Most upvoted comment decides which show gets the next spot. ANY show that has ever aired on the network qualifies.

This show was amazing I would watch every morning while I was eating breakfast before school . 10/10 theme song never skip

View Poll

First of all, sorry for the long post. I'm about to tell you about a rabbit hole I fell into and became slightly obsessed with over the past week.

It all starts around 2010, when I was between 8 and 10 years old. It was that weird time when Cartoon Network had invested in live-action series for its programming, probably trying to chase the success that Nickelodeon and Disney Channel were having with shows like iCarly and Wizards of Waverly Place. This led to series like Mr. Young (which I personally loved), Destroy Build Destroy, and the subject of this post, Level Up…

Well, first of all, for context: Level Up was a series that premiered in 2012, at the height of the MMORPG phenomenon, especially World of Warcraft, which possibly reached its peak popularity during that time, with the Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria expansions. The main goal of Level Up was to capture this WoW audience. The show followed a group of teenagers who were friends inside the fictional MMORPG Maldark: Conqueror of All Worlds (which was clearly inspired by WoW—the HUDs, menus, and game art were very obviously taken from World of Warcraft). The episodes had a "monster of the week" structure, with monsters and villains from the game escaping into the real world. The protagonists had to use their in-game weapons to defeat these enemies, all while dealing with basic high school dilemmas like bullying, popularity, romance, and, of course, playing video games with friends.

If this show’s premise sounds bad, that’s because it really was. The series is horrendous—borderline torturous to watch today. But Cartoon Network had high hopes for it and invested millions in a global marketing project. Back then, commercials for the show were running 24/7 on the channel. The series even had a movie as a pilot and was treated as a major event. I don’t even need to say that it was a complete failure, right? Absolutely no one remembers it today. It was canceled after just one season, and now it’s pretty hard to even find episodes to watch.

Personally, I watched the series more recently, and it’s just as bad as you’d expect. But when I was 10, I remember following all the promotional hype and watching it as it aired. My 10-year-old self, who loved video games and never saw them represented on TV, actually kind of liked it? I remember talking about it with my school friends and keeping up with the weekly episodes—I thought it was pretty cool.

That said, you saw the title of this post. This text isn’t really about Level Up—it’s about the game Maldark: Conqueror of All Worlds…

As part of the massive marketing campaign that Cartoon Network launched for Level Up, they planned to turn the game that the characters played in the series into a real game that we could access and play on the Cartoon Network website. And this game was indeed produced and made available, complete with TV commercials promoting it. The ads marketed it as a real MMORPG, and when I saw them at 10 years old, I had to play it. And my god, I loved that game. You could create your character, team up with other players, and explore and loot dungeons. I remember being really impressed that the armor was actually cosmetic and changed your character’s appearance.

But with the failure of the show, Cartoon Network abandoned the IP and discontinued the game. For many years, I lived my life normally, never even thinking about this game—or Level Up as a whole.

Until recently, when I remembered it and thought, "Hmm, is there any way to play that thing today?" And, my friends, I discovered some fascinating things.

First of all—yes, it’s possible to play Maldark: Conqueror of All Worlds today. When I started researching the game, I found a small but active Discord community dedicated to Level Up. There are barely a dozen people there, but they’re relatively engaged. But before we talk about Maldark, I need to make a huge detour here…

In January 1997, a game was released that was revolutionary for its time, and you might have heard of it: Diablo, developed by Blizzard North. A few years later, in 2000, Diablo II was released, an even bigger revolution compared to its predecessor. And then… we had over a decade of silence—no news about Diablo III. It was a time when many players doubted whether we’d ever see Diablo III, and if it was frustrating for the fanbase, it was even more frustrating for the developers. During this gap between Diablo II and III, nearly the entire original Diablo team had left Blizzard North. If Diablo III ever happened, it would be a completely different game made by a different Blizzard…

Among these developers were Erich Schaefer and Max Schaefer, two of Blizzard North’s founders, who still wanted to continue Diablo's legacy. They then founded a studio called Runic Games and, in 2009, developed a game called Torchlight, led primarily by Travis Baldree, a writer and game designer. Runic's goal was always to develop an MMORPG set in the Torchlight universe. Baldree had previously worked on Mythos, a Diablo-like MMORPG, but Runic decided it would be better to first release a single-player game to introduce players to the MMO world and raise funds for development. After Torchlight's launch, they opted to work on a sequel rather than jumping straight to the MMO. This sequel would allow them to refine online mechanics and better prepare for the massive multiplayer experience they envisioned. In 2012, Torchlight II was released.

