The Independent Gaming Source recently finished the submission period for their Bootleg Demakes Competition. Contestants had to “demake” a well-known game as if it were illegally ported to a more primitive system by shady bootleg developers. There were a lot of great or promising games turned into less graphically great games – Mirror’s Edge, Homeworld, Team Fortress 2, and Shadow of the Colossus all got treatments, for example. A few of the submissions, however, stood out to my own personal tastes as notable, like a Lovecraftian Katamari Damacy and a Tetris RPG. Click through for the list.

• “Advanced Set The Rope On Fire Cartridge” by Blueberry: A hilarious re-imagining of You Have to Burn the Rope. Play the original first; this one’s for advanced players.
• “Aquarium” by Oracle: The graphics and music in this demake of Aquaria are brilliant. Unfortunately, the amazing exploration gameplay of the original wasn’t brought over.
• “Katamaran Vs Dalmatian Giraffe” by moi: I always knew what Katamari Damacy was really about, but this game makes the subtext clear: You are the agent of a Lovecraftian elder god from behind the stars, consuming all of mankind. Royal Rainbow!
• “Let’s Roll Up” by nu: A more faithful rendition of Katamari Damacy, complete with music. I do <3 me some Katamari.
• “Protobytes” by scytos: This game actually felt more fun to me than the original Elebits.
• “S.T.A.C.K.E.R.: Nuclear Scavenger” by Pishtaco: Various folks have highlighted this brilliant game that turns an FPS/RPG set in Russia into a Tetris/RPG.

Check out the rest of the games in the competition, too. Just because I didn’t call them out doesn’t mean they’re not well-done.