Sunday, December 12, 2010

A Merry Hardcore Gaming Christmas!


Once again its getting time to become a little more silent and holy - in a crazy, busy, consumerism kinda way, of course. Most media have recognized the power of this holiday of consumption sprees, but not all of them still remember the no doubt outdated, more contemplative aspects of the time.

You'll hardly ever see a year go by without at least one specificly christmassy movie showing up in theaters, while game sites and magazines will rather suggest you put Call of Duty or Madden under the christmas tree. And it's not the least bit their fault, as they simply don't have much choice. With the exception of the odd movie license, Christmas games are an especially rare breed. One is tempted to conclude the competitive nature of video games just doesn't go well along with the holiday of love. But it hasn't always been this way. Let's take a look at what offered the nerds of yesteryear the opportunity to feel Christlike while avoiding to have to spend time with their loved ones.

Out of competition are licensed games (Home Alone, Nightmare before Christmas, etc.) and MMO specials (those are legion).

These are the games you should really get for christmas:




Maria's Christmas Box (1988)
The oldest Christmas game we could think of is ... actually pretty weird for a christmas game. (Now vintage) British glamour girl Maria Whittaker dons the Santa Outfit, mostly to take it off again in a game of strippoker. Way to start our family holiday special!





Snatcher (1988)
Nothing says holiday season like a hardboiled detective and robot side-kick tracking body-snatching biomechanical monsters through a futuristic cyberpunk city. If Gillian and Metal Gear visit the city square, not only does a jazzy rendition of jingle bells play in the background, but the two discuss their Christmas plans and Metal promises not to let Gillian spend it alone. Aww, now that's the holiday spirit.




Father Christmas (1989)
Oh no, Santa has overslept. Now he really has to hurry to build his sled and get those presents delivered. If only those pesky elves would stop stealing the parts of the sled from him. (I thought they were supposed to be his helpers?) Then of course follows the actual ride. Santa delivers all continents, America, Europe, Africa (not depicted racially insensitive at all, see the first screenshot of this post), the Eskimos in Antarctica (sic!) and Finland. Finland??? Poor little Asian and Australian kids...



James Pond 2: Codename Robocod (1991)
So you think the idea of a fish in the British Secret Service is stupid and ridiculous? So how about a sequel with a fish in a robo suit to walk on dry land whose mission it is to liberate Santa's workshop from the evil Dr Maybe? Yeah, I figured you'd love it.



X-Mas Lemmings / Holiday Lemmings (1991-1994)
The Lemmings became christmassy a whole four times. Each year from 1991 to 1994 DMA Design released a special level pack for the joyous season. They alway used the same set of graphics, though. The concept of the game where you have to assign various jobs to the suicidal little critters to make them reach the level door stays untouched.




Secret of Mana (1993)
Not a christmas game per se, but in the all time favourite by Squaresoft you get to visit Santa (complete with Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer) in his hut inmidst a frozen forest. After you beat him to a pulp in his huge creepy ogre form, that is. Far East of Eden Zero features Santa, too.






Daze Before Christmas (1994)
While christmas specials were abundant at the time, original christmas games had become rare in the 90's. Daze Before Christmas is a nice if stock platformer that occasionally makes clever attempts to integrate christmas tradition into the gameplay, for example the 24 levels are presented as the doors of an Advent calendar. For whatever reason Santa turns into the devil when he drinks a cup of coffee.



Jack in the Dark (1994)
Before finishing the sequel to their legendary hit Alone in the Dark, Infogrames first used this neat little game to showcase their current engine version. The game actually takes place at halloween, which gives the little witch enough time to break into the toy shop and free Santa from the grasp of the evil jack-in-a-box.



Rise of the Triad (1994)
If you really have to shoot pixel people in the head in first person on christmas, try Rise of the Triad. The classic FPS actually contains several "easter eggs" for several holidays, christmas of course was no ecxeption. (Day 1 buyers soon got the opportunity to experience this, as the game was released on december 21st.) Not only wears one of the characters a Santa hat, the music is also replaced by a tune that masters the seemingly impossible task of instilling feelings of neighbourly love just as much as the desire to blow shit up with huge guns.




Jazz the Jackrabbit Holiday Hare (1995) & Jazz Jackrabbit 2: Holiday Hare 98 (1998)
Sonic's Rival on the PC got the christmas treatment twice, each time with a few winter-themed extra levels. The second game actually contains almost as much easter levels.



