"Can this computer make Super Mario Bros?" - My first attempts into Game Dev
An overview of my past game ideas and mods
In the year of 1989, shortly after getting my Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), I made it my lifelong goal to make video games. A year prior in 1988, my dad took me to an NFL game at the Los Angeles Sports Memorial Coliseum where the Miami Dolphins beat the Los Angeles Raiders 24-14. I was so enthralled with the game and the sport of football that one day at school, I was filling a “What do you want to be when you grow up?” paper and I put down “Football Player” which was my very first time deciding on a profession when I was a kid.
A few months later, I changed my mind and put down “Game Maker”.
While the correct term would be “Game Developer”, my 7 year old self just put down what I thought it was at the time.
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, I didn’t have internet access as it wasn’t widely available for normal consumers like my family. The only way to read up on how to create games was either going to the library or bookstore to look up books on programming.
In 1989, my dad got us our very first computer, the Leading Edge Model D. A green monochrome PC that was able to do word processing for my dad’s work and play some primitive games. I remember asking my dad “Can this computer make Super Mario Bros?” and he said “I don’t know, son.”
My dad was able to copy some games from his co-worker’s 5.25 floppy disk and among those games were bootleg and ascii versions of Donkey Kong, Frogger, and one in particular: “Morse Code”.
I thought Morse Code was a program that could help me “code” games and wasn’t about deciphering morse code. Being the naive kid I was, I remember typing in “Make Super Mario Bros.” in Morse Code and got:
“Invalid Command”.
I have to admit that I was pretty devastated that Morse Code wasn’t able to create all of Super Mario Bros for me like an AI prompt in 1989. I tried to look up other alternatives as a kid with no resources as the internet wouldn’t be available for many years. At the school computer lab, I messed around with Basic, Q-Basic, and eventually Visual Basic, but was unable to understand any of it which led to my fear of actual programming languages.
I had to settle for the next best thing which would be writing down game design documents on actual paper without ever making the games. These ideas varied from original ideas, mods to current games, and my “unofficial” sequels. Over the years, I would actually complete one game and try to mod several. The ideas that I could recall are:
Stupid Chickeno Brothers (1991)
I came up with this idea with my friends during my 4th grade year during my younger sister’s birthday party at Round Table Pizza when we put our pointed party hats on our mouths and pretended to be chickens. I recall there were 6 Chickeno Brothers called “Stupid”, “Dumby”, and other variations of stupid. Maybe I’ll include this as a parody in a future game I make.
Mega Man “6” (1993)
When I was in the 6th grade and Mega Man 5 was the newest Mega Man game at the time, I came up with my own “Mega Man 6” before the actual Mega Man 6 came out. I came up with “Grenade Man” and “Sword Man” far before Mega Man 8 was ever released, but my designs weren’t even close to the actual ones. I also remember coming up with ‘Nuclear Man” and especially “Toilet Man” which made my friends laugh. I remember having fun coming up with Toilet Man’s sketch and how silly it looked.
With tools like “Mega Man Maker” now out, I could make Toilet Man a reality. Who knows? I just need to find the time to actually learn how to use it.
“Super” Dragon Warrior (1993)
Being a huge fan of the Dragon Warrior games on the NES before I knew they were Dragon Quest, I wanted to make the next iteration of Dragon Warrior games: “Super Dragon Warrior”. I actually made a story and several maps like a castle with a water fountain and bridge. I can’t remember more about the maps and story other than Barney the Dinosaur being the boss of one dungeon.
Mega Man X “2” (1994)
A year before the actual Mega Man X2 came out in the USA in 1995, I was debating with my classmates if the title of Mega Man X was either Mega Man “X” or Mega Man “Ten”. Luckily in 1995, I won that battle, but back in 1994 after the first Mega Man X came out in the USA, I was already planning my own Mega Man X2. I can’t remember if I even came up with a story, but I did draw 8 Mavericks I can barely remember other than “Flame Hippo” which was a hippo version of Flame Mammoth and “Slicing Sawslicer” which was Boomer Kuwanger, but covered with sawblades. Thankfully, the actual Mega Man X2 was far better.
Mutant League Golf (1994)
Being a huge fan of the Mutant League Football and Hockey games on the Sega Genesis, I created a pretty detailed Game Design Document of “Mutant League Golf” in the summer of 1994 which I still have to this day 30+ years later! I actually plan to talk about this in more detail in a future blog entry.
Final Fantasy “IV” (1995)
After finishing Final Fantasy III on the SNES which was really Final Fantasy VI in Japan, my cousin and I came up with our own “Final Fantasy IV” which was going to be a direct sequel to the events of Final Fantasy VI. Years after the defeat of Kefka and the World of Balance was restored, a group of aliens called the Meteor Beings came to Earth to escape from one of their own gone rogue like Zemus/Zeromus from the actual Final Fantasy IV.
