Being part of a creatively-driven fan community is a fantastic experience. Everyone shares a common passion - be it a movie, book, or game - and channel that energy into something constructive. Some people make art, others create music. And a few bring all those creative efforts together into something massive. Each entry on this list features a fan-developed game years in the making. Years spent toiling away in the developer's free time, hundreds of hours fueled by all-consuming fandom. And then poof all that work was undone.

The threat of a cease and desist letter hangs heavy over the heads of all fan developers working with someone else's creation. It is the Sword of Damocles, the Eye of Sauron, the all-powerful force that at any moment could shut the project down - but so often waits until the last minute to do so. Here are seven lovingly crafted fan games sunk by such letters.

It's only natural fans would want to spend more time exploring one of the Super Nintendo's most beloved JRPGs. While Chrono Trigger had an official sequel - Chrono Cross - it wasn't the direct sequel some wanted. Enter Kajar Laboratories, the fan-driven developer behind , an extensive ROM hack that looked and played just like the original. Set five years after Lavos' demise, Crimson Echoes finds the original cast on a new adventure involving alternate timelines, reptilian AI, and a resurrected king from the past. These plot points help set up the events of Chrono Cross, thus bridging the gap between the two games.

And here's the worst part: the game was cancelled just weeks before its release. After five years in development, Crimson Echoes was officially shut down in early May of 2009, mere weeks before its planned release date. By this point, the game "35 hours of gameplay and 10 separate endings" along with some new modes and other extras. Basically, everything you could have wanted from a Chrono Trigger 2.

The extensive fan-community surrounding My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is one of the most creatively-driven communities out there. So it should come as no surprise that - between all the music, artwork, and movies - a few fan-made MLP game have popped up as well. Fighting is Magic was a 2D fighting game from MANE6 who hoped to marry the spirit of My Little Pony with the high-speed action of Capcom's Vs. series. The result was a light years away from anything you'd find on MUGEN.

And here's the worst part: Fighting is Magic got hit with a cease and desist letter shortly after helping raise over $200,000 for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. In 2013, the organizers behind EVO on their Facebook page to determine the eighth game in their fighting game tournament lineup. Fighting is Magic was on that list, and drummed up a fair amount of support, but that didn't save it from getting shut down shortly thereafter.

Kids and adults the world over have been capturing pocket monsters for almost two decades, and yet we still don't have an official Pokemon MMO. In 2009, a small team of independent developers sought to fix this glaring omission with Pokenet. Players were able to battle, train, and level up their Pokemon, even though the game was still technically in beta. In essence, it looked like a really crowded version of the Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen games, with dozens of trainers wandering the Pokemon wilderness.

And here's the worst part: Pokenet was shut down on April Fool's day. What kind of a sick joke is that? Plus, if you do a simple search for 'Pokemon MMO' you'll discover Pokenet isn't the only Pokemon MMO in town. So why did it have to be canned while all these others live on? Your guess is as good as mine, and mine is 'bad luck'.

This one is a real heartbreaker. After eight years toiling away on their own time, Spanish developer Bomber Link finally released Streets of Rage Remake. This massive game was a glowing tribute to an arcade classic. It contained over 100 stages, 19 playable characters, and a 76-song soundtrack remixed by five different musicians. It was a beast and, according to the developers, designed completely from the ground up. According to , "It does not use reverse engineering nor a single line of code from the original games. It's all based on visual interpretation."

And here's the worst part: Not only did Sega can this glowing endorsement of their own franchise, they shut down their own as well. A video of a prototype Streets of Rage remake hit the web in 2012, courtesy of developer Ruffian Games. The footage shown was of a playable demo thrown together in six weeks. It was all for naught, however, as the project was apparently scrapped for unknown reasons.

The story of this fan-developed Metal Gear remake helps highlight just how arbitrary the whole cease-and-desist process appears. In 2014, a fan-developer Outer Haven announced it was halting development on its remake of the 1987 classic, Metal Gear. This came as a bit of a shock after the same developer just a few months prior announced that they had received Konami's blessing to move forward with development. For Pete's sake, they even got David Hayter himself to supply some voice work for their trailer. These guys were dedicated.

And here's the worst part: they had the green light from Konami, or so they thought. Originally, the developers and are working on a new game that's Metal Gear-free.

Super Mario 64 is one of the most beloved 3D platformers of all time, and a testament to Nintendo's skill at game design. Even so, if you want to play the game today there are only a few ways to do so. Developer Royston Ross offered a new alternative earlier this year with , a high-definition remake of the Bob-omb Battlefield using the Unity game engine. You could even play it in your browser. But after about a week in the spotlight, the game was taken down at Nintendo's request.