ESP Ra. De. (1996)
Yepp, Cave's bullet hell shooter is set at christmas 2018. You would hardly notice most of the time except for the ending, though. They don't go to church for evening mess, that's for sure. When looking closer, there are a number of visual clues scattered throughout the stages, though.












Christmas NiGHTS (1996)
The last of the promotional christmas specials in this list. Christmas Nights, like Rise of the Triad, also supports special events for several other dates, according to the Saturn's internal clock.








Shenmue (1999)
The plot of Shenmue isn't actually about christmas, but with it taking place in winter, chances are you'll eventually get to experience the holidays in Yokosuka, with the believable artificial world recognizing the occasion. Despite the sometimes grief themes, many events in the game are full of christmas spirit, like Ryu helping a small girl to bring up an orphaned kittie.



Deathsmiles IIX (2009)
The original Deathsmiles had a strong Halloween theme, but its sequel shifts things up a few months to take place during Christmas. There's the sound of jingle bells in the air, the white dusting of snow on the ground...and a fiendish bastardization of St. Nick named Satan Claus at the penultimate foe.






There's obviously more games to note (Parasite Eve, Napple Tale, etc.), but this should you keep busy for this year's holidays. If the above are not the right games to go on your wish list, check out the thread on our forums for more suggestions. Thank you so match for playing and do have a Merry Christmas (when it hits in about 2 weeks)!
Posted by derboo at 2:18 PM 8 comments
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Saturday, December 11, 2010

The IndieGround - Indie Picks of the Moment



It's safe to say that indie gaming has exploded in the lasts few years. What was once the realm of hobbyists has turned into a viable alternative to mainstream gaming. The recent success of Super Meat Boy on XBox Live Arcade and PC is proof enough. For gaming enthusiasts who prefer the "good old days", many indie games recapture the quirky spirit that was prevalent during the 8-bit and 16-bit era. As such, it is a subject that is a tight fit for HG101. There are literally hundreds of indie games out there of all kinds to be played, and while I could never cover all of them, I would like to cover some of the more interesting ones that I have played recently.

(Thanks goes out to Sotenga for the article title!)

Update: The systems the games can be played on has been added!



But that was [Yesterday] - OneMrBean

Price - Free

System - Flash enabled browser



But that was [Yesterday] is a short but sweet browser game and winner of the recent Jayisgames Casual Game Design Competition 9. The best way to describe the game is a short, interactive adventure: the game plays out on a linear path with only 3 buttons to contend with (left, right and up). The main meat of the game is the story, told via a series of flashback events that you play through as you come to obstacles in the main level. In each story segment, you learn a new ability that allows you to move further in the main level until you reach the end.

Saying any more would spoil the experience, but one thing I will mention is the ending mechanic: the ending changes depending on what time of day you play the game, with three endings to see in all. While somewhat frustrating, it's an interesting implementation of branching endings seen in many games.


Super Crate Box - Vlambeer

Price - Free

System - PC / MAC



Super Crate Box Trailer

Take one part platform shooter, drop it into a closed arena with constantly spawning enemies, paint on a charming retro coat of paint, and you have Super Crate Box. SCB plays like your standard platform shooter: you run, jump and shoot at constantly spawning waves of enemies with a variety of weapons. What makes SCB stand out however is the scoring system. Rather than scoring by killing monsters, you instead score by collecting crates filled with weapons. Each crate you pickup changes the weapon you use, making the game more or less challenging depending on what you get.

Enemies spawn from the top of the screen and make their way down. Should they fall into the pit of fire at the bottom of an arena, they will respawn as tougher, angrier versions which move faster. You start the game with only one arena and a few weapons to play around with, but as you collect crates, new weapons, characters and levels are unlocked. Weapons unlock based on the cumulative number of crates you collect, while unlocking new locales and characters requires reaching a high score in each level. There are three arenas of varying difficult, 20+ weapons, and a higher difficulty mode to find as you progress.

The scoring mechanic forces players to keep moving and adapt as their arsenal changes. With the constant flow of monsters and random spawn locations for crates, it can even be advantageous to let monsters pass through the bottom of the screen and become tougher until a better weapon appears. SCB is a challenging game, so expect to die early and often. Finding a good rhythm can take time, but once you do, there is nothing more thrilling than holding out for 5 minutes or more as you collect crate after crate.


