CT:CE was going to be an actual game, albeit a hack of a game to make a new game, at least from what I understand, but a game nonetheless, and by the looks of it there was a lot of original content. I was particularly fond of the character portraits... were they made from scratch? I don't know...

Stuff like Fire Sonic, on the other hand, isn't part of a well-thought out game, and ultimately the sprite is a Frankestein's monster of sorts, pieced together from many sprites of differing styles. In that sprite alone, here's what I can see:
-Fire effects from Megaman X
-Fire sword from Megaman Battle Network
-An aura effect I KNOW I've seen, but can't remember where
-Monkey D. Luffy's arms for a punching attack?
-Last but not least, it's a Sonic Advance/Battle recolor

Splicing stuff together to make a sprite like Fire Sonic is easy to do. I can do it, in fact, I HAVE done it. I've got a thread somewhere of me messing around like that (Search "Gutsful" if you're THAT curious, it's not pretty), and to be honest, stuff like that can actually be fun, whether you're doing a cheesy fangame or fan animation or whatever. However, that doesn't make it a submittable sprite, it's just a recolor pieced together with effects.

But then the fact remains: CT:CE's material contains characters that do not exist in official CT media.. So what's my opinion on it? The hard work that went into Crimson Echoes qualifies it as a quazi-indie game, essentially a dedicated fan game with lots of hard work and quality control. And popularity too, that would help.

I've just been pondering more on the subject, running back into the Customs and Edits section to meander through all the old locked posts to come up with EVEN MORE to say on the matter, and more or less I feel like I'm gonna be saying some of the same thing, and I'm probably gonna sound mean to the kind of people who like doing simple recolors and fan characters, but I'm a mean skeleton man.

Numero Uno: There were about 3 different threads for "custom" sonic sprites on the front page alone. Believe it or not, Fire Sonic was the best sheet of the bunch, not only actually featuring Sonic (albeit in a form he never takes), but also because, despite being a Frankensheet, it had some fun animations going for it. Now take a look at Dark the Hedgehog a few threads away, and we get to see the same pose of a crappy sonic edit quite literally rotated to make a flying "animation". In fact, the same sprite is used all over the small sheet, save for a spin-dash pose, one of the EASIEST poses to copy from a sonic game, requiring little more than a recolor. Granted, I didn't even look at Dash the Hedgehog today, I looked at it some other day and it was essentially a recolored sonic.

What's the problem with all of these? No matter what you do, what you say, or what you think, you can't sell these as original or riveting ideas to anybody sane on this site as they are. Why? Well... more reasons than I can count on my left foot, so let me try to abbreviate this.

1. Say I recolor Sonic, and all Sonics are acceptable, I'll just call him by the name the computer calls the color with the name Sonic tacked on the end. I can churn out billions of different combinations of just coloring alone, and eat up millions times more space than all the original material currently on the site combined. The reason why THIS is stupid is anyone with half a brain and a decent computer painting program can do this themselves, all they need is the ORIGINAL sonic sprite as a base. Therefore, recolors are pointless.

2. Sprite mixing is bad 90% of the time as far as higher quality stuff is concerned. The site is trying to have a higher standard of quality about the sprites they accept, from what I've seen anyway. There are issues about palettes and just general jarring visualization that arises from mixing sprites between styles. It can be FUN, but not submittable material.

3. These fan-made characters, more often than not, only hold meaning to their creator, and maybe a handful of people collectively loyal TO the creator of said fan character. However, that doesn't mean they hold meaning to anybody else. And who's to say that a fan character isn't just pulled out of someone's ass? I can create a fan character right now!... "Leticia Belmont, the hottest and only female member of the Belmont Clan's vampire hunters because Legends was gay and totally not canon. She looks a lot like Yoko from Dawn of Sorrow, 'cept she's got brown hair and wears bright purple and has enormous boobs, so I'll have to photoshop those out a bit. She totally seduces Dracula and they have a son, Alucard II, who has black hair instead of white and uses a sword that has fiery red effects instead of blue because that's so evil..." Guess what? Nobody would even give a damn. If nobody has emotional attachment to the character, why would they even want to bother?

I've gone on and OOON about why the bad stuff sucks, so what makes these indie games and fan games so different?

The games and/or the sprites are FUCKING RAD. I'll cite two examples off the top of my head, one a fan game, essentially, and one an independent game. First off, "Legend of Princess", a quickie game mimicking Legend of Zelda, just not calling itself that.. it definitely is Legend of Zelda though. And the sprites look freakin' TIGHT. Hard work was put into making the sprites look awesome, and they are FULL custom stuff (to my knowledge). And the game is awesome too! That's how stuff like that ends up going into an actual game section rather than the regular customs section.

The second example is Cave Story. Original game and characters, lovely style, popular cult following: pure genius. Seriously, when I first saw the sprites for this game, I NEVER for ONE MOMENT thought that just one guy had created all those sprites. And I didn't even look up the footage for the actual game until years later, and then I found out that not only did he do all those sprites alone, but programmed a whole game alone. THAT is impressive, and that is worthy of being called an genuinely worthwhile game.

It is a labor of love, with time, hard work, and dedication put into a project meant for all to enjoy, that everyone DOES enjoy.