And here's the worst part: the entire thing was a tease within a tease. Not only did we get a very limited taste of the Bob-omb Battlefield in HD - remember, it wasn't up for long - that stage in itself was a tease of a fully realized Super Mario 64 HD, something that should really be in our lives. I guess we'll just have to make due with our $10 ROM dump on Virtual Console.

What's especially odd - and/or maddeningly frustrating - is that the likelihood of a company issuing a cease and desist letter appears almost arbitrary. Why did Pokenet get singled out as the PokeMMO to axe? Why did a remake of a Super Mario 64 stage get shut down when there are hundreds of Mario 64 hacks and remakes out there? And here's the big one: why is there not an industry-wide standard covering this sort of thing?

Look at Valve: they embraced the fan-developed, HD . If all companies required all fangames to be shut down, that would be one thing, but instead it appears the decision hinges on the personal whims of the companies themselves.

So I say embrace the creativity. These fangames are a testament to the rabid devotion of their communities; not to mention an excellent source of good PR. You don't build a loyal community by stifling its creative efforts.

For as long as there have been video games there have been systems in place to ensure that those video games do not continue on unabated. After all, what good is a truly endless experience, an interaction without incentive? Once the initial novelty wears off, what then? Without the likes of the humble health bar to affirm our actions, to measure our gaming greatness, we'd all be utterly bored by now.

Health bars - hidden or otherwise, are as vital to gaming as the lifeblood in Zelda's HUD hearts are to Link. They come in many forms, measuring our proximity to defeat in everything from blood to - well, everything listed here. Yes, you see as games have evolved, so have our means of measuring our ability - or not - to play them well. New stories, worlds, tasks and design ideas have forced the noble health bar out of its comfort zone and demanded that it adapt, to measure all kinds of different successes and failures in a plethora of new contexts. All pretty much hit you with restart hammer when depleted, but it's not the destination that matters, it's the journey. Thusly, today's big list of things looks at just some of the many, highly intriguing alternatives to the classic life bar. Whatever you do, don't let 'em hit zero.

They say that 'the heart wants what the heart wants', and what the heart wants most of all is not to implode out of sheer bloody terror. An EKG, or electrocardiogram device, measures the rate at which that most vital of vital organs operates. It's also rather useful for telling medical professionals when to start beating on your chest like an angry ape. Fear Effect uses the machine's iconic pulsing symbol in lieu of a regular health bar, with enemy attacks serving only to increase its rapidity. Green is good, blipping along at a steady rate, whilst red and yellow represent a state of declining health.

Players can enhance their chances of survival by 'calming down' the protagonist - either by way of stealthy play or through the completion of in-game puzzles. Failure to do so will effectively cause your avatar to suffer a massive and fatal heart attack. We're not exactly sure where science stands on the whole 'death by fright' debate, but it's a fair bet that the game's lithe leading lady hasn't been wolfing down any deep fried mars bars lately, so it can't be her cholesterol to blame…

If only every individual came complete with a sanity meter. It'd certainly make relationships a whole hell of a lot simpler. Knowing your ditzy misfits from your grade-A nutters is an evermore-essential skill. With access to the heady world of online dating, the average person's exposure to amorous lunatics has increased exponentially. This sort of thing should be a default widget on everyone's profile.

Video game sanity meters have been around for quite a while now, though few are held in such high regard as that which appears in Silicon Knight's Eternal Darkness. The concept proved to be so darn popular in fact that Ninty even opted to copyright it, presumably so that they could accurately gauge lost Metroid fans' continuing levels of despair. Unlike many of the entries on this list, ED's meter isn’t an outright replacement for the health gauge, though failure to top up your 'mental mana' will cause all sorts of freaky disturbances to appear, eventually leading to your death. Contributing factors include being spotted by an enemy, or witnessing a terrifying event. Thank God nobody asked the protagonists to play Too Human then…

If there's one fatal flaw in the whole 'average everyday hero' trope then it's this: real people tend to be absolutely bloody awful at handling pressure. Heroes undergo great pains to achieve their ends, overcoming fear itself in the name of goodness, truth and the philanthropic spirit. Real people smash up their keyboards and scream highly specific grievances at their pets. See the difference? A hero's courage isn't for everyone. Some folks have it, most don’t. Where the likes of Nathan Drake can happily laugh off a good dozen-or-so near-death experiences (seriously, did he piss off Death from the Final Destination franchise?) most of us would sooner be reduced to an amorphous wailing wreck.