Octodad - Octodad Team

Price - Free

System - PC



Octodad Trailer

Octodad concerns itself with the exploits of an octopus pretending to be a doting husband. The titular Octodad must build a decoy so he can slip away unnoticed during his wedding anniversary. However, before he can do so, he must contend with everyday chores assigned to him by his wife and two children. What would be a simple task for the average vertebrate proves challenging for Octodad, who lacks bones.

As Octodad, you use the mouse to move around and interact with the environment. To move, you simply hold the left or right mouse button to control Octodad's left or right foot respectively, then move the mouse to reposition him. To interact with the environment, a simple tap of the spacebar causes Octodad to make use of his dominant tentacle, which can pick up and reposition any items he finds. Those familiar with the trainwreck that was Trespasser will have flashbacks: the controls for moving Octodad's arm are very similar to the failed dino shooter.

There is also a suspicion meter, which acts as your health bar. Do anything suspicious and a splat of ink hits the screen as the bar fills up. However, outside of the timed challenges, suspicion never really comes into play. Your family doesn't seem to mind your awkward flailing. The only things I found that will raise your suspicion are in the beginning tutorial and the fireplace: sticking a tentacle in there is a no-no.

Despite how awkward it is controlling Octodad, it never manages to be frustrating or too cheap, and watching him flop around is a joy to behold. Octodad was made as a student project for DePaul University, and while it's rough around the edges, it provides a lighthearted, enjoyable experience.


More indie games will be incoming as I find the time to play them.
Posted by Snarboo at 1:42 PM 3 comments
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12/11 Update - Aki Wrestling Games, Delphine Adventure Games, Gaia Seed, ESP Ra. De.



I know practically nothing about wrestling, as this article on Aki Wrestling Games is ridiculously comprehensive, detailing all of the titles made by the Japanese company, how they were localized for the American audience, their competition at the time, and how they ended up start the Def Jam series. To follow up the Out of This World article from last week, I put up a small bit about Delphine Adventure Games, a trio of titles they developed in their early years. They seem to get a lot of love from Amiga fans, but since I don't quite have that twinge of nostalgia, I can't say they've really aged well. But you can definitely see how they influenced Out of This World and Flashback, especially in Future Wars, which had graphics by Eric Chahi.

On the shooter side, we have a review of Gaia Seed, which is an expanded version of the write-up on the blog from about a year ago. It was recently released on the US PSN thanks to Monkey Paw Games, and it's a good way to play a cheap shooter, especially considering that a physical copy will run you approximately $150. And finally, to follow up on Dangun Feveron, here's a review of ESP Ra. De., featuring psychic humans blowing up crap in near-futuristic Tokyo. It's the predecessor to the more popular Espgaluda series, the second of which was ported to the 360 at the beginning of the year (and the regular edition is region free! Yay! But the awful exchange rate means it will cost you at least $80! Boo!) And since we're talking about old shooters being released on DD services, we decided to dig up Cho Aniki to revise it a bit. The original PCE game is available on the US Wii Virtual Console, the PSOne game (the one with the extremely bizarre digitized sprites) is on the US PSN thanks to Monkey Paw (again), and the recent PSP game (the one with the wang logo) is also out on the PSN courtesy of Aksys. So classy.
Posted by Discoalucard at 11:13 AM 4 comments
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Dezaemon Plus / Dezaemon+ on PSN デザエモン+

Recently released on the US PSN, this PS1 shmup creator allows you to create (almost) any kind of 2D you can imagine. There’s also a really handy guide to get you started.
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I want to apologise for using camera shots – while most other PS1 game saves can be taken from a PS3 and converted using MemcardRex 1.4, to work on emulators such as epsxe, for some reason Dezaemon’s won’t convert properly. The emulator recognises it, but when I tried to load the save data in the game’s ISO running on epsxe, it freezes. So I’m afraid you’ll either need it on PS3, or be able to place the data onto an actual PS1 memory card and run it on the actual hardware.
If anyone can fix this problem, so the save works on my PC, please let me know, since I’d like to take screens of my game for the upcoming HG101 article on the Dezaemon series. I’ve included an MCR file in the ZIP, so maybe someone else can get it loaded.

DOWNLOAD MY PRE-MADE GAME HERE.