The rogue Meteor Being was going to bring down a Meteor to destroy the Earth and it would have been up to Terra, Edgar, Sabin, Locke, Celes, and the old FFVI group to stop it. I’m pretty sure Final Fantasy VII was in it’s early development stages in 1995, but I like to think I came up with the concept of Meteor around the same time the Squaresoft, now Square-Enix writers were coming up with it. I also recall my cousin and I made an additional 30 characters with one of them being a singer like Annie since I saw the Annie broadway play over the summer of 1995 on stage.
I did actually save these ideas to a word file on a 3 1/2 floppy disk. However, after I bought a USB floppy disk reader and tried to load the contents, the disk was empty..
Klik & Play Ideas (1995)
In the spring of 1995, I was finally able to use my first actual drag and drop game engine that didn’t require programming called “Klik & Play” developed by Europress Software and published by Maxis. I do plan on going over this more in detail in a future blog entry.
I only had the shareware demo version of Klik & Play that couldn’t save and had very limited assets. My first idea was a simple shooting game where you shot at skateboarding kids for some reason. Maybe you were some kind of violent old man with a gun yelling “Get off my lawn!”, shooting at poor skateboarding kids. I don’t know why anyone would want to shoot at skateboarding kids, but they were among the only assets that were usable, so I put them as the enemies as I was unable to import images I made in Microsoft Paint. I also remember drawing a silly looking Dragon in Paint to import into the Klik & Play demo, but it didn’t work. I do want to make a tribute to the Skateboarding Kid from Klik & Play in a future game.
Klik & Play is long gone, but the team has moved on and created Clickteam Fusion which I haven’t tried, but is the spiritual successor which is aimed at younger audiences.
Custom Warcraft 2 Maps (1996-1997)
I used to make a ton of Warcraft 2 maps in my high school years. Probably my most memorable one was my recreation of “The Rock” where Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage infiltrate Alcatraz Island. I made Sean Connery’s character a mage and Nicolas Cage’s character a peasant fighting against the Marines who have taken over Alcatraz Island and you need to free the prisoners. I can’t remember all of the other maps I made, but my cousin and I made so many over the years. Sadly, I never learned how to use Starcraft’s map editor as it felt too complicated at the time, but I would have liked to make some maps in Starcraft too.
Untitled DOOM Wads (1996)
After getting a bootleg of “The Ultimate Doom” in the Philippines in 1996, the bootleg disc also came with map creation software to make your own WAD files which were the main files needed to run Doom and were moddable. I remember making a wide room with a crushing ceiling that would kill the Spider-Mastermind boss similar to a certain level in Doom 2. However, it was very tough to work with the map editor, especially determining the height of a room. I also made a simple bowling alley where barrels were aligned like bowling pins and enemies were surrounding them. My bowling alley levels were pretty terrible in comparison to the premade ones I had downloaded.
Cyberforge (1997)
In my sophomore year of high school when I saw Final Fantasy VII previews in gaming magazines, I imagined a protagonist who liked like Cloud Strife, but was a cyborg who came out of a pod in the distant future. I didn’t really write down much of this idea, but it could be a fun one to revisit in the future.
Untitled TI-85 Adventure Game (1997)
In high school, I was required to have a TI-85 Calculator for my math classes and my friends would copy over games to them. After endless sessions of Tetris, I messed around with the game program editor a friend copied over for me and made a simple map where you controlled a square character and the obstacles were numbers like 0 and 4. The novelty wore off pretty quickly and I didn’t make that many maps as the game editor was tough to use.
Attack of the Saiya-Jin (1999)
During the peak of Dragon Ball Z’s popularity in 1999 in my senior year of high school, I found another easy to use engine called OHRRPGCE (Official Hamster Republic Role Playing Game Construction Engine). After messing with it for a few months, I was able to finally create and release my first game which got over 100k+ downloads. I do plan on writing a more detailed post about the creation of this game and I recently remastered it for it’s 25th Anniversary.
Download on itch.io!
Untitled RPG Maker Game (2001)
In 2001 when I was in college, I got the PlayStation version of RPG Maker and attempted to make an RPG. However, making an RPG was incredibly cumbersome with a controller and I highly don’t recommend it.
I was only able to create the opening sequence where barrels are dropped on guards in a castle and the main heroes spout memes and catch phrases from 2000 like the Budweiser “WASSUP” commercials. I can’t remember what the tile of the game was or what the heroes names were, but I stopped due to how tedious it was making an RPG with a controller and not a mouse.
Surprisingly, I never really messed with any of the PC or current console versions of RPG Maker to this day. I’m really not sure why, but it is what it is. The good news is that I might still have my old PS1 RPG Maker data on my memory cards. If I ever get another copy of the PS1 RPG Maker, I might try to access the files again since I still have a working modded PlayStation 2 that can still read PS1 games.
