Retro Puzzle Maker is an amazing little free game engine. It’s a web-based tool that allows you to make Sokoban style games that output as playable NES ROM files. The engine is code-free and any beginner can use it, and while means that while you can’t change much in terms of the type of game you’re making, there are some variations to the level goals you can select and a robust level editor to make the game feel like a creation that you yourself have made.
When you first arrive at the homepage for Retro Puzzle Maker, you have the option of starting a new game, or loading a creation you’ve previously worked on if you’ve downloaded your game as a .json file before. Clicking on the new game option will let you enter basic info like the title before picking your main character from a large premade selection as well as the type of game tiles you’d like to use to build your game. Both your game character and the game tiles can be completely replaced with your original art however, as long as it follows the capabilities of the NES. The ‘graphics’ section of the game lets you change all of those, as well as gives you an FAQ on what you’ll need if you want to supply your own graphics.
There are three gameplay styles you can choose from. The most basic is simply get to the exit to get to the next level. The second is pushing all boxes into holes, then getting to the exit. The third is collecting all coins on the screen, then getting to the exit. All the gameplay styles are played from a top-down perspective and are single screen levels. You can have up to 64 levels in your game, so you can make these pretty meaty if you’d like!
I decided to try making a Christmas themed game last year just to see how the engine worked and was quite happy with the experience. First off, I changed all the graphics to be Christmas or Wintery themed. I chose the ‘collect all the coins’ style of gameplay, only in my game’s story, you’re Santa’s helper snowman and you’re trying to collect all the presents and put them at the tree, the tree being the exit for each stage after collecting the coins.
The editor gives you several types of tiles to use in your level design to make things interesting. There’s the crates you can push into holes, and after you do the hole is filled and can be walked across. There are also ice tiles which make your character slide across all of them until they land on a different style tile or run into a wall. There are lock tiles that require you to get a key. And there are tiles that can be walked over once but then collapse into a hole after you do so you can’t go back. Using all of these you can make some pretty unique style levels!
You can upload your own custom music as well, but making NES music is something that I have an interest in learning more about, but is still currently out of my wheelhouse. Luckily it has five built in songs with some variety in tone.
There’s a simple sidebar to the left of the screen letting you access all the different parts of the game easily. Level editor, graphics, music, title screen, end screen, hud info is all there and with some simple documentation to answer any questions you might have. There’s also a ‘play’ button on the left, and at any time you can try your NES game right in the browser.
Overall this is a great little engine for making a small puzzle game (or, if you use all 64 levels, a quite large puzzle game). I’ve seen a number of NES games pop up on itch.io that are clearly made using it, and there’s even a tag available now to search for them. Speaking of which, I put my game, Santa’s Snowman, up on itch.io, so give it a try! The ROM is also available to download for free, so you can play it in your browser or on your emulator of choice.
I thought it might be fun to talk a bit more about games that I’m playing as I’m playing them. After all, I think I play more games than I realize, and it seems my memory is such that if I played something a week ago, it might as well have been ten years, I’ll just forget. Also, sometimes I’ll look back and think that it would have been nice to talk about things as I was playing them, and see what I was thinking then. If you go back far enough in this blog, back when it was hosted on a different service, you can see that I put up a blog post on the day of the Wii launch. But I thought I would be cheeky and not talk at all about my thoughts on the Wii, or Wii Sports, or The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. No, instead I wrote up a post on Sneak King, the Burger King stealth title for Xbox 360, which launched on the very day of the Wii release. That was fun and all, but maybe I should have talked about how awesome Wii Sports was! Or heck, talked about the launch, since I was working at GameStop at the time!
So with that rambling explanation of WHY I want to make some more ‘in the moment’ video game posts, let’s talk about some of the games I’ve been playing for October. And man was there a big one!
