Merry Christmas from Ganondorf! (Oh, and Me, Too!)

I already wished readers of SuperPhillip Central a Merry Christmas, but let me do so to those who check out my game design blog as well! Merry Christmas, friends! It's been a wild day with some nice family time, fun presents, and soon to be some delicious Christmas dinner! I hope you and your loved ones have had a splendid Christmas day!

Ganondorf wishes you a Merry Christmas as well.
(But he'd rather see the demise of Hyrule!)

No one can find me hiding here! Mwahahaha!

Making an RPG can be really overwhelming! What do?

One of the most taxing genres to focus making a game on, in my opinion, is an RPG. There is generally a very good reason why most creators who want to make an RPG are encouraged to make a short RPG, maybe 3-5 hours long. However, for those of us who have already done that and are foolhardy enough to try a longer RPG, what are some good things to think about before you're crushed under all the work that crafting such a game requires?

Image courtesy of
http://www.smallbizmodo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Busy_Man.gif

For months now, and when college and life in general have giving me time, I've been working on my own RPG, Legends of Adrigal. I have in the past created an RPG on RPG Maker for the original PlayStation, and I also tried remaking said RPG in RPG Maker 2003, which was an eye-opening experience. 

Legends of Adrigal will by no means be an immensely long epic like a Final Fantasy game or Dragon Quest, to name a couple. However, it will be the largest game I've ever worked on, and with that, it requires a LOT of work. There are the NPCs to make, the maps, the world, the scenarios, the dialogue, the characters, the battle system, the items, the weapons and armor, the music, and so much more that thinking about this might put off a less foolish person.

However, I AM damn foolish, and I'm going to try to see this project through. The main thing to think about when creating a game is whether or not you're having fun making it. Now, you can have a bad day or even a bad week while tinkering with your game creation, but if you're finding yourself frustrated much more than you're finding yourself having fun with your game, then you should step back and ask yourself what you can realistically change to make things easier on yourself.

An RPG is a HUGE time commitment-- even just a five hour one. Knowing that I just finished the NPCs of my first town and have yet to really get into the battle system or main hub of the game makes me think hard on how much work I have yet to put into my game. I then sigh, but I quickly realize that I'm still enjoying my time on the game.

HOWEVER! I have advice for myself and for people who are making a big game. The finish line is a loooooong way away, but there is something I do to make myself feel like I'm constantly making progress. What is it that I do? ...Do I see your mouth salivating in anticipation? Well, let me tell you before you drool on your keyboard!

A fantastic way of keeping yourself engaged in your project is to create goals for development of your game. I have the long-term goal of finishing Legends of Adrigal, of course, but I also devise multiple smaller goals as a checklist that I can be proud of having accomplished along Adrigal's development. 

For instance, one of my mini-goals was creating all of the events within Mabel, the first village of the game. This included NPCs, quests, and events that transfer the player from outside a house to its inside, like a door, for instance. I also managed to create the first leg of my item, weapon, and armor systems. I created different items and equipment, gave them numerical values (the cost of buying one, selling one, attributes, etc.), and was on my merry way. My next task is to fill Adrigal City, the central city of Legends of Adrigal, with NPCs and events. 

Think of your game like Adrigal City. It's devised up of various parts, and it's important to note that you don't have to do everything at once. Split up the work between different goals. For instance, make it one goal to create entrance and exit events for each house in the western portion of the map, while you have another goal to set up events for the eastern part of the map. Have another goal being creating the music for the city. The point here is to not think of the map as a whole, but instead the sum of its parts.

Some goals are larger in scope than others, such as my aforementioned task with Adrigal City. While completing smaller tasks all add up to personal satisfaction. Make the goals something you can realistically do, and something that you can be proud of when you've completed them. I've already completed over a dozen different goals, and I'll be creating some more for myself in the future so I have something I can always aim and strive for. 

It's even better if you treat your goal list as a means to treat yourself. For instance, I made it a goal to finish my opening cutscenes, where Casey and friends enter into the Adrigal video game. Once I completed that, I gave myself permission to play a new video game in my family's collection that I was excited to try out. You can set up miniature gifts and rewards to yourself for completing various goals as a way to entice yourself. Although this is not necessary by any stretch of the imagination.

