The Mike Hardy Saga, Part IV: Another Visit
(note: read parts I, II, and III if you haven’t already)
In part three, I took a look at the various Doom ripoffs “created” by Michael J. Hardy. Those were not, however, the only releases he has made under the Asylum Studios name. His other releases include a Frogger clone, a web browser, and a horror game. Let us take another exciting visit to Mr. Hardy’s Asylum Studios.
First on the list is 3D Frogger (mirrored locally here, and also exists here and here and here in slightly differing forms. Note that the Javascript status bar scrollers may end up giving you a seizure if you load all of those pages in the same Firefox window.) Hopefully, everyone knows what Frogger is, and if you do not, be sure to click on that link. Next to Tetris, Frogger is probably one of the most cloned, rewritten, and rehashed games of all time. Because of this, it is hard to find just which Frogger clone Mr. Hardy has used for his version. As I explained before, the precedent he has set can only lead one to believe that this version was not written by him. Note the restrictive terms of his source license agreement, as well as the claim that he has released the source “sorta under the GNU.” Also note that there are two names for it: Asylum Frogger and Asylum Frogboy. Note further the horrendous user interface design, which is a common thread in all of Mr. Hardy’s releases. Any help in identifying the original creator of this game would be appreciated.
Next up there is Asylum Explorer (mirrored locally here). In Mr. Hardy’s words, “Asylum Explorer WebBrowser is Awsome. It is a Webbrowser in the Horror Genere.” I don’t know about you, but I am certainly horrified by the user interface alone. Nothing else has made me want to stab myself in the eyes with a semi-blunt object quite like this before. I am also horrified at how easy it is to make something like this; his source code is a mere 3 kilobytes. That is because this is an ugly Visual Basic-created wrapper around the Internet Explorer browsing engine. Now, technically, Mr. Hardy did not steal anything to make this (except possibly a few of the random graphics), but it is so bad I decided to showcase it anyway.
Finally, there is Fiend 3D: Darkness Fall’s (sic, mirrored locally here). “This Game ranks right up there with DOOM and Wolfenstien Also along with and Better then Most 3D FPS.” But of course; would you expect anything less from Mr. Hardy? Of course, he had the gall to take the work of other people and claim it as his own. That alone, though, was not enough for him; if you are astute, you will notice that the majority of the previous Mike Hardy sites to which I have linked use the exact same website design as this one. The real Fiend team released the source code for free; how else could Mr. Hardy have obtained it, plastered his name all over the game, and started charging $69.00 for the source code? The bottom of the page clearly states that “All the material is copyrighted to the FiendTeam and may not be used without our permission.” Given Mr. Hardy’s apparent linguistic skills, I am not surprised that he might have missed that statement.
“All the material is ©Copyrighted to Mike & name removed Hardy and may not be used without our permission.” Oh, I guess he did not miss it. He merely “reused” it.