Of course, Super Mario Bros. Wonder came out last recently, and I’ve been spending as much time as I possibly can playing it. I believe I’m in my fourth world currently? And of I’m absolutely loving it. I’m always down for a new 2D Mario game, but even I was starting to feel like Nintendo weren’t putting as much effort as I’d like into their 2D Mario titles after the 4th “New” Super Mario Bros game. This really feels like they’re trying to recreate the…well, wonder…of the best Mario had to offer through Mario 3 and Mario World. Those games had loads of weird things, and you just felt like you never knew what your next challenge would look like. The care they’ve taken in the animation really adds to much to all the characters, you get a much better feel for their personalities. The wonder seeds segments in each level are pure joy, you never know what weird, crazy thing is going to happen, but you’ll always look forward to it. There have been levels where I missed the wonder seed, and I know I’ll be back to find it, not necessarily because I want to 100% the game, but because finding them is so much fun.
I especially want to spotlight the mutiplayer and online functionality, which I’m loving. As a lot of people have talked about already, this game changes up the mutliplayer formula from the last couple “New” games by not having the players collide with each other. That means that you can’t pick up and throw your friend, and it also means that you won’t mess up a jump because you landed on your friend and bounced off their head into a pit. While the chaos did add a unique kind of fun, I think being able to focus more on the gameplay and less on where three other people are on the screen probably allows them to make levels that are a bit more tightly designed, since they don’t have to worry about the areas feeling too cramped with four players bumping into each other.
But I haven’t actually had any couch co-op experience yet. All my multiplayer has been online, and it has been, surprisingly, a joy. I really thought I would switch it on, try it a bit, and then switch if off to focus on the game itself. But to my surprise, I’ve kept it on almost the entire time I’ve played! I haven’t found it at all distracting to have a couple other players joining me in the stage, and sometimes other players will do something like put a standee where a secret is. It’s been fun to try and save a player that died by catching their ghost within the five seconds they’re given, and it’s been fun when I’ve been saved the same way by others. And I’m impressed at how smoothly everything runs; having other players in the level does nothing to the frame rate at all, and everyone seems to maintain a solid connection. It’s a far cry from Super Mario Maker 2, where any online match was pretty much guaranteed to be practically a slide show the frame rate would dip so much.
Another big launch recently I was looking forward to is the 4th DLC pack for Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed! When this game first came out I did actually write a blog post about it, surprisingly! The new DLC pack is free, just like all the ones before it, and it adds a lot of new great features, including being able to save 4 pre-made Ghostbusters so you can switch between different looks. They even hang around the firehouse, chillin’, which I thought was a great touch. You can also save loadouts to your equipment now, meaning you can try different combos and switch around to see what feels best, which I appreciate. Two new maps were added, a Chuck E. Cheese style area, and a subway, both of which feel like great places to find hauntings and fit right in with the other locations. And of course, the new ghost added, which was teased about a while back, is Samhain, the spirit of Halloween himself, first seen in The Real Ghostbusters episode “When Halloween Was Forever”. He looks great and seems to be quite a formidable opponent from the few matches I had against someone using him. I haven’t played as him myself yet, as I just unlocked him. You have to go through the new story content before you’re able to use Samhain, which leads to the next big part of this update, new story content, with the full cast, including Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson back to voice their roles, which is always so appreciated!
My wife and I have been getting in the spooky spirit by playing Para Eyes on Steam, which is pretty much a copy of the I’m On Observation Duty games. But we’ve already played through all 5 of those, so we were eager to try a new one. This game is good, and more than just a simple rip-off, it makes some much needed improvements and quality of life upgrades. First off, there are multiple difficulty levels, with the difficulty effecting things like how fast anomalies happens and how quickly you have to deal with it, and how many rooms you’ll have to watch. At first it seems like a bummer that you have to start with easy in order to unlock the next higher difficulty, but it adds some nice replay value, because when you go up a level, now you have one new room to focus on, but you’re already kind of familiar with the other rooms. Reporting is also much snappier, with you just having to click on the screen where the event occurred, instead of having to report the room, and the type of anomaly. Overall I’ve enjoyed the changes this game introduces. There’s also a few additions you can buy with in-game currency you earn, so you get additional anomalies like shadows and spiders added to the mix. If you’re in the market for another game in the I’m On Observation Duty style, I’d give this one a recommendation.