Thus, Legends of Adrigal is going slowly but steadily with its development. I have to remember that I'm but one person working in a game genre that generally has dozens of team members working on it at once. Every little goal completed is a personal achievement and victory for me. It can also work to help you, and it doesn't even have to be something with as much work as an RPG. Whether big, small, or somewhere in between, make sure you're having fun, give yourself some obtainable goals to achieve, optionally reward yourself for achieving said goals, and you'll continue to make progress and enjoy what you're doing simultaneously!

The First Songs of the Legends of Adrigal Soundtrack Are Now Live on Bandcamp!

Yesterday I posted a reminder to check out my first ever self-composed soundtrack for Super Push Adventure. Today, it's my pleasure to provide to you the Bandcamp link to Songs of Legends of Adrigal, the "official" (as official as me posting it on Bandcamp can make it at least) soundtrack of my work-in-progress RPG. There are sixteen current tracks to listen to, and my friend from Fat Bard, a local area company that makes music for games, Patrick Crecelius, provided the excellent sound mixing, giving each track stereo sound and reverb!

I'd love for every one of you that takes a gander at this blog entry to take a listen to the soundtrack. What do you think about it? Do the themes sound good to you?

Check out the soundtrack here!

Check Out (and Listen) to the Super Push Adventure Soundtrack!

I don't think I've mentioned this on my blog before, so here we are with the message! Super Push Adventure released early this year on March 27. That's not the message, though. The message is that you can download the soundtrack and listen to every song from the game for free (or you can opt to pay whatever amount you feel obliged to pay). The soundtrack was composed by me, and had the assistance of Avery Waddell of St. Louis and Natasha Gita of Australia with the sound design. I'm really proud of the overall soundtrack, and I hope you get a kick out of listening to it as much as I had creating it!

Check it out here!

Legends of Adrigal Progress Report - 12/8/15

Welcome to a new recurring segment at StortzumSoft! It's a progress report for Legends of Adrigal, an RPG I've been working on for several months now, off and on, when college, my other blog, and life in general allows me to work on it.

I shared months ago the opening scenes of the game. Today I share some screenshots of Mabel, the opening village that our hero Casey wakes up in when he and his friends are transported inside the video game. I made up the town to have a homely feeling to it, somewhere that players will want to come back to because of how warm and cozy it feels.

One of the things I wanted in Legends of Adrigal was to have a living world. While it's not in my capability to do something like The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask with the manpower I have (or lack, that is), what I can do is have the world feel like it is one connected kingdom. I have done this by updating NPC (non-playable character) dialogue as different major events in the game take place. This is not only to make it seem like the NPCs are living their lives like the player's party, but also to keep dialogue feeling fresh. I want there to be a reason for the player to continue chatting with NPCs.

Another way to keep players engaged with NPCs to create entertaining dialogue that doesn't feel like a machine wrote it. My previous game, Super Push Adventure, used dialogue in a way to make for some fun scenarios and conversations. While the story of Legends of Adrigal is somewhat serious overall, the NPCs allow me to get wacky and sassy with my dialogue. I want the player to speak with NPCs not because out of a necessity and duty, but because they want to see what entertaining things the characters will say.

NPCs also talk about events that happen in other places. For instance, this next screenshot shows a miner from Dorter talking about an issue with the mine. I wish to have it where countless NPCs will help create a feeling of cohesiveness with the world of Legends of Adrigal, helping to build the game's lore in the process.

Another important thing to have in an RPG for longevity is that of side quests. Legends of Adrigal will have a quest system that is incorporated into Adrigal City, the central hub of the game. However there are also side tasks that can be done in the game just by talking to specific NPCs. An early example is a game where a Mabel child hides three coins in three patches of grass. In finding them all, Casey receives a Healthy Steroid, a vitamin that grants permanent upgraded attack strength. Though it is a bit humorous that a child would take a steroid from his father's drawer to give as a prize to a stranger. That's just my goofy sense of humor chiming in here.

There is also fun to be had with exploring and investigating different objects in town. While not everything that the player examines will have text to it, there are some interesting discoveries to be found.

The latest events I've done story-wise are when Casey introduces himself to the mayor of Mabel, Mayor Wendell. He suggests that Casey go to Adrigal Castle to meet with the king to ask for any leads on where his friends might be, and also how to get home. He then offers advice that Casey should visit Mabel Academy for battle advice, and asks his grandson Nemus to tag along as a chaperon along the dangerous Mabel and West Adrigal Roads.

