Ancient Web: A 1997 Mario Fansite Let Neglected Characters Star

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

In the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario always gets the starring role. Jay Resop made an entire website for everyone who had to live in his shadow.

Visit the Neglected Mario Characters mirror.

Neglected Mario Characters, or NC, celebrates the side characters of Nintendo games through jokes, stories, fan art, and sprite comics. The preserved front page dates the site's Internet run from September 6, 1997 to September 6, 2010, with material still added to the mirror afterward.

In his About NC page, Resop explains that the definition of 'neglected' was quite generous: every character except Mario could qualify. He acknowledges that early NC was mostly text before he began adding new formats.

In 1998, the project introduced sprite-based comics. Resop describes them as the first on the Internet, immediately softening the claim to 'at least the first well documented' example. That is an author's claim rather than a proven priority in web-comics history, but the page is plainly an early surviving record of the technique.

The comics reuse videogame sprites as performers in sequential visual jokes, something both resourceful and perfectly suited to dial-up-era fan production.

Fan lore became its own continuity

The short-comics page preserves work attributed to Resop, while the site's About page offers a recommended reading order for longer projects such as The Evil-Luigi Series, The Mushroom Wars, Mario Busters, NC Chronicles, and The Lord of the Wings.

These were not just one-off character profiles. New stories referred back to old jokes and recurring original characters, requiring the kind of continuity guide that a writer might create for a television series. The homepage also credited collaborators who supplied sprite sheets and contributed episodes.

The address is explicitly a Bibliotheca Anonoma mirror, not the active home of Resop's original site. Its maintainers say they have no affiliation with him and preserved the older material as an unendorsed archive. Old links and image-based navigation may be uneven, but the commentary pages remain valuable as primary evidence.

The original counter notes a 1998 start date and jokes that page-view totals no longer matter. That may be the most accurate memorial a 1990s fansite can leave: a hit counter still standing after the scoreboard stopped being important.

Explore the mirror's introduction and comic index.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.