The result of the entrepreneurial pairing of Paul Callahan and James Russell, and one of the oddest [[Game-Maker]] games I have encountered. With an easy game development kit at hand, they chose to advertise their services as custom game designers. Send in a portrait of yourself, and they would scan it in, anti alias it, and slap it on a stock body to roam around a dungeon.
a

Along with Sheldon Chase and Marty Valenti, ''Time After Time'' is amongst the few examples of digitization I have seen in a Game-Maker game. Along with its sequel ''[[Reptilia]]'' it is also the least effective, as there is no animation and little attempt to blend the photographs into the surrounding imagery. Also, frankly, the game isn't all that hot. Still, there’s a certain weird brilliance to the business strategy.

[[Category:Antares Bros., The]][[Category:Top-down]][[Category:Action-adventure]][[Category:digitized graphics]]

Time After Time

2010-07-26T01:11:25Z

The result of the entrepreneurial pairing of Paul Callahan and James Russell, and one of the oddest [[Game-Maker]] games I have encountered. With an easy game development kit at hand, they chose to advertise their services as custom game designers. Send in a portrait of yourself, and they would scan it in, anti alias it, and slap it on a stock body to roam around a dungeon.
a

Along with Sheldon Chase and Marty Valenti, ''Time After Time'' is amongst the few examples of digitization I have seen in a Game-Maker game. Along with its sequel ''[[Reptilia]]'' it is also the least effective, as there is no animation and little attempt to blend the photographs into the surrounding imagery. Also, frankly, the game isn't all that hot. Still, there’s a certain weird brilliance to the business strategy.

[[Category:Antares Bros., The]][[Category:Top-down]][[Category:Action-adventure]][[Category:digitization]]

Category:Antares Bros., The

2010-07-26T01:06:38Z

69.112.100.217:

''[[Time After Time]]'' and ''[[Reptalia]]'' are two of the oddest [[Game-Maker]] games I have encountered. Both are the result of the entrepreneurial pairing of Paul Callahan and James Russell. With an easy game development kit at hand, they chose to advertise their services as custom game designers. Send in a portrait of yourself, and they would scan it in, anti alias it, and slap it on a stock body to roam around a dungeon (in the case of ''Time After Time'') or desert (in ''Reptilia'').

Along with Sheldon Chase and Marty Valenti, these two games are amongst the few examples of digitization I have seen in a Game-Maker game. They are also the least effective, as there is no animation and little attempt to blend the photographs into the surrounding imagery. Also, frankly, the games aren’t all that hot. Still, there’s a certain weird brilliance to the business strategy.

Especially in middle class America, there is a huge market for marginally customized products — stamps, address labels, Christmas cards, pre-formatted business cards; all inexpensive, all a bit tawdry. All of them allow a solipsistic demographic that achieves little and earns both too much and too little to have real freedom to buy meaning for itself. By that reasoning, what better gift for that young gamer in your life than to buy him a slot in a real videogame?

I have no clue if Callahan and Russel found their own success in this venture. I kind of hope so.

[[Category:Game-Maker artists]]

2010-07-10T09:31:35Z

69.112.100.217: Created page with 'From experience, Janelle was all business. It looks like he reached some sort of exclusive distribution deal with RSD, as I believe my first copy of ''Barracuda'' came as a stand…'

From experience, Janelle was all business. It looks like he reached some sort of exclusive distribution deal with RSD, as I believe my first copy of ''Barracuda'' came as a stand-alone sample diskette with my original copy of Game-Maker. Later on the CD release of Game-Maker included a stripped-down version of ''Barracuda'' as a sample game.

The reason ''Barracuda'' had to be stripped down, I suppose, is that the official version is an unusual hack job. Long before Game-Maker supported interstitial [[.FLI]] files, Janelle designed custom [[Deluxe Paint]] intro animations and a text-mode wrapper to strongly insist that the player register the game. One wonders who these many hard-working individuals are who form the Gamelynk corporation. If I fail to register, will they each send a sternly-worded note to my mother?

Something else kind of neat is that Janelle archived all of the component Game-Maker files, I believe using [[LHarc]] compression. So instead of a directory full of [[.MAP]] and [[.CHR]] files, you had a small number of mysterious data files, an executable, and some supplementary text files. Much tidier, and a capability that I always wished Game-Maker provided on its own. I'm not so sure that Janelle was as concerned with presentation as he was with preventing other Game-Maker users from tinkering with his files. Still, it's cool to see this level of ambition.

As for the game itself, again it feels weirdly stiff and serious. The premise involves... well, here's Janelle's description:

: Barracuda V1 Brand new Game Supports VGA, 286 and up with Animation. Action Role Play Game that will let you Save The World From A Nuke Atack. Navigate Submarines and Explore Underwater Wrecks...

It's not an RPG, at least not in the sense that you or I understand. It's more of an adventure-sim... something. Basically, nuclear warheads that threaten to blow up the Western world. You need to seek them out on the sea floor, then dive to retrieve them. It's a hugely ambitious game by Game-Maker standards, and involves huge environments and several different play modes.

You start off as a blip on a map screen. You move with agonizing slowness in any of the four cardinal directions, half a grid square at a time. All the while, waterspouts randomly swirl around the map. If they hit your ship, well, too bad for you. There's no avoiding them, because once you hit the arrow key the game moves you at the rate it feels like moving you. Still, it all looks clean and professional. And it's certainly unusual.

Once you reach an "X" on the map, the game switches to a side-scrolling procedural submarine section. You dive, dive, dive, dive, dive, dive, dive, dive, dive, and dive, and then scour the sea floor for a wreck to enter. Along the way your sub can shoot torpedoes, though I'm unsure at what. Maybe the game presents some hazards later on; I don't remember encountering any. This section is more of a slow-paced bit of exploration. Again, there's no faulting the presentation; if you ignore the tedium, it looks and feels great.

Finally you arrive at a wreck, and the view shifts again. Now the game involves searching the wreck with a too-fragile diver. Health equates with air. If you get snagged on barbed wire and start to bleed out, you can find replacement air tanks to heal yourself. Makes as much sense as pork chops in a trash can, I guess.

Again the diver moves so, so slowly. And the areas inside the ships are enormous mazes. They don't seem to follow any particular engineering logic; they're just one murky corridor after another, everything looking pretty much the same. And then once you find what you're looking for, you need to make your way all the way back to the entrance. Which is... realistic.

I notice that I'm being sarcastic all throughout this entry. It's hard for me to avoid, as this game is so astoundingly dull. Yet it is one of the most important games in the Game-Maker library, and it's such an oddity that it's worth discussing.

Apparently the shareware episode of Barracuda has at least one sequel, Secret Mission 2. I've never seen it, and if it's more of the same then I think I'm set. The registration form also suggests a future Mission 3, though I'm unsure if that came to pass.