My next duty will be filling Adrigal City with NPCs and creating houses for the east side of the metropolis. This city is the most crowded and largest in the game, but I find it fun to inhabit it with different NPCs with updated dialogue as the game goes on. I hope you'll look forward to the next Legends of Adrigal progress report, as much as I am looking forward to continuing work on the game!

The Kingdom City of Adrigal - Songs of Legends of Adrigal

A new song for my RPG Legends of Adrigal is here after a bit of a hiatus! If the title doesn't already clue you in, this theme plays in the kingdom city of Adrigal, the capital. It's a place that is situated right in the heart of the kingdom of Adrigal, and it is a place that players will return to often.

I wanted a catchy and upbeat theme for this city, and I think I achieved that with this song. As inspiration, I had this song from Ys Seven in my mind. What do you guys think?

The problematic development of Chickadee

If you haven't been in the know on Chickadee, my Breakout-inspired game, let me get you up to speed. My programmer, Jo, won't be able to work on the game for quite a while, so I essentially had to put development on hold for a currently unknown amount of time. The question that you might be asking yourself is why. That's not that tough of an answer, believe it or not.

Chickadee started as me following a Game Maker tutorial, a Breakout-styled game with octopuses and sea urchins. The only difference was that I added my own visual theme to the game. I then asked my programming friend from Europe who also worked a bit on Super Push Adventure if he'd be interested in helping. He said "yes", to my excitement.

The issue here is that my programmer has basically done all the work with the innards of how Chickadee is built. That includes the physics, how enemies interact with Chickadee, and how progression takes place. Everything was done with my direction. I'd basically go, "Is it possible to make this enemy do this or that?" and my programmer would say yes and implement it.

I have no idea what I'm looking at.
Is this Russian code? It's Russian code, right?

Game Maker Studio has its own programming language that it uses, and like any language, there are multiple, countless, interpretations used. This means that my programmer used his own coding structure and form for implementing what I wanted to happen with the game. This makes it so if a totally different programmer wanted to complete Jo's work, they would have to intensely comb through his code, trying to understand what Jo did and why. This is next to impossible since there are so many interpretations one could make out of Jo's code.

Chickadee is too promising to outright cancel,
so I'm going to rough it and wait for Jo to be free.

Thus, since I'm incredibly ignorant when it comes to coding, much less actually using Game Maker in general, I had no choice but to put the development of Chickadee on a semi-definite hiatus. It's a total disappointment, as I really liked how the game was shaping up, and I put a lot of thought into the characters, their designs, the art, the level concepts, the game structure, and a myriad of other things. To say that the hiatus of Chickadee left me depressed would be quite the understatement. Still, I can work on Legends of Adrigal in the meantime, but at the same token, it greatly soured me in thinking that I have a future in game development.

Super Mario Adventures: A StortzumSoft Project

Super Mario Maker released over two months ago, and since then, I have been feverishly working on my own creations with the intuitive and well done level maker.

It's with great pleasure that I announce the side project I'm working on related to Super Mario Maker. I'm making my own "game", if you will, devised up of eight basic worlds and one special world. The basic worlds consist of four levels each, and the special world consists of eight especially hard levels. The levels use all four tile sets: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U.

By no means is this an original idea, but it's something that I've enjoyed doing greatly, and I hope you will check out the levels that I've made. Note: Some pictures taken from my Super Mario Maker levels are out of date, as I've added checkpoints and other alterations to them. Also, all levels have new sixteen-digit codes, as I had to remake many of them. Finally, each level houses three hidden 1-ups that are essentially the equivalent of Star Coins.

Check out the levels after the break, as this article is very screenshot-intensive.

Game playing and creation as a means of therapy

In an uncontrollable rage that started from something slightly aggravating and innocuous such as my DVD player scratching my first disc of Roseanne Season Three, I let out my frustration by biting into my arm. This is an example of a bad way to channel one's anger and depression into an action.

My psychiatrist attempts to help with allowing me to conquer my bipolar symptoms, particularly when I become manic, but the issue here is that there is no one way my manic symptoms are triggered. Thus, there is no one way to always solve or prevent such an episode.

