woopWOOP
Member
I've always loved editors included in games. It allows the player to get pretty creative with a game and it's rules and can really extend the life of a game. So naturally, I'm psyched about Super Mario Maker coming this September. Thinking about Super Mario Maker and the things I can pull off with it also reminded myself of an old little PSP-game: Megaman Powered Up. That game was the sole reason I bought a PSP back then. For those unaware it's a chibified remake of the first Mega Man with a huge focus on the added stage editor, with extra stage packs and enemy packs hidden in the main game itself for you to unlock for the editor. The editor sadly didn't include everything they used in the main game, from the huge variation of platform shapes to some other features, but it still had plenty of options.
I remembered I made a few complicated stages in the past and decided to check them out again for the heck of it. Guess what! They kinda suck. I mean, I designed some pretty clever stages for each specific Robot Master (you could play as each of the Robot Masters with added abilities: Cutman can wall-jump, Gutsman can create new blocks out of thin air, etc), but it was missing some pretty basic game design 101. Hard jumps were above spikes with no room for error or practice, it was pretty clear a lot of times I was out of ideas and just spammed enemies everywhere for 'added difficulty' and whenever you were high up you could fall all the way down somewhere near the start of the stage. "Then they'd have to go through the whole stage again, muahaha" I probably thought to myself back then, not realising most people would just quit my bullshit stage at that point. I felt so bad about it that I actually went and re-edited my old stages these last few weeks... along with making some new stages too! Turns out the servers are still up and running and stages are still being uploadded every day, sweet! (on that note, if you have some stages on there, gimme the ID! I wanna play 'em~)
Anyway, I dont want the thread to be solely about Megaman Powered Up. I thought about all the games I played over the years that included a level editor. A lot of them were on the early days of the NES actually, thanks to my ex-neighbour's 370-in-1 NES cartridge:
Excite Bike - The 'Design Mode' in this game had about everything the main game had, tho having a single letter representing different objects was pretty dang confusing. Think I had to resort to writing it down on a piece of paper. Nothing like making tracks that's all about crazy air time. If I remember right the game continues on to stage 2 after you finished your custom track, so your custom track was only available in the first stage colours.
Mach Rider - This game constantly looped your created stage in different environments with different road hazards. To be honest I really sucked at this game and only used the editor to create straight line courses so I could see all the different areas the game had to offer
Wrecking Crew - This game allowed up to four custom stages! Damn! After finishing the last one it'd loop back to the first. It had about all the features of the main game, except for placing hidden items like the Golden Hammer. I vaguely remember that being randomly placed, but no clue if there was any pattern to it. Oh and whatever you do, do NOT press the 'play custom stage' button without adding in any bricks to break first. Doing that would get the game stuck in an endless loop of victory jingles.
Muts & Milk - Like Excite Bike this one allowed you to completely edit the first stage, after that the game would continue on with the regular stages. Since the stage colours change back and forth you were always stuck with the stage 1 colours (this kinda stuff really ticked me off back then, haha...).
Battle City - Again, just the first stage. My brother and I would always hide our flag within white bricks, making it near impossible to lose the game... for one round. Getting the enemy stuck on tiny islands was also pretty fun.
Advance Wars From the GBA forward every AW game came with an easy to use map editor. Used this editor plenty when playing against a friend. Both of us could edit our own 'fortress island' with set amount of cities and factories. Good stuff. Editor didn't come with the bigger 'event' objects like that AW2 volcano tho, sadly.
Excite Bike 64 - Ofcourse the N64 sequel also includes an editor! You were limited to an arena where you could string together a route with set pieces. One nice detail was the ability the manually alter the height points of the different hills you could place. This basically allowed you to turn the track into something that looks like it came out of a lie detector machine. The game didn't really know what to do with the deep trenches, so getting stuck there would often blast you miles skywards for some reason..
Starcraft - Yeah, plenty of PC games can be custom modded and whatnot by tinkering with the files, but Blizzard's official editors for Warcraft and Starcraft were pretty damn nifty with the map tiles being very nicely placed automatically (compared to, say, KKND or Gruntz where you had to puzzle the different pieces together to make it look good). With all the fancy customizable triggers you could go beyond regular multiplayer maps and make something akin to the campaign too. Really neat.
