HydroJames
Shining Sea Dragon
What you see before are not the Giana Sisters, but Giana and her super-powered alter-ego, Punk Giana. They got their start on gaming home computers like the Amiga and Commodor 64.
Back when Super Mario Bros. was gaining popularity for how it revolutionized platformers, people who couldn't afford an NES wanted a version of it for their home computers. German video game developer Rainbow Arts would approach Nintendo with a home computer port of Super Mario Bros., but, of course, they would turn it down.
Rainbow Arts would then transform their port into their own game with striking similarities to Super Mario Bros.
Enter The Great Giana Sisters, released on May 6, 1987.
In place of Mario and Luigi were Giana and Maria, owls replaced Goombas, gems were collected instead of coins, and so on and so forth.
Not only did this game borrow heavily from Super Mario Bros., some box arts and ads took shots at it.
Due to this combination, Nintendo would file a lawsuit, ordering all copies of the game to be pulled from shelves.
By all accounts, this game should have been just another Super Mario Bros. clone that faded into obscurity, but it miraculously didn't. It was kept alive by fans sharing it through piracy. It was a cult classic and it went down in history as one of the most pirated games of all time.
It had enough of a fan following to receive an official sequel, on the Nintendo DS of all things.
It was released on 2009 in Europe and Australia and 2011 in North America. It is also available on iOS and Android. It would be the final Giana Sisters games to be worked on by German programmer Armin Gessert before he passed away from a heart attack at the age of 46.
But this also wouldn't be the end for the series either.
Black Forest Games would launch a Kickstarter for "Project Giana". The campaign was successful and born was Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams!
This platforming game features a unique mechanic where you can freely switch between your alternate selves, changing your abilities and the world around you.
Cute Giana would run through the edgy world while Punk Giana travels through the cute world.
The is so radically different from the previous installments that one can look at it and not tell the series has its roots as a blatant Super Mario Bros. clone.
Has anyone here experienced or even heard of the Giana Sisters?