My bipolar has affected me for the majority of my adult life, presenting symptoms when I was originally in college around age 23. I have had three unique jobs-- one at GameStop, where I ended up cussing out my boss and walking out, one at Six Flags, where I ended up cussing out an employee and marching off, and one at Best Buy... where this is a little different-- I ended up cussing out an employee and threw my headset at them. I'm borderline psychotic during a manic episode, but the latter one was especially scary as I had never lashed out at a person before. It was only an object like a wall I'd kick or punch or something handheld that I could smash and break by throwing it to the ground.

Regardless, I'm back in school now, and I'm finally on a prescription cocktail that works for me. That doesn't mean my symptoms are fully in control, as the opening paragraph clearly shows. However, it does mean that I don't suffer from the symptoms anywhere close to how often I did or as severe as when my bipolar originated.

Despite all this, I have found an avenue for calming down and feeling less alone when depression, a portion of my bipolar, hits. Like painting, drawing, or simply coloring, I find that playing games and even developing games help me in serving as art therapy. It's doing something creative or something that gets me distracted that allows me to turn from a bad mood to a good one-- or at least feel numb instead of full of sadness or rage.

I tend to play games with bright colors and peppy soundtracks-- things like Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mega Man, and so forth. For some, they could say it's a means to escape. For others, it may be said that these games turn a sour mood into a happy one through the interaction I am having with the games I play. My brain is no longer thinking about how alone I am (and my depression clouds how I am actually not alone by any stretch of the imagination, as a simple Facebook post about how I'm feeling or what I'm doing is met with my friends chiming in), how I'm a loser for never having been in a relationship before (even though I know many people don't have the same problems I do, which again, my depression clouds), and how my self-esteem is quite horrid. Instead, I'm thinking about how to solve an environmental or platforming puzzle, how to get around to a cordoned off section of level, or what I should to complete an arduous challenge.

This goes into designing games as well. With Super Push Adventure, I found joy in creating new levels and writing dialogue. I was making my own world-- one that was free from all the horrors of the real world like my depression, my loneliness, my rage, etc. I found that making Super Push Adventure at times was highly therapeutic. It gave me such a high that no drug on the market could replicate, and unlike drugs, I wouldn't suffer a nasty side effect from my natural high.

Legends of Adrigal is allowing me to show off my creative storytelling side. In some ways, having depression when writing the scenario or composing music helps give the mood I want to have for the game at times. It's much easier for me to write a forlorn, somber piece of music when I'm in a similar type of mood.

NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and several other places have brought up a link between creativity and mental illness. Perhaps this gift of creativity (however limited it may be for me) is a side effect of my bipolar. It certainly is linked to it, as doing creative things certainly helps me feel better about myself, lowers my chance for a manic mood swing, and feel well.

I believe that doing anything creative is great for the mind. You don't have to be depressed or have thoughts of isolation in order to start something.  It's not limited to just creating games or solving puzzles, either. You can draw, you can paint, you can color, and so on to help your mind out. For me, I feel good when I'm making progress in a game, allowing my artistic spirit to thrive with creating sprites for a game like Chickadee, writing scenario data for Legends of Adrigal, or composing music for Super Push Adventure. It doesn't work all the time, but more often than not, when I'm feeling down (but not in a manic frenzy), I can turn to games to make myself feel better.

Introducing the main villain of Chickadee!

I've been sharing a lot from Chickadee, my Breakout-inspired game, this past week. My sharing continues with this look at the main villain of Chickadee. Who is he? He's none other than Dr. Egghead. In Chickadee, he bird-naps the entirety of Birdseed Village outside of Chickadee and Old Redbird the Cardinal. The latter serves as the Chickadee's guide throughout the baby chick's adventure. But what did Chickadee's village ever do to Dr. Egghead? What is the reasoning behind the mass bird-napping of the village's denizens? Find out when you play Chickadee!

The design of Dr. Egghead is simple enough, a face shrouded by a giant eggshell with eyes poked out. He dresses to impress with his cape, dress shirt, bowtie, and vest. His big eyebrows, handlebar mustache and crooked grin are what identifies this mad doctor outside of his professional garb.

His personality is quite eccentric, dare I say, mad. I mean, what else can you say about a man who wears a giant eggshell on his head? He likes egg puns, cackling laughter, and designing devilish ways to eliminate his enemies. But again, what does he want with Chickadee's friends? And why did he leave Chickadee and Old Redbird behind?

All of this makes for one egg-citing villain if I do say so myself!

