About eight years ago I would guess (what happened to all that great memory stuff I had?) I attended a computer and console games course at a
science museum. For the most part the class consisted of playing
computer games on old
Amigas. Have you ever played
ski free? The game we played the most was the ancient predecessor to it. I don't recall the exact title but it involved flying millions of feet into the air to the point where you could see the atmosphere and then performing insanely crazy tricks and trying to land without killing yourself. I've strayed from the topic though.
The only real learning we ever did in that class was using a program called the shoot 'em up creation kit. It was a really simple program that let you design your own sprites and their death sequences, enemies, scenes, static objects, und so weiter. It was really a cool program. It was probably the first user friendly way to make a game without huge knowledge of coding and program structure. Most of the games I ever saw that came from this were pretty lame and generic, but someone with a great imagination made a game where you tried to dodge flying trash on a windy day with your umbrella. Now if that's not creativity and making the best of a fairly limited program, then I don't know what is. Anyways, I stray again.
After weeks of work we turned out some fairly decent games for elemtary school kids and tested them out. Perhaps some people will complain about clipping and the fact that most of the games took place in a featureless black field and was remarkably linear and really predictable (is that redundant?), but god it was great seeing something we'd created come to life and entertain us even if just for a second. This probably much the same feeling all of those mad men at BSI must feel.