As for Dezaemon Plus itself, it’s more of an update to the SNES iteration, rather than a full blown sequel. Several of the competition games bundled with Dezaemon appear to have actually been made using the SNES original. Although not as advanced as the later Saturn sequel (Dezaemon 2), this PS1 release is still pretty versatile, and a lot of fun. If you’ve ever used Mario Paint, all the tools will seem familiar. Released by Monkey Paw Games in its original Japanese form, they did go to the effort to post an instruction manual.guide on their website. After removing the superfluous stuff it prints off on about 6 pages of A4 paper.


TOOLS
The real flaw to Dezaemon is that it doesn’t support horizontal shmup creation by default, only vertical. Upon hearing this I immediately decided: I’m going to make a hori shmup using this vertical shmup creator! And I did, or at least the illusion of one.

The game allows for designing the graphics for all backgrounds, bullets, explosions, enemies, main craft, and power-ups. Basically everything. You can set where enemies appear, how they appear, the movement pattern they use (from 20), what kind of bullet patterns they fire (again, 20), the speed at which they move and fire, what they fire, and there’s also a neat special effect option where you can have them rotating, shrinking or expanding at different speeds. This is great if you want a tiny ship to balloon in size. Ships can be on the ground (background) or in the air (foreground), invincible or harmless, whatever you choose. You can also compose all the music.

The clever thing is, you can also make enemies spawn other enemies, which if you use a little ingenuity with, you can create ever more elaborate attack patters – hell, you could probably rig up a crude danmaku shooter if you wanted. You can even make your spawning enemies invisible and harmless, thereby making enemies spawn from them in creative places. Success lies in your imagination and using the tools in inventive ways, which is how I made a hori shooter. You get out what you put in, and while there are 10 pre-made shooters on the disc, the most fun will be found in creation.

Another slight gripe I have, is that while the game is supposed to support the PS1 mouse, I can’t get my PS3 to do this. Plugging a USB mouse in works for the dashboard, and I can even select Dezaemon from the menu, but once the game loads in PS1 mode the mouse stops working. I tried switching controllers via the Home button menu, to no avail. Does anyone have a solution for this? Do I needed a dedicated PS3 mouse? A PS1-to-USB adapter an original PS1 mouse? If you know, please let us know. Using a D-pad works, but it’s obviously slower.



HORI
My shmup, which is only one level long, with a tech demo second level, is called Hori. The first level took me 4 hours to put together, the demo second level about an hour (you can access it via the edit menu).

To achieve the illusion of horizontal movement I went with a blank background so you don’t see the scrolling. Then I placed a series of invisible enemies along the far right hand side of the screen, moving down and firing horizontally tiny white star bullets. Because they’re on the far right, you shouldn’t notice that they’re firing in two horizontal directions – instead it gives the illusion of a star field. I also placed a few enemies firing fireballs. I used the graphics editor to rotate an pre-made enemy, making them appear hori, and I did the same with the main ship and the boss. So all in all it gives the impressions of flying along. You need to avoid stars and fireballs, kill enemies and then the boss. Simple.

The only thing I couldn’t find a solution for was your gun. They all fire vertically. So to alleviate this I set the default weapon to the homing laser, so as long as there’s enemies on screen it shouldn’t break the illusion. There’s only two homing weapons in the game and you can’t edit weapons, besides changing their appearance. This is a set-back which I don’t think has a solution. Meaning I can’t quite see R-Type being remade anytime soon.


Stage 2
After a night’s sleep I had the idea to set clouds as harmless enemies, spawning from a line of invisible enemies along the right side. I tweaked the movement and firing speed of the spawners so they fired only at the bottom of the screen. Then I had the enemies which they spawned undergo enlargement and flying horizontally. There’s only about 3 horizontal flight patterns for enemies, and none of them fly precisely straight, so it took a while to get a seamless run of clouds. I could have tweaked them further and made them go in a wavy pattern. Next I set some cloud enemies to spawn on their own near the top and, here’s the clever bit, had them spawn further clouds of their own which homed in on the player. Since most players hang by the left side of the screen, this would most of the time create the illusion of harmless clouds floating to the left. I tweaked the speed for everything then decided to make the main cloud spawners invisible – feel free to bring them back. There’s two different waves if you play the demo of level 2, and I think it looks awesome. Obviously further tweaking regarding enlargement, speed and wave pattern would produce more varied and cooler results. I didn’t finish this level, but I really think I’m on to a winner here.
This proves that it is possible to fake a hori shooter in Dezaemon Plus. You could have the top spawns being clouds, and the bottom being tree tops. Or you could set a green background, and have it like the ship is flying underneath a forest canopy with trees and leaves at the top and bottom. Or under the sea, and fish are swimming past in the background, while at the bottom bright coral is hurtling past. Enemies can spawn as normal, and most players won’t notice the deception – apart from of course the limited weaponry which always fires vertically.
One idea I had was you could have a tree tops scrolling below, and a static sky background above these. Except at one point a missile (which has been drawn into the background), will scroll downwards on the otherwise blue background, and you can time it so that as it disappears at the bottom of the screen, all the tree tops turn into giant animated flames, implying a megaton explosion. Or you could have the static colours slowly go from one hue to the next, so from night time to a slow dawn and then noon. As long as it remains relatively blank, apart from objects which are falling, you can give the impression of horizontal movement.
Of course, all this is void should Monkey Paw Games release Dezaemon Kids, which can create dedicated hori shooters.