The Level Backgrounds of Chickadee

Chickadee continues to excite me, as we're all making some serious progress towards the game. Now, you already know Jo is doing the programming, and I'm doing the directing, concept ideas, level design, art, and music. However, there's another person helping out, my local friend, Natasha Matthews, who is doing the background art of levels. What is her secret to these awesome backgrounds? Let's hear it straight from Natasha's mouth! Well, technically it was Natasha's fingers, as this was a typed response!

"Really I am taking [Phil's] concepts and looking at nature to figure out color pallets and I use real life textures over my work so the sand on the beach has a sand texture or bark on the trees. I also look at games such as Little Big Planet and Nintendo games for more inspiration."

Let's take a look at the four current backgrounds Natasha has worked on. I drew up a quick concept for Natasha to follow, and she did the brunt of the work! Note: These might not be the final versions in Chickadee.

TUTORIAL WORLD BACKGROUND

FOREST WORLD BACKGROUND

BEACH WORLD BACKGROUND

WINTER WORLD BACKGROUND

FOREST WORLD CONCEPT

BEACH WORLD CONCEPT

WINTER WORLD CONCEPT

The Enemies and NPCs of Chickadee - Part Two

Chickadee continues its development with myself and my friend from across the Atlantic, Jo! The latter of our partnership has done all the programming and getting the kinks worked out, while I've been doing a director role, level designer role, and artist and musician role. I'd like to talk some more about the NPCs and enemies that Chickadee will encounter in his quest to save his fellow friends and family members! If you missed part one of this growing series of articles, check it out here. Now, onto the five next characters I have to share with you all!

CHILL WILL THE BLUEBIRD

Chill Will is the prisoner of the winter world. He has a very casual disposition about him and doesn't let too much get him bothered, not even being captured by Dr. Egghead! He keeps himself warm in the winter with his lovely scarf. Not only is it great for keeping warm, but it's also quite the fashion statement, too.

PRISCILLA THE BEAUTY BIRD

Here is a bird that is in love with herself and always has her makeup kit within wing's reach. She's a bit self-absorbed-- well, actually, that's an understatement, and she certainly won't mind shouting Chickadee's ears off for not rescuing her sooner. She is the prisoner of the casino world.

PEEKABOO THE HERMIT CRAB

He's not the angriest enemy around, nor is he very violent. He's Peekaboo the Hermit Crab, and he peeks out of his shell intermittently, more inside the shell than not. Hitting the shell will have Chickadee simply bounce off it, while hitting Peekaboo's body will defeat the foe and remove his shell from the playing field.

PEEPERS THE PELICAN

Another enemy from the beach world, Peepers the Pelican is a cool costumer (note the sunglasses hanging off the bridge of his beak) that flies in a set pattern around a given level, dropping eggs that will send Chickadee off kilter if he runs into them. Thankfully, Peepers can be defeated by one or two hits on any part of his body, even his wings. 

MEGAPEDE THE MIGHTY

Introducing the boss of the forest world, Megapede! He slips out of one of six holes, three on either side of the battlefield, ready to send Chickadee to his doom! Can you defeat each segment and send Megapede crying home? Only through doing so will you rescue the bird imprisoned by Dr. Egghead!

The Enemies and NPCs of Chickadee - Part One

Both Chickadee development and production have continued as of this week! Thank the lord for fall break! With this update to Chickadee on StortzumSoft, I'd like to talk about a handful of NPC and enemies that Chickadee will encounter on his Breakout-styled journey. Let's begin with two friendly faces, shall we?

OLD REDBIRD THE CARDINAL

This is Old Redbird, the wisest of Chickadee's treetop village. Foolishly, Dr. Egghead, the villain of our tale, did not bird-nap this bird along with Chickadee's friends, thinking he was too old to be of any use. Fortunately, there are plenty of uses for Old Redbird during Chickadee's journey, providing sage advice and wisdom to the baby bird on his adventure. Need to know what a certain contraption does? Old Redbird's your bird!

MR. INCHES THE INCHWORM

Don't mind Mr. Inches the Inchworm-- he's just laying about in his hole in the forest world of Chickadee. Well, that isn't entirely true. You WILL mind him if you end up crushed in between two Mr. Inches at once or be in between Mr. Inches and a solid object when he pokes his head out! Other than that, Mr. Inches is perfectly harmless and just wants to pop of his hole and say hi!

