Games that push the limits of old game-making tools

[Q-Nova]

Back in the old days of game-making tools, such as Klik & Play, The Games Factory, and early versions of Game Maker, many of the users were amateurs new to game development, and it showed in the games they made. While those kind of games can be fun, they also can be buggy and simplistic. Game-making tools back then had a reputation for being incapable of producing well-developed games that had any sort of professionalism. That they couldn't create anything beyond a bog-standard platformer or maze game. The idea of this thread is to talk about games that use one of those old game-making tools and make you go "This is made with THAT program!?" This can include professional-feeling (at least to a degree) games, but it can also include games that implement features that the program is supposedly incapable of doing (e.g. scrolling in a KNP game). It doesn't necessarily have to be good nor fun, by the way. In other words, think of this as like those threads and articles about games that push old consoles to the limits, except replace "consoles" with "game-making tools".

I'll start with Aquanoid 2, by Fadex:



When I watched the video shown above, I was blown away. There's a lot of particle effects shown, such as the circles that come out of the bricks, and the little sparks that appear when the ball hits the paddle at its highest speed. Rather than using an animation of the full particle effect, it looks like each particle is its own separate object that moves in its own way. Also, when the ball hits a brick and it doesn't get destroyed, it shakes! The music and sound effects are not packed within the game file itself, but rather a music folder. Not only has this allowed the music to be very high quality, but I've beaten the whole game and never ran to the infamous sound glitch, despite having not messed with the processor stuff! This must've been the work of an extension, which might've also allowed the game to go from level to level without ever restarting the music nor cause any interruptions. When you start the game, there's a demo shown. At first, I thought this was a video file, only to then realize that "Wait, that's actually made WITHIN the program!?" And this is all made with The Games Factory! You read that right!

With all the polish in display, I was a bit disappointed by the ball movement. When watching the video, I thought it was a custom movement for a static object, but then I played the game and it almost felt like the default bouncy ball movement. The ball can sometimes bounce in slightly off angles, and if it hits the edge of the screen while a brick is nearby, it'll bounce the way it came in rather than at a perpendicular angle. I've also had the ball go through the paddle far too many times than appreciated, which is frustrating, especially in a game this difficult. All in all, though, it's kinda impressive, and can be fun too.

Reply

[littlelum]

I was too young to be part the scene in that time, but I do remember when Mario Maker 1 was popular. There were a lot of cool things that the community came up with, such as making a level that kills you if you look left. There was one guy who made a bunch of cool levels, like one where Yoshi tries to kill you, or one where you and a koopa troopa have to "work together" to defeat Bowser.

Things went absolutely crazy when the second game came out. There was Zelda dungeons, hot potato, and incredibly niche mechanics. The troll levels too, were absolutely mind-blowing in how they were able to manipulate you into doing dumb things that wouldn't even occur too you normally. Too bad all that got drowned out by those "refreshing" levels.

Reply

[DJ Coco]

Pretty much anything GamingEngineer ever made.
He makes insane 3D magic happen in Game Maker, ever since Game Maker 7 I think, and he's still going strong.

Also, Iji was very impressive for its time, being originally made in Game Maker 5.

Reply

[mrpin355]

Excuse me for the bump, but should I consider Scratch an old game-making tool? Conceived in 2007, it has led to the conception of many primitive animations and games but later on, people started making crazy stuff such as working 3d rasterizers and raytracers. 

Here is an example: Super Mario 64 Platformer on Scratch (mit.edu)

You can see an entire collection of amazing work here: 3D Graphics and Scratch - Scratch Studio (mit.edu).

Albeit, it's pretty slow but they proved it's possible. Scratch is infamous for its poor processing and simplistic drag and drop coding framework but it didn't stop people from experimenting with complicated 3d graphics in a dollar store toaster.

A new signature is on the works but have this:

Reply