If you’ve any interest in shmups, this is a versatile and enjoyable creation kit. Just make sure you’ve got an imagination and enjoy thinking outside the box. If people start creating their own, it has the potential for limitless replay value. When Dezaemon Kids was released on PS1, it had had a second disc which contained 100 shooters all created using Dezaemon Plus, and some of them are absolutely incredible.

Here’s a screen from each of the 9 competition winners which had their game included with Dezaemon Plus alongside the default Daioh game.

Posted by Sketcz at 8:41 AM 5 comments
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WAHP – live broadcasting today!


As pointed out in the comments, Warning a Huge Podcast, which is dedicated to Japanese gaming, is having a live broadcast today. They also now have a dedicated website now, with merchandise, a poll to gauge interest in future topics, and other cool stuff. Apologies for posting about this earlier, but I’ve been snowed under with work and still need to listen to WAHP 12.

Join Nick Rox and shidoshi for the first ever WARNING! A Huge Podcast Live Event! Be here Saturday, December 11th starting at 1pm Pacific! (Start time as of now 78.43% certain.) Watch all the excitement that goes down, and chat with other WAHP listeners!
Posted by Sketcz at 8:37 AM 1 comments
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Friday, December 10, 2010

The greatest RPG that no longer exists


They say dead memory cards tell no tales. In my case, a dead memory card means one of the greatest (maybe) RPGs ever made with RPG Maker on the PS1, Morishinden Chojin, will never be played by anyone. By the end of this blog post both myself and you, the reader, will have made a cat smoke an entire packet of cigarettes.

(images stolen from Mobygames and are NOT of Morishinden Chojin)
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Yesterday I bought one of those PS1 to PS3 USB converter things, to back up memory cards. After 10 years of procrastinating I was finally going to give my RPG Maker games to the world. The adapter was overpriced at $20, but I had store credit I wanted rid of. It actually works like a piece of crap, though I did manage to back most stuff up.

Three memory cards didn’t register, one unofficial, and two official. I tried them on a PS1 unit and the official ones were fine (one contained my brother’s FF7 and 8 save files, the other my Japanese MGS and CV save data). The unofficial one, the red PSW card, held nothing. IT HAD DIED. Actually, I had suspected it had died about 2 years ago when I had trouble loading my Suikoden save file. Along with it went all my PS1 Goemon data, and my first PS1 RPG Maker creation: Morishinden Chojin.
This really upset me. Now that I’m in adulthood and concerned with everyday crap like taxes and federal gun smuggling charges, old save data from PS1 games are irrelevant. Except in this case it wasn’t just save progress, it was a beautiful thing which I’d created. A bright, shining kusoge which I should have protected more, and its loss was like coming home to find my collection of stolen Dali paintings up in flames. The memory card in question was given away free on the cover of a magazine which cost something like £3. Considering cards back in the day cost £20 or more, I thought this a bargain. Lesson learned: it’s cheap for a reason.

I must have made MC sometime around 1999/2000 – the ridiculous name was a result of me studying Japanese as part of my high school curriculum, and wanting something cool sounding. I can’t remember its exact meaning, something about forests of the dead. Regardless, it has nothing to do with the game. The games contains the following things: obfuscated design, a giant NAKED GUY with 1970s hair, a packet of cigarettes hidden in a chicken egg, Samurais on a Plane, Monkey Island-inspired INSULT KUNG FU, stealth sections with GRENADES, a rather clever spotlight section on a bridge, suicidal lightning samurai, long cut-scenes of ABSOLUTE GIBBERISH, a FIRST PERSON DUNGEON SECTION inspired by Dungeon Master (seen in the FIRST PERSON), plus a final boss battle where you need to FORCE A CAT TO SMOKE CIGARETTES after which he reveals that HE’S YOUR FATHER.