EIGHTLEGS THE SPIDER

Let's talk about the first enemy that Chickadee will encounter if you play through the forest world first. (Remember that you can play any of the six worlds at your leisure.) Eightlegs the Spider usually hangs out-- literally-- from ceilings, only dropping down to cause Chickadee trouble when the player bounces near him. Eightlegs cannot be attacked from the front, as he'll just smack Chickadee around, messing with the player. Instead, attacking from the sides or from the rear will take good care of our eight-legged pest.

CRABCAKE THE CRAB

As you'd imagine with a crab, Crabcake only moves side to side. It must make getting around such a pain if you can only move sideways. If you're moving east to west, you'll never experience the joy of moving north to south! What a terrible and tragic life Crabcake must lead! No wonder why he's so angry and an enemy to Chickadee, being able to only be attacked from the front or rear! I'd hate the world too if I could only move sideways!

BIGEYE THE SHIELDBOT

The final character to share tonight is Bigeye the Shieldbot. You can't see it with this image, but Bigeye has up to two shields that spin around his body. These shields will make Chickadee bounce off them as if he were nothing. Timing your shot correctly is the difference between hitting Bigeye's body and hitting his shield. Obviously the former is what you want to do!

The Content Creation panel at Pixelpop Festival

Over a month ago (man, time flies!) I participated in St. Louis' Pixelpop Festival, a celebration of all things gaming-related! I've posted previous blog entries such as this one and this one detailing some of the show highlights that I had the pleasure to be a part of. This video here, however, had eluded me! Not anymore!

One of my hobbies is blogging, and I've written for SuperPhillip Central, my site, for over seven years now. Here, as part of this Content Creation panel led by Ryan Dampf of Living the Nerd Life, I discuss why I became a blogger and all sorts of fun stuff. It's worth it way more to hear everyone else on this panel, though! Please enjoy!

The games that shaped my desire to go into game design

Hello all. Development work for Chickadee is at a standstill, but Legends of Adrigal is coming along just fine, as you saw with last week's item system post.

Today I thought I'd do something autobiographical for this blog today and talk to you about the games I grew up that got me interested in making games. Without question, one of my favorite parts of game design is creating maps and levels, as well as doing scriptwork and dialogue. The following games growing up gave me an eye for adequate level design and pushed me into thinking hard about doing games as a career. But not programming-- %#%# programming!

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)

My skills as a gamer hampered my enjoyment of the original Legend of Zelda on the NES, and if I was bad with that game, there was no doubt that I absolutely would blow at playing its 2D side-scroller sequel, Zelda II. No doubt indeed, as I did suck at playing that game, too. After Zelda II, Shigeru Miyamoto wanted to go back to the top-down perspective that The Legend of Zelda had. After all, he was a bit disappointed with Zelda II.

Regardless, I'm glad he found Zelda II as something that could have used more work, despite it being a highly competent game (that I absolutely suck at). He and his team created one of most memorable and replay-able games for me. I was lost and enamored with the world of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

I remember bugging my mom to bring home blueprint paper from her work so I could draw dungeon maps and an overworld map for my own Zelda adventure. I thought up block puzzles, torch puzzles, where you had to light up all the torches in a row, and other obstacles. I emulated A Link to the Past as closely as possible, because as a kid, I really didn't have the skill set required to innovate in any special way. I wish I kept those maps, as they'd be an astonishing blast from the past... pun intended.

Mega Man X (SNES)

Here's another game that inspired me to draw maps of levels, except this time they were 2D affairs, mimicking the gameplay of Mega Man X to a "T". For those unaware of Mega Man X's gameplay, it's a much more intense Mega Man game when compared to the classic series. There was much more action, a slightly darker tone, the ability to wall jump, find upgrades for both health energy, weapon energy, and armor, and introduced a whole new series of characters to the Mega Man lore.

Anyway, I devised my own series of Mavericks and Maverick names with silly names like Shield Turtle, Rampaging Ram, Force Bronco, and so forth. I concocted simplistic 2D stages and would draw a line through the levels, so it was like I was playing them. Now, my memory of these exact levels is mighty fuzzy, so I imagine these levels were horribly designed. I mean, I might have been in gifted classes as a kid (and no, I don't know how the hell that happened either), but I wasn't a genius at level design by any stretch of the imagination. It was just something fun to do while my friends played street hockey.