Alright, thats about all I can remember. So GAF, what other games also had fancy editors included with them and what kind of stuff were you pulling off with it?
I remembered I made a few complicated stages in the past and decided to check them out again for the heck of it. Guess what! They kinda suck. I mean, I designed some pretty clever stages for each specific Robot Master (you could play as each of the Robot Masters with added abilities: Cutman can wall-jump, Gutsman can create new blocks out of thin air, etc), but it was missing some pretty basic game design 101. Hard jumps were above spikes with no room for error or practice, it was pretty clear a lot of times I was out of ideas and just spammed enemies everywhere for 'added difficulty' and whenever you were high up you could fall all the way down somewhere near the start of the stage. "Then they'd have to go through the whole stage again, muahaha" I probably thought to myself back then, not realising most people would just quit my bullshit stage at that point. I felt so bad about it that I actually went and re-edited my old stages these last few weeks... along with making some new stages too! Turns out the servers are still up and running and stages are still being uploadded every day, sweet! (on that note, if you have some stages on there, gimme the ID! I wanna play 'em~)
Anyway, I dont want the thread to be solely about Megaman Powered Up. I thought about all the games I played over the years that included a level editor. A lot of them were on the early days of the NES actually, thanks to my ex-neighbour's 370-in-1 NES cartridge:
Excite Bike - The 'Design Mode' in this game had about everything the main game had, tho having a single letter representing different objects was pretty dang confusing. Think I had to resort to writing it down on a piece of paper. Nothing like making tracks that's all about crazy air time. If I remember right the game continues on to stage 2 after you finished your custom track, so your custom track was only available in the first stage colours.
Mach Rider - This game constantly looped your created stage in different environments with different road hazards. To be honest I really sucked at this game and only used the editor to create straight line courses so I could see all the different areas the game had to offer
Wrecking Crew - This game allowed up to four custom stages! Damn! After finishing the last one it'd loop back to the first. It had about all the features of the main game, except for placing hidden items like the Golden Hammer. I vaguely remember that being randomly placed, but no clue if there was any pattern to it. Oh and whatever you do, do NOT press the 'play custom stage' button without adding in any bricks to break first. Doing that would get the game stuck in an endless loop of victory jingles.
Muts & Milk - Like Excite Bike this one allowed you to completely edit the first stage, after that the game would continue on with the regular stages. Since the stage colours change back and forth you were always stuck with the stage 1 colours (this kinda stuff really ticked me off back then, haha...).
Battle City - Again, just the first stage. My brother and I would always hide our flag within white bricks, making it near impossible to lose the game... for one round. Getting the enemy stuck on tiny islands was also pretty fun.
Advance Wars From the GBA forward every AW game came with an easy to use map editor. Used this editor plenty when playing against a friend. Both of us could edit our own 'fortress island' with set amount of cities and factories. Good stuff. Editor didn't come with the bigger 'event' objects like that AW2 volcano tho, sadly.
Excite Bike 64 - Ofcourse the N64 sequel also includes an editor! You were limited to an arena where you could string together a route with set pieces. One nice detail was the ability the manually alter the height points of the different hills you could place. This basically allowed you to turn the track into something that looks like it came out of a lie detector machine. The game didn't really know what to do with the deep trenches, so getting stuck there would often blast you miles skywards for some reason..
Starcraft - Yeah, plenty of PC games can be custom modded and whatnot by tinkering with the files, but Blizzard's official editors for Warcraft and Starcraft were pretty damn nifty with the map tiles being very nicely placed automatically (compared to, say, KKND or Gruntz where you had to puzzle the different pieces together to make it look good). With all the fancy customizable triggers you could go beyond regular multiplayer maps and make something akin to the campaign too. Really neat.
Alright, thats about all I can remember. So GAF, what other games also had fancy editors included with them and what kind of stuff were you pulling off with it?
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