Kickstarter drama: Is a well-funded Ron Paul video game a cheap cash-in?

Hats off to Something Awful’s Jon Hendren for sniffing out a story suggesting, potentially, a crafty exploitation of a political base. Basically, a fellow named Daniel Williams launched a Kickstarter effort to fund his independently produced Ron Paul-themed platform game, ostensibly in the “style” of Super Mario Bros. You may have heard about it. Much of the art hitherto released from the effort, however, which has already netted nearly $10,000 in donations, is crudely cribbed from other games. As seen above — Ron Paul himself appears to be a simple re-skinning of Nintendo’s Waluigi, while the throng of Paul supporters are sprites taken from the endlessly charming SNES game Earthbound. And oh yeah, that weird, puffed up, ambulatory George W. Bush head? That’s ripped from the award-winning indie masterpiece Braid. Williams, for his part, has denounced the criticisms as “trolls” trying to “make some noise.”  (EDIT to fix spelling of Jon Hendren’s name)