With the memory card dead and my data gone, this blog entry is the first, last and only surviving record of the game which never was: Morishinden Chojin.

It was a game where I set out to break all the rules.


I’M NAKED!
You start on an aeroplane constructed from the medieval machine tiles available in RPG Maker. Some guy says he’s your commander and your mission is to infiltrate the enemy base, procure weapons on site, and then make a cat smoke cigarettes. There’s no explanation, you don’t need to know why. There’s also 3 treasure chests which contain a change of uniform and which allow you to play as either a Pirate Man, a Thief Woman, or a Big Orange Naked Guy with hideous 1970s style wig. Thinking about it now without the mind-altering haze of too-much-Pepsi in my system, logically the chests must have also either contained gender changing magic, or I had inadvertently given players the option to play in drag (honestly, I sincerely thought I could encourage women to play the game by offering a female character). The naked guy was a custom sprite I’d made. I actually just took the default silver robot sprite from RM who looked like a naked silver humanoid, and did a palette swap from silver to orange, then drew a big mop of hair on his head. The robot wasn’t anatomically correct, so you’re in effect controlling a genderless steroid fiend. In high school, the option to BE GORO (be naked) seemed like a funny idea.

BAD DESIGN ON PURPOSE
On the aeroplane was a giant egg, inside of which was an essential item to finish the game: a pack of Lucky Strikes cigarettes, for that smoooooth tobacco flavour. If you failed to look inside the egg, and then parachuted out of the plane, you couldn’t finish the game. I really liked the idea of including an item which made progress impossible without it – kind of like those old adventure games. I also wanted a game which tackled the taboo subject of smoking in a wholly irresponsible and inappropriate manner, especially since companies at the time were against tobacco usage in games and MGS was something of a strange anomaly.

KUNG FU
I couldn’t do parachuting with the basic tools, so your guy falls to earth via the game’s built-in lightning animation. He starts in a forest which is easily navigated to an enemy base on a cliff side. Outside is an old man. I wanted to do a Custom Battle System, or CBS as the RM community calls it, since the default battle system sucks. I based it on Monkey Island’s insult sword fighting and Suikoden’s one-on-one duels. So the guy would say stuff like “Come and get me!” and that would be your cue to pick an option which implied defending, because he was powering up a special move. If you lost you had a good idea of what you should have chosen. RM has a fairly robust system of triggers and flag switches to play around with, plus multiple choice dialogue boxes, so with a little effort you could create lengthy dialogue trees with specific outcomes. Lose and you warped back to the forest. Three wins and he gave you a keycard to enter the base.

STEALTH
Next were two simple stealth sections. I created some basic mazes and put guards in it, but they were designed so that you could only enter their field of vision in a specific block, which was an invisible trigger switch which resulted in them walking down and capturing you, whereupon you reset to outside the base. There were also some fairly obvious places you could stand to then select and use an item (in this case grenades from a box). Doing so in the correct place results in the guard walking there to investigate, switching off the invisible trigger tile, and allowing you to move past. There were only two such puzzle rooms, but I was really pleased at how well they worked – it was clunkier than MG on the NES, but it was convincing in the game’s context.

SPOTLIGHTS
Following the MGS theme, once beyond the guards was a long bridge where I’d used RM’s custom colour overlay to give the screen a dark blue hue, like nighttime. Next I filled the bridge with NPCs, except the sprite I used was a plain looking disc, coloured yellow, so it looked like a spotlight on the bridge. They moved randomly, and if you touched them the screen effect turned bright white, like you were spotted, an alarm sounded, and you were taken back to the start of the bridge. This was actually an ingenious idea which worked tremendously well. A couple of friends played it and they got caught a few times, totally freaking out when a spotlight came close. In truth, the spotlights couldn’t move into you – getting caught required you to push INTO THEM. So if you stood entirely still you’d never get caught, and it was possible to slowly move to the bridge’s end quite easily. Still, it was a perfect illusion of roving spotlights. At the end of the bridge there’s a giant explosion somewhere and the screen shakes.