Lastly, I’ve also been playing a bit of Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 on the Switch for the spooky season. I really loved the first Bloodstained Curse of the Moon game, with both games being heavily inspired by Castlevania 3 on NES. This one definitely feels like it upped the challenge over the first game, to the point of occasionally feeling frustrating. I still like it, but I’m completely stuck at a boss battle that I will have to watch someone playing through on YouTube to figure out how to advance, I think. The atmosphere it top notch though, and the NES-esque graphics are a delight. The weapons all feel good to use, and the various characters all fee different enough that you can find good uses for them in different situations. A solid Castlevania style game!
I meant for this to be a short post to quickly record what I’ve been playing, but it somehow ballooned out! I’m not sure if future posts like this will be quite this long, but I do like the idea of trying to write down all the games I’ve been going through, along with some impressions.
Just in time for Halloween, let’s look at five of my favorite episodes of The Real Ghostbusters!
Collect Call of Cathulhu
While the other episodes on this list are favorites from my childhood, this is one that I only have the vaguest recollection of as a kid, but now, as an adult and a lover of H.P. Lovecraft’s writing, this is a real standout episode. The Necronomicon is being loaned to the New York Public Library from Arkham University, and is stolen by Cathulhu worshipers. It’s later revealed by Egon and Ray that Cathulhu is one of several ‘ancient ones’ that writers like H.P. Lovecraft used as the basis for their stories. This episode is a real treat for Lovecraft fans by bringing in several elements of the Cthulhu mythos, and simply saying they were real elements that Lovecraft simply weaved into his stories. We get some great creepy character designs of the [find what they were], and a pretty great looking Cathulhu himself in the end. This is a really well-written episode that is fast paced and packed with action, intrigue and comedy.
When Halloween Was Forever
I think this one and the Boogieman episode might be the most famous of the Real Ghostbuster episodes. During Halloween night, two goblins release Samhain, the spirit of Halloween, from his magically sealed prison. He then begins a plan to make the night last forever, with all ghosts in the city under his command.
An example of some of the weird drawings in this one. Stiff angular faces and weird Slimer drawings.
This is a great episode and a classic villain who would pop up in the background in several episodes before returning in a later season. One of my bigger gripes with this episode, however, is the art. I don’t know which team worked on this episode, but it was not their A-team, or even their B. Character animation is really stiff here, and I feel like everyone has very strangely angular faces that don’t move well in three dimensions. Special shoutout to Slimer, who through at least the first half of this episode is WEIRDLY off model. It’s a real shame, because this is one of the most remembered episodes, yet if you go back to look at it, you might think that the show doesn’t look as good as you remember it. Art aside though, it’s a true classic, and one that I watch every year for Halloween.
Knock, Knock
I always love when The Real Ghostbusters is allowed to be just be a little creepy. Just enough to kind of freak out a young kid who is watching it, before the heroes can heroically save the day again while cracking a joke. This one has a couple of great moments like that. In Knock, Knock, an underground tunnel is being drilled when the workers come across a door that isn’t mean to be opened until Doomsday. It ends up opening, and paranormal activity starts happening all over the city. At one point the Ghostbusters decide to travel by subway. The lights go off in their car, and when they come back on, the car is filled with skeleton passengers! Truly creepy! Then the subways themselves come alive, turning into giant worm-like creatures that burrow through the ground, then pop up making a weird cry/screaming noise. I remember this episode mostly for all the ghostly imagery in it, and it has plenty to offer.
Play Them Ragtime Boos
This episode has a very different feel, because we’re not only away from New York, but we’re away from Ghostbusting in general. The Ghostbusters go on vacation to New Orleans but find the place they’re staying in is haunted by an old blues band that appears and plays music every night, bringing the locals under their spell. Each night they get stronger, until they start reversing time itself, with the town reverting to the way it used to look and people’s clothes changing. Since they were on vacation, they don’t have access to their ghostbusting gear. Ray and Egon try to make a quick and dirty proton pack, to disastrous results, before they try a method that leans less on gadgetry, fighting blues with rock n’ roll! I guess it’s good that all four Ghostbusters know how to play instruments? Have they been in a band this whole time and we just haven’t known? Because I’d go to that show.
