover, you can be one of six classic Nintendo characters. Link, Castlevania's Simon Belmont, Mega Man, Bill from Contra, and Samus from Metroid are all in Mario's world now, but they play exactly as they would in their own games.

Jay Pavlina, the 25-year-old creator of Crossover, is a self-described "insane person" who had never made a game before. He worked for an entire year to release this instant classic, including six months where he literally did nothing else.

The mysterious Pavlina gave up everything to get the game done, including his apartment. In an interview with games website GameXplain, he described his living situation during the project:

Sometimes I was living in the worst conditions you could imagine, including sleeping next to railroad tracks because I didn't have money for rent. Even right now I'm supposed to pay rent but have no money.
Maybe he really is insane, because even with the ordeal he went through to finish it, Pavlina claims that the current version of Super Mario Bros. Crossover is basically a demo. Apparently the finished version will really blow some minds. I just hope the game stays up and doesn't face any copyright trouble, both because Pavlina put in a lot of hard work and sacrifice and because Crossover is really, really fun.