BOTVGH

BOTVGH (short for Battle of the Video Game Heroes) was a fan-fiction...thing that lived in relative obscurity and can now be found here.

It was essentially a nonsensical, wacky crossover of every video game (and a few other things) ever with new installments written by tons of different people, though the main cast mostly consisted of your Nintendo classics like Mario, Link, and Samus, many of whom are comedically Out of Character with crack pairings (Cranky Kong X Princess Zelda, anyone?) abound. It has a unique style in which a picture is used instead of a name, but is otherwise standard script format. It was done in the style of a TV show, having "episodes" and "seasons," while in-universe ads for new episodes of things are seen on TV, regardless of the fact that lots of the Breaking the Fourth Wall moments that lampshade the fact that the show is nothing more than a "cheap crossover fanfiction with pictures." New "episodes" were made from 1996-2002, explaining why many of the jokes are very, very out of date. The quality of the actual episodes themselves tends to vary wildly, Depending On the Writer; lots of writers with different styles and interpretations of the characters lead to lots of inconsistency, though the more dramatic story arcs by Sean Kelly were rather popular. The general tone seems to be more comedic with a cynical style and with No Fourth Wall.

Has quite a few spin-offs. Most of them are ridiculously broken - several episodes "haven't been posted yet after the move" (this was many years ago and they still aren't there), several images are missing, and in the case of one of them, half the episodes were completely lost (extensive internet searching will find a few missing ones on some archive)

This work contains examples of:

 * The Ditz: Link.
 * Ash is even worse. It's even Lampshaded once.
 * Jerkass: Oh ye Gods, so many. Especially Mario, Cranky, and SO MANY of the authors and writers.
 * Lampshade Hanging: All the time.
 * Medium Awareness: Confusing in that they are both aware that they're on a webpage and that they're on TV in their own universe. So they're aware of a false medium within their real medium, while also being aware of their real medium yet lampshading their regular medium, too.
 * No Fourth Wall: Clearly evident. Many, many episodes have the characters speaking with both the author and the narrator, and this is merely a casual occurrence.
 * Running Gag: Well, there is this one running- *cow falls on troper*
 * Self Insert Fic: The authors themselves are in almost every episode, though rather than being Mary Sues they're merely regular people who are sometimes even hated by the characters themselves.
 * Shout Out: The cow running gag may be one to Monty Python and The Holy Grail.
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The more comedic (and often better) episodes are definitely closer to the cynical side. To quote Peach, "...........Oh, wait, no. This is BOTVGH; peace is impossible."
 * Spiritual Successor: Battle Of The Gaming Stars, a little project some guy started. Time will tell if it will get it's own website and become popular.
 * Too Dumb to Live: Link.
 * And Ash who ACTUALLY died once.