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ROM Check Fail is a fangame that takes a handful of games from the arcade era and mixes them together. The experience is somewhat similar to WarioWare, in that you must adjust to rapidly changing playing styles. Every few seconds, your character and the enemies on the screen will change. At one second you may be Mario doing battle with a pack of Space Invaders, and the next you're the car from Spy Hunter blasting ghosts from Gauntlet. Unlike WarioWare, there is a single goal that remains the same in each stage: Clear all the enemies on the screen. The game continues for 20 screens, and upon completion, starts it all over again, raising the speed each time.

An addictive game with pick-up-and-play gameplay reminiscent of the early arcade and Atari console days. It can be played here. In 2016, Farbs also released ROM Check GO!, a variation of the game that lets you change characters at will.


This game provides examples of:

  • Artificial Stupidity: The enemies from Gauntlet will charge at you no matter what, even if you're Pac-Man with a power pellet and thus can kill enemies by touching them. This can lead to situations where you kill every enemy in a screen before the switch, causing the timer to reset, and the cycle repeats until you can't reach the enemies in time.
  • Asteroids Monster: Some enemies split into two pieces when killed, such as the enemies from... well, Asteroids. This can be a good thing, as you earn points for each enemy you hit even if you don't kill it, allowing you to earn triple points from one enemy.
  • Bound and Gagged: Cacofanix in a Freeze-Frame Bonus image of a celebratory feast during the montage at the end of the game.
  • Death from Above: Rain of Goombas. Goombas have the unique trait of observing the laws of gravity, making them plummet to the ground if they happen to be in the air. It's also worth noting that anything that falls in a hole in this game reappears at the top of the screen. If a group of Goombas fall into a hole, it's best to run for cover.
  • Excuse Plot: A file containing a bunch of old games has become corrupted and mixed together somehow. It's up to you to... look, just go blast/stab/eat/stomp the enemies, all right?
  • Gameplay Roulette: From Pac-Man to Super Mario Bros. in 3 seconds!
  • Hitbox Dissonance: The enemies from Qix have hitboxes that are the same size as every other enemy, but with a sprite that's larger than it. This can lead to some weird situations, such as trying to kill them with Link (a character with melee range) while not getting hit by them.
  • Interface Screw: Sometimes a level can finish right when the game tries to switch themes, leaving the text garbled until the next switch happens.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Due to how the game is designed, you can often die for no fault of your own. For example, those immobile blocks from Breakout can suddenly turn into hordes of enemies, leaving you completely unable to escape.
    • Heaven help you if you turn into the ship from Space Invaders (which can't move up or down) and the enemies above you turn into Goombas (which obey the laws of physics).
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: Your character, in all iterations, dies if they are touched by an enemy at all. Even if your character is something that normally has more than one hit point, like Link, you still die instantly.
  • Poison Mushroom: The Space Invaders ship. Woe betide you if you receive this while an enemy is headed for you from the sides or below.
    • Rather annoying if you are stuck in the air and all the things you need to kill are goombas.
  • Reference Overdosed: Pretty much the entire game is references to retro games.
  • Scoring Points: The entire point of the game.
  • Shout-Out: The entire game, especially the phrase "Princess is in a faster castle!"
  • Title Drop: In the very first screen:
    RAM Check: OK
    ROM Check: FAIL
  • Unwinnable by Design: If the roulette gives you the Space Invaders ship (which can't move up or down) with enemies on the same line as you, you're dead. Pray you roll something better before you run out of lives.
  • A Winner Is You: After beating all 20 stages, you're booted back to the beginning to try again. You are also treated to a rapidly flashing display of classic end screens, many of which fall under this category. Justified, as the entire concept is old arcade games being mashed together, so it makes sense for the end screen to be a bunch of arcade game end screens that fall under this trope.
  • Wrap Around: The player and enemies (especially falling Goombas) can go past the bottom of the screen and appear at the top. However, this only works in that single direction.

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