Mrs. Rogers’ Neighborhood
This episode might be my favorite? Or the one that holds the most nostalgia, at the very least. I think I just really appreciate that it’s a classic haunted house episode, and there’s something super fun about something so simple. Mrs. Rogers’ house is presumably haunted, so she stays at the firehouse while the ghostbusters go to check it out. All the haunted house classics are here, doors opening, voices, plates flying across the room. But the big thing happens when they figure out that Mrs. Rogers is actually the ghostly entity Waat, and they try to escape her house. The house comes completely alive and tries to stop them, which ends with a great scene in which the front entryway begins stretching away from them while the walls grow hands to grab them. When they finally reach the front door, the whole room rotates vertically, so now they are holding onto the door, dangling over a long hallway as the furnace climbs up towards them. It’s some great animation and very creative. This episode might be the first one I ever saw as a kid, which I’m guessing also plays a large part in why I’m so very fond of it.
And there you have it, five of my favorite episodes of The Real Ghostbusters! There are certainly plenty more to love, so maybe I’ll do a follow up at one point or another. I do so love talking about the GBs! Thanks for listening as I ramble on about a 35-year-old cartoon show! Happy Halloween!
Halloween is always my favorite time of the year. Starting in August, I’m drinking pumpkin spice coffee, I’m watching spooky movies and Halloween cartoon specials, and I’m playing lots of spooky games. Playing through the first Castlevania game, or at least playing one a Castlevania game in general, has become something of a yearly tradition now. So last year, I started thinking about making a short Halloween game for the Game Boy using the wonderful GB Studio engine.
GB Studio in action.
For those that don’t know, GB Studio is a game engine that allows you to create your own Game Boy games without any code knowledge. The games can be output as ROM files, which means you can play them in a Game Boy emulator or even flash them to a cart and play them on an actual Game Boy. It also makes it easy to play them in a web page and have it hosted on something like Itch.io. It takes some getting used to, but in no time you can have a prototype of several different genres, including RPGs, platformers, and side scrolling shootem’ ups. And did I mention it’s free?
stage 1, Pumpkin Jack avoids a skeleton in the cemetery.
So in late August last year I figured I had plenty of time to design out a short Halloween platforming game. I wanted to keep things simple and short, partly because I wanted to finish it on time (or at all, as some game projects tend to go) and I wanted people to be able to play through it rather quickly, just a short burst of Halloween fun. I sketched out some simple platforming levels consisting of two stages in a cemetery in the woods, and ending with a witch’s castle. All the graphics are designed by myself, though I looked online for some Game Boy music that was free and available in fair use to use in game projects, and found a suitable creepy sounding track.
Stage 2, a ghosty is flying by.
I was inspired a bit by Wario Land 4 to have a section of the game that would have you running back to the starting point. I figured this would make the game feel a little bit unique instead of just running to the right, and also it would double the length of the stages essentially. I decided that in the back story of the game, an evil witch stole Pumpkin Jack’s soul and put it in three candles. You start off this journey by traversing classic platforming hazards, and added a few different enemies to watch out for such as white skeletons that walk back and forth, red skeletons that will occasionally throw bones, and ghosts that will bob up and down as they travel through the air. There’s a candle at the end of each stage, and when you collect it, the witch will show up and chase after you, forcing you to run back to the pumpkin patch area you started from.
Stage 3, in the witch’s castle.
I also took a little inspiration from Kirby’s Adventure on the NES (and I think also the first Dream Land on Game Boy maybe?) by having an end boss battle that was a side scrolling shooter. In the last stage you fly above the witch’s castle and shoot candy at her. Hit her enough time and she goes down and your soul is reclaimed!
The final battle. Avoid the bats and shoot candy at the witch!
It’s a short and simple game, but I hoped to add some spooky Halloween charm to make it enjoyable. One thing I’ll admit I still have trouble with is making interesting Game Boy Color palettes. I’ve seen some amazing examples of other people’s Game Boy projects that have such colorful pops to them, and I’ve had a hard time grasping that myself. That being said, I was pretty satisfied with the end result. The game is up at Itch.io, where you can play it in your browser, or freely download the ROM file to play on an emulator if you wish.