So it's rather refreshing to find a game in which our avatars actually do the same. Capcom's Clock Tower 3 even includes a 'panic meter', which fills up any time that the lead character of Alyssa encounters one of the game's many monsters. Unlike the aforementioned sanity meter however, this mechanic can actually cause lil' Ally to become damn near-uncontrollable, as she sobs, stops, trips and outright refuses to listen to reason i.e. 'use your health potions' or 'hide over here'. Sounds about right to me.

Lawyers, as a rule, tend not to lack for self-confidence, though honesty is another matter entirely. (*He says, before being sued for 18 quintillion dollars*). It's interesting to note then, that the Ace Attorney franchise isn't so much concerned with the protagonist's self-assurance as it is with the confidence he can inspire in others - namely both judge and jury. Likewise, prosecutor par excellence Miles Edgeworth requires the absolute truth in order to claim victory. Talk about Opposite Land... Still, these concepts remain vital to the series' success, forcing players to really do their homework in order to succeed, as opposed to when playing more, shall we say, 'accusation-happy investigators'. Alright we're talking about you Cole Phelps. You'd never have worked it out on your own.

Also known as the 'penalty meter', these gauges reflect how far the player is from earning him or herself an instant failure. Rather than 'dying' outright, the presiding judge will instead order the player to simply shut up, thereby preventing any additional evidence from being exposed. Lack of facts means a lost case, no matter how well things were progressing up to that point. Penalties can be incurred in a number of ways, though most relate to proper lawyering faux-pas - i.e. presenting irrelevant information, causing numerous interruptions or generally wasting everyone's time.

How ironic that a game as maddeningly frustrating as Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde's NES 'adaptation' should include its very own 'anger meter'. Perhaps they ought to have stuck one on the front cover, next to a shot of that man's head exploding in Scanners. 'Anger level: Dome Blaster'. As it stands, the game's actual anger meter measures how many hits Dr. J - no, the other one - can endure before morphing into his alter ego. Once changed, Hyde can only revert to his human form by defeating scores of enemies, lessening his anger with every successful kill.

The aim here is to help either persona to reach the church. Jekyll is on his way to get married, while Hyde appears to be terested in battling floating demon heads. J sidles to the right, overcoming the usual assortment of church-goers' woes - namely attack dogs and laxative-gulping birds, while H shuffles his way to the left, fighting off all manner of hell spawn in the process. While the game does boast an additional health bar, most folks aren't really likely to notice, so busy will they be slamming their skulls into the TV in vexation.

A solitary 'health bar' shared between as many as four cack-handed friends? What could possibly go wrong? Rock Band's crowd meter is all about giving the people exactly what they want - good music, played in time, with a minimum of drug-induced tirades, prissy refusals to play or other such rockstar-related nonsense. Failure to keep the tunes coming results in your immediate death.

No wait… you're just made to start all over again, like the world's crappiest cover band freaking out at a high school talent show. Potential hits to the meter include everything from missing big notes to the police happening upon that one dead groupie at the back of your tour bus. No, not really. You'll have to wait for Rock Band 4 for that...

Ah the morality meter. What better way to adjudge ethical integrity than to plot the entirety of human experience along a single, simplistic gradient? "Have you been a good boy this month Mr. Manson? Well then I guess we can let those nine most recent murders slide. After all, you are a level 87 paragon". I hope that no one's actually taking their cues from these sorts of things, paying off the occasional genocide by helping a couple of ducks to cross the road.

So, what exactly is a morality meter doing on this list anyway? Surely those things are so far removed from the typical health bar as to warrant their own article? Well yes, for the most part. While it's true that ethical flubs seldom result in an outright failure, some games do choose to punish players long before the alternate endings roll in. Take the Adventures of Robin Hood for example, an MS-DOS game that for some strange reason allows players to turn a man a legendarily benevolent man - so altruistic he's practically an adjective for charity - into a right old greedy bastard. Accordingly, the townspeople could also play against type, by stringing up this bizarro Robin of Loxley by his neck. You didn't see that in the Kevin Costner film.

Despite being named as a 'Sanity Meter', Fahrenheit's unique take on the concept is really more akin to a 'stress gauge'. If the likes of Amnesia and Eternal Darkness can be considered 'straight horror', then this cult hit is more of a twisting and atmospheric thriller. Everything from guilt, to grief, to outright physical revulsion can cause the game's main players to lose stability, edging them ever closer to complete mental collapse. In short, where sanity meters are perfect for measuring shocks, scares and unbearable tension, a stress gauge instead assesses the slow decline of an everyday office worker. That is to say: everything up to and including their big, monitor throwing rage quit.

Interestingly, or should I say rather morbidly, the game doesn't shy away from displaying the results of these overloaded stress meters. Depending on the protagonist being played, as well as his or her current situation these outcomes can include suicide, arrest, job loss and even committal to a mental asylum. Ouch.