Still, the MMO Runic had dreamed of never materialized, and the studio eventually shut down years later.

Now, putting all jokes aside, Torchlight I and II are two of my all-time favorite games, and I believe they are criminally underrated as some of the best ARPGs ever made. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon gameplay footage of Maldark: Conqueror of All Worlds and, the moment I laid eyes on it, immediately thought, "Holy shit, this is literally a Torchlight I clone." And I’m not even exaggerating—this game outright copies all of Torchlight I's menus and HUD. If I was curious about Maldark before, after discovering this, I had to dig deeper.

In the Maldark Discord community, I found out some really interesting things. First, I wasn’t the first to notice the Torchlight similarities. Reading through old chats, I saw rumors that Runic Games had supposedly sued Cartoon Network for plagiarizing Torchlight I's code. However, I searched everywhere and found no evidence to confirm this claim—I have no idea where they got that from.

I also learned that it’s possible to download Maldark and play it on your PC today. The process involves installing an obscure browser I had never heard of, installing Unity, opening the game’s HTML in that browser, and refusing to update it—because if you do, the game supposedly stops working. Naturally, I did all of this to play this stupid game.

And the game is exactly what you’d expect—a very basic Torchlight clone. Torchlight I was already a pretty simple game, but Maldark is even simpler. There are four classes, each with just one skill tree (Torchlight had three classes, each with three skill trees). The skill tree is so dumbed down that only two viable builds exist. The attributes are practically useless—there’s no reason to level up anything besides your weapon’s damage. Item affixes are so bland and irrelevant that you never feel excited about loot.

But this is where the fun begins. Remember that Cartoon Network promoted this game as an MMORPG? Did Cartoon Network manage to achieve with Maldark what Runic Games spent years trying to do but never succeeded? Did Cartoon Network make a Torchlight with multiplayer mechanics even before Torchlight 2 was released??? Well, of course not. Maldark is nothing more than a single-player game that blatantly pretends to be a multiplayer one. Throughout the entire game, we form a party with other "players" who are nothing more than NPCs that occasionally send a message to simulate an MMO chat. And the worst part? These NPC "players" are incredibly dumb. The pets in Torchlight are far more intelligent than these so-called Maldark NPC players.

But, as mediocre as this game may be, I have to admit one thing: this game is truly impressive. You can tell that Cartoon Network did invest in it, especially when you remember that it was a browser game. At a time when browser games were dominated by Flash games, Maldark was an ambitious project, with relatively good graphics for a browser game, fully in 3D. And even today, I find it impressive that all the armors and weapons in this game have cosmetic representations on your character (although the art direction leaves much to be desired—some armors are really ugly). Another cool thing is that you can create your own character, something that only appeared in Torchlight 2, which was released a few months after Maldark (although the character creation is quite basic, and it's clear that the original models were designed in one way, while the customization options just distort the original model). I can see a child at the time being amazed by this game. Heck, I was amazed by this game. Maybe it’s no coincidence that I love Torchlight 2 so much and have already dedicated over 500 hours to it.

During this playthrough of Maldark, I decided to check the game’s credits and saw that it was developed by a studio called NGD Studios. A quick Google search revealed that it's an Argentinian company now known as Nimble Giant Entertainment, which is currently responsible for Star Trek Infinite (I love Star Trek—it’s funny how, if we dig deep enough, all our interests seem to be connected, right? Like that six degrees of separation theory). I then decided to search for the names credited in the game, and without much difficulty, I found the original devs of Maldark and their social media profiles (which is kind of creepy, right? Hahahahaha).

Honestly, I find this whole story so crazy that I’m seriously considering making a documentary about it for YouTube. In fact, I was looking for the devs because I wanted to contact them and ask questions about Maldark, Level Up, and the Torchlight inspiration. But for now, this is all I have. I won’t disclose anyone’s names for obvious reasons, but if my hyperfocus continues, I might end up releasing a mini-doc on YouTube about this whole story. And who knows? Maybe I’ll even have more accurate information straight from the original developers.

Thanks to everyone who read this insanity of mine! HAHAHAHAHAHA

Most upvoted comment decides which show gets the next spot. ANY show that has ever aired on the network qualifies.