Breath of Fire (SNES)

Breath of Fire, a joint effort between Squaresoft and Capcom before Capcom simply took the series as its own, was one of, if not the, first RPG I ever played. It was also one of the first games that ever made me cry. No, not because I sucked at it and thought the game was cheating. Instead, it was because of the fate of two supporting characters, Alan and Cerl.

Cerl was one of four generals to the dark army (I think they were the Dark Dragons or something thereabouts?), the main villains of the game. She fell in love with Alan, a denizen of a local countryside town. Cerl's memory towards Alan was all gone, and despite his words and actions, Cerl wasn't having any of it unfortunately. That is until one key moment after Ryu's (our hero's) party defeats her. Alan and Cerl's past relationship comes back to Cerl, but her time crystal goes off, teleporting the two and Cerl's tower in a bright flash of light.

When Ryu's party reaches the remains of Cerl's tower, they find two children, one boy and a girl. "Tag! You're it!" The one says to the other. These are obviously Alan and Cerl, and they now have their lifetimes to once again be with one another. That moment made me tear up like crazy as a young child myself. Of course, this song playing during that scene didn't help matters at all.

The point is that not only did Breath of Fire get me into RPGs, but it also taught me that gaming could be used as a powerful interactive agent for telling stories. There are plenty of games out there that tell stories in a way that only gaming can, such as 999 for the Nintendo DS. I want to do the same with my games, but I still have some learning to do. Then again, life is always a learning experience in some regard or another.

Banjo-Kazooie (N64)

Super Mario 64 indeed blew my mind, like many gamers back in 1996 when it launched here in the West. While other games have surpassed its controls and camera, few can claim to be better than the actual game itself. For me, that's except Banjo-Kazooie. The game was more humorous, the worlds were more cohesive (they also didn't kick you out of them after each Power Star-equivalent was nabbed), the music was phenomenal, the sense of progression was lovely, and the move set of Banjo and Kazooie just jived with me more.

One of my earliest posts to this blog was about the Banjo-Kazooie-inspired level maps I did in high school and early college. I don't recall the exact reason I made them, but I actually still have these. Thankfully, if I lose them, I still have digital copies. All hail the digital age! It was indeed Banjo-Kazooie that opened my mind to interesting level design in a 3D platformer context. One of my biggest dreams as a game designer is to have the opportunity to create such a game with a team. It might be a pipe dream, as the 3D platformer is by no means a popular genre like it was back in the PS1 and N64 generation, but it's something I really hope I can do one day.

Perfect Dark (N64)

Most Nintendo 64 kids, like this one, grew up with playing GoldenEye, an FPS that pioneered the genre on home consoles and came out a year after the film of the same name. For me, Perfect Dark was my jam early in high school. I loved the story, voice work, objective-based missions where areas were nonlinear, offering multiple paths to Ms. Dark's goals, and I especially adored the multiplayer. The maps were big, but not too big, delivering paths, chambers, and rooms that made for complex maps and enthralling firefights; the customization options towards what kinds of matches you could do were incredible; and the game had bots. BOTS! HALO doesn't even bots, for god's sake! Any FPS with bots is better than Halo locally.

Nonetheless, I'm not the biggest fan of first-person shooters, but Perfect Dark got me so fascinated with the genre. It opened my mind to the possibilities of creating my own FPS games, or if not even that, my own multiplayer arenas. I'm still waiting for another FPS that is just as good as Perfect Dark and offers just as many options as it.

RPG Maker (PS1)

Ah... my first go at creating an RPG! I remember bawling when my third-party memory card became corrupted, and I had to start work over again on the game I was making. Sure, it was but three hours of work, but it was a major disappointment for an 13 year-old. At least that's the age I'm going with, because I'm not doing the math at this moment.

I remember actually going through the steps of making a finished RPG. It starred SuperPhillip, a character that I made up in second grade. Superheroes were all the rage with me like they are now with Marvel and DC pumping out movies like an assembly line. I wanted to create my own, so I did. There really isn't a story to tell there. I just liked superheroes and dreamed of being one at the time in second grade.

Anyway, I had to split my RPG across two memory cards, as the game's length scenario-wise was too big to just fit on one. That's not including the third memory card for system data, such as maps, battlers, enemies, items, magic, etc. It turned out well, and I used the work I did there to create a project in RPG Maker 2003 later on. Regardless, I believe RPG Maker on the original PlayStation was one of the first RPG Makers officially localized and released in the West. Bless you, Agetec, you magnificent bastards.