Era's Adventures
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Era's Adventures 3D (or just Era's Adventures) was a platform puzzle game released for only Android developed by An-dev. It was released in late February of 2013, and Nintendo took legal action against the game only two weeks later due to the character "Era" having an almost identical appearance to the Mario character Yoshi. The game was then put back on Google Play and Era was given a new design, with her skin being blue with the addition of a red cap, but it still looked too much like Yoshi, causing it to get removed again in 2014 permanently. The character for Era was then replaced with an original dog character, with the game being renamed to Jack 3D, in which it can still be found on the Play Store to this day.
When the game was removed, the creator claimed that he just downloaded the 3D model off of TurboSquid and wasn't aware of it being a Mario character as he wasn't a Mario fan. However, some believe that he could just be lying given how popular the Super Mario franchise is worldwide.
Gameplay
The gameplay is extremely basic. It features a green female dinosaur named "Era", with very little plot. The player must control Era to shoot flaming mucus at objects such as boxes and crates in order to collect keys. Once the player has collected all 3 keys, the door opens, allowing them to complete the level.
Why Yoshi Should Eat It
- The character "Era" is obviously just Yoshi, looking almost identical to the latter character.
- Extremely basic and repetitive gameplay, especially for that a mobile game. All you do is just walk around, shoot flames at objects, and open chests. That's it.
- The graphics are quite dull even for that of 2013 3D mobile game standards.
- Yoshi, or Era in this case, looks very out of place with the rest of the game as the environment is quite gritty while Era is cartoony.
- Speaking of Era, her in-game model is quite uncanny to look at and is badly compressed with her eyes being very polygonal.
- Repetitive on-loop music. It's just the same short piano loop throughout the entire game. In fact, you can even hear when the music loops.
- Somewhat stiff controls, with Yoshi walking kind of slowly, and the jumping being somewhat broken. There is also no way to run or turn the camera around manually in this game either.
- While there is a powerup that allows you to run faster, it's wasted as it's only temporary and makes Era even harder to control.
- No boss fights or enemies whatsoever, despite the beginning of the game showing Era getting trapped.
- The game is very short as it can simply be beaten in under 20 minutes.
The Only Redeeming Quality
- Some of the game's levels can be a bit fun to play, being better than the other levels.
Reception
"Actually, this is an indie game developed by one developer, so due to the limitation of effort, I purchased a cute character from TurboSquid, one of the biggest 3D asset stores, without knowing the background story of the character Yoshi, since I'm not a Super Mario fan.... Once the game was released on the Play Store, after spending hundreds of hours in making the game, I started receiving 'kind' mails from Super Mario fans that I stole Yoshi, etc. So I started Googling and I realized that the character is really from the Super Mario series."
— Andev's response
Upon release, the game was criticized by several players, Mario fans, and some reviewers due to the game blatantly stealing Yoshi and calling it "Era", with the developer responding to this by claiming that he just downloaded the 3D model off of TurboSquid, with him not being aware of it being a Mario character as he wasn't a Mario fan, however, this has received some skepticism as many believed that he could just be lying, given how, as stated above, popular the Mario series is worldwide.