I was actually hoping to have a follow up to the game ready to go for this year’s Halloween, but it looks like I’m not going to make it in time. But hey, any time of the year is a good time for Halloween fun, so I’ll keep at it and eventually Pumpkin Jack will return.
In the 80s and 90s, Nintendo was firmly against video game rentals. Big name video rental places like West Coast Video and Blockbuster were stocking NES, and later, SNES games, and so were all the mom and pop rental places of the day. It was big business, and I don’t know of any video rental place that didn’t carry at least some video games, no matter how small the store. And that’s saying something, because video rental places were absolutely everywhere back then, especially before Blockbuster came along and put all the independent ones out of business. According to a 1994 article from Billboard, Nintendo was finally ready to talk business with rental places, allowing them to buy direct and save some money. They were still planning on going to Congress to push for making game rental illegal, however. But in just a year, they would partner with Blockbuster to make the Blockbuster Video Game Championships. And a year later, with the Blockbuster Video Game Championships II, they would even have a custom-made Donkey Kong Country game made for the tournament (Okay, so they didn’t make this JUST for the Blockbuster tournament, I believe this was reused from Nintendo’s 1994 PowerFest)! And when I heard about that championship, with a game that I considered myself to be quite good at, I decided I had to enter, and I had to win!
Like I wrote about with my post on playing Little Nemo on NES, I was inspired by a video Hungry Goriya posted on YouTube about 9 NES games you should play. I’ve made my way through the 2nd of the 7 I plan to tackle (as two of them I’d already played through). This time I tried out The Guardian Legend, and boy was I in for a surprise. When it came to Little Nemo, I had played that through rentals a few times as a kid, and had tried it again a few times through emulation as and adult. This one though, I was playing for the first time ever. And I’ve got to admit, I was blown away.
This is just a short post to talk about one of my favorite let’s plays that I’ve watched over the years. It might sound weird to have a favorite let’s play video, not a favorite YouTuber or anything, but this particular let’s play series that tackles Jurassic Park: Trespasser is just so well done and interesting that every couple of years I find myself watching the whole thing again! The person doing the video, Research Indicates, has a nice narration voice, and takes you through the ins and outs of the game, detailing the high hopes the developers had for the game, and the myriad ways in which it all crashed and burned. But he does it in a way that shows a real respect for what they tried to do. This is a well-researched let’s play video dealing with a game that most YouTubers would probably play just to mock and laugh at it, yet when Research Indicates talks about it, it makes you want to play the game that is only vaguely hinted at as you play, the one that the team really tried to do.
For those that don’t know, Jurassic Park: Trespasser had extremely lofty ambitions, including physics-based puzzle design, no user interface to distract you from the game world, and dinosaurs that would act realistically through their AI so they would appear as living creatures. Absolutely none of those things ended up working properly, and Research Indicates goes into what happened, all the while guiding you through the game. It’s a great watch and I highly recommend checking it out.
I feel like, as with many games released during the NES’s lifetime, there have been these waves of popular opinion, thanks largely to the internet, where a game that was liked at the time is ripped apart, then everyone talks about how awful it is, then later on everyone kind of pulls back and realizes that maybe it’s not that bad. The most extreme case of this happening was probably E.T. on Atari 2600, which at the time of its release I used to enjoy playing, but gradually it became known as the ‘worst game of all-time’. Now I feel that people have backed off a bit and realized that there are far worse games, and that outside circumstances meant that it merely wasn’t the game that was loftily envisioned by Howard Scott Warshaw at the time. I feel like the first game based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has had a similar rollercoaster ride of sentiments, and I’m not sure where people usually fall now on whether it’s good or not. I’m not sure if I can objectively say that it’s one of the best TMNT games of all time, but it certainly still one of my favorites.
In just a little over a week, there’s going to be a major DLC update for last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge game. In addition to a new mode, costume options and stages, a new character will be playable, Miyamoto Usagi from Usagi Yojimbo. With this addition, something that started as a playground rumor when I was just ten years old, and something I wanted to badly to be real, will finally happen.
Painted Pixels 