SAMURAI LIGHTNING
I forget what came next, but you eventually came to another cliff’s edge, where the plane you were on had crashed (hence the explosion). There’s wreckage and flames everywhere, and plenty of dead bodies and blood splats (I think I made a custom blood splat tile for this). In the middle of the carnage I put RM’s pre-made sprite of a Samurai Sword in Puddle of Blood. Investigating it results in the samurai from the plane flashing down on lightning, and revealing that it was HE who betrayed the organisation, and there’s a cut-scene. All I remember of the dialogue is it was pure insanity, the likes of which only a sugar-high high-school student could invent. He mentions something about the secret of the cat and then shoots you to the edge of the screen, he explodes in a shower of blood and then you fall off the cliff’s edge.

(although I made reference to Snakes on a Plane at this entry’s start, I was obviously unaware of the film when making this game – I just thought samurais would be cool to include)

FIRST PERSON
I seem to recall that you then wake up in what appears to be a Dungeon Master inspired first person dungeon / sewer tunnel, which is the best bit of the game. I’d created a bunch of custom graphics titles, plain coloured squares and a series of half-square triangles, which I then used to create the impression of standing in a water filled tunnel and looking down it. The custom tiles drew the tunnel shrinking into the distance, ending up as a black square, while I used RM’s built-in sprite invisible options, to make the main guy invisible. I made about 5 such rooms (normal corridor, dead end, right turn in the distance, right turn close up), with water for the tunnel’s base. It ended up looking “windowed”, since I kept a black border of nothing around it to conserve my limited tile memory.

Next, I placed 4 invisible tiles around the main invisible guy (who technically existed in the black border), and set each room’s 4 tiles up with a series of complex number triggers, to represent every possible position he could be standing in. It was so complex it took up all my remaining memory, because I distinctly remember thinking, ahh crap, I can’t make any more turns. In truth, there was about 6 possible spaces to stand in a linear tunnel which only had one turning point which led out the tunnel. But I reckoned with more time and effort, I could create some simple 3D mazes (like those from Mystical Ninja on the SNES), simply by drawing a maze on graph paper, assigning each standing spot a number, and then setting up the tile triggers to change each specific number to another, when one of the 4 tiles was touched, based on only around 8 possible rooms (dead ahead, left turn, right turn, etc etc etc). In the end I added the splashing sound effect each time you moved, to give the impression of walking through sewers (the floor tiles were the animated water ones – which proved tricky because the game didn’t want sprites walking on it).

SMOKE THESE, CAT FATHER!
Once out the tunnel you end up in a cavern. A quick walk through the maze leads you to an innocent looking cat. To finish the game you need to stand next to it and use the cigarette item. This results in RM style turn based battle against the wackiest looking boss I could find. He has 1 hp so goes down quickly. Afterwards you force the cat to smoke the whole pack, resulting in RM’s mist effect filling the screen, the cat coughs for a bit, then there’s a cut-scene where he reveals HE’S ACTUALLY YOUR FATHER.

Yeah, I have no idea what went on there. There’s more deranged dialogue, implying a sequel, whereupon the credits roll.

It had some great ideas wrapped up in an illogical story which, when I replayed it about 3 years ago, seemed somehow even funnier. I’m only sorry I couldn’t share it with you, because the convoluted workaround I’d created for 3D mazes was actually quite cool, and sort of really worked.

Sadly the memory card is dead, and the game lost. And even if I tried to remake it today, it would have none of the teenage energy I’d infused it with. If any reader wants to remake my creation, you have my blessing.

My second RPG creation was a game called Chef Island, based on the cooking minigame in Suikoden 2, which thankfully survived on another memory card. I never finished this game, but I will be making the save data available for anyone who wants it, in a future blog entry in the next few days.

You know what I'd really like to see? ASCII or Monkey Paw Games re-releasing RPG Maker on PSN, so we can all then create awesome games, use a USB key to grab the save data off our PS3's, then upload them online. The PS1 save-data is tiny (like 128kb or something).


FOR THE RECORD:
HG101 does not endorse animal cruelty. My family have owned several dogs and cats over the years, and we have always treated them (and all animals) with care and affection (to the point where neighbour’s pets would actually visit our house and refuse to return to their owners). Making a real cat smoke real cigarettes, is always a bad idea.
Posted by Sketcz at 5:25 AM 7 comments
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