Untitled MUGEN Mods (2002)
In 2002, I was trying to mess with MUGEN and import the Dragon Ball Z Super Butoden sprites to make my own DBZ fighting game that played better than the actual Super Butoden games. I never really got far into this as having to edit the sprites was very tedious. Thankfully, Bandai Namco has released a ton of great Dragon Ball fighting games since then, especially Dragon Ball FighterZ.
Untitled Final Fantasy IV and VI Mods (2004)
Back in 2003-2004, tools were released to be able to mod the SNES roms of Final Fantasy IV and VI and you could replace sprites and dialogue, but the flow and structure of the games would still be the same. I did mess with these tools for a bit, but never made anything with them. I did download “Awful Fantasy” from the Something Awful website which replaced all the characters with various Something Awful forum members which used these tools.
Untitled C++ Text Adventure (2006)
When I was learning C++ in college back in 2006, I was working on a Zork like text adventure, but didn’t get very far into it. I remember you started off in a forest and ended up encountering a troll who would set you off on your adventure. It was going to be like the Zork games where you would type what to do next or choose from numbered options to continue your quest. After failing my C++ class, I never bothered making this game and left game dev for 15 years until 2021.
Curious Ventures (2010 and 2018)
Even though I left game dev in 2006, I still had some curious ventures into it even though I wasn’t that serious back in the day. In 2010, I remember downloading the Xbox 360 SDK from a forum that hosted Xbox 360 ISO files, thinking the SDK was the program needed to make games, but I had no idea how to use it. In 2018, I remember seeing Unity Assets in Humble Bundle that looked cool and was starting to get the gears in my head going about game dev again. However, I was more focused on the Battle Geek Plus YouTube channel reviewing games before I eventually came back to game dev in 2021. I still signed up for the various console developer portals in 2018 (except Sony as they require a business EIN) just in case I ever got the game dev itch again.
Spoiler: I finally got the game dev itch again in 2021 and stuck with it!
Super Mario Maker 1 and 2 Levels (2015 and 2019)
I used to mess around with Super Mario Maker 1 on the WiiU and made a simple level that you kicked a koopa shell into and it set off a chain reaction that hit a ton of ? blocks for coins. I did load up my WiiU after several years and my level was long gone. I did kind of recreate this level in Super Mario Maker 2 with a ton more depth and I also created a level called “Mario’s Torture Chamber” where you could drop enemies trapped in cages into the lava. Luckily both of my Super Mario Maker 2 levels are still available. I honestly haven’t had as much time I would like to make Mario levels and I’m busy making my own games now, but I would like to return to making a small level or 2 eventually.
Untitled Dreams Game (2018)
During E3 2018, I had the pleasure of playing “Dreams” behind Sony’s closed doors which is a 3D game creation software developed by Media Molecule, the creators of Little Big Planet. Sadly I never got around to making my own Little Big Planet levels on the PS3, but Dreams was a far more robust program and game that offered a ton more features. I gotta admit I didn’t get very far in making anything in Dreams as I wasn’t 100% serious about returning to game dev yet and I was still more focused on reviewing games for the Battle Geek Plus YouTube channel. I did a basic 3D platform room before feeling overwhelmed and going back to reviewing games.
I also heard that you could publish games made in Dreams to the PlayStation Store which actually never materialized due to the complications of IP rights and the process of actually becoming a PlayStation developer. Eventually, I became an actual PlayStation developer and launched my first commercial game, “Popcorn Rocket” for the PS4 and PS5. Maybe one day, I’ll just mess around in Dreams again for fun.
Game Builder Garage (2021)
Right as I was making the decision to return to game dev, I immediately purchased Nintendo’s Game Builder Garage for the Nintendo Switch. I enjoyed it alot, but I only got halfway through the tutorials. Maybe one day I plan to get through it again now that I have actual experience developing for the Switch and have released my first commercial game, “Popcorn Rocket” on the console. I would love to make some fun prototypes in this game to see if I can turn them into full concepts.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it. Those are all of the ideas for games and my modding experience I had in the past that I can remember off the top of my head. Maybe I’ll revisit a few of these ideas to use in my future games and if I can remember any more of my ideas, I’ll probably do a follow up.
Nowadays, making games is easier than ever and will continue getting easier as the tools are far more accessible to everyone. We didn’t have Roblox, Unity, Unreal, Godot, RPG Maker, Game Maker, etc. when I was a kid. Klik & Play was already revolutionary enough, but the tools have just gotten better and better for anyone to start making games now.
It does feel good to return to game dev after 15 years and I’m here to stay this time!
I do admit that I look up eBay auctions for a Leading Edge Model D computer, but I don’t have the room for it and a working one is quite pricey. Maybe one day I’ll find a way to own that piece of my childhood again…