Childhood Game Design - Part 3

As well as finding a large collection of games that I'd drawn, I also found a number of drawings of games by a few other people. The majority of them were made by my sister, and it's interesting to see how her perspective differs from mine, as someone who had less exposure to the kind of games I played. Certainly none of them involve shooting or spaceships. There's another page of drawings that I think is mostly by me, but which also features a drawing by Maria, the daughter of a friend of the family who was several years younger than me. I don't think the drawing was meant to represent a game, but I feel like I added to it in order to make it look like one. My memory is really fuzzy on this, though.

Finally, there are three drawings by a boy I went to school with by the name of Andrew. I'm not sure of the circumstances which lead to him drawing them and giving them to me, but I know he hadn't really played any video games. Perhaps I approached him and asked if he played games, or maybe he'd heard me talking to someone else. At any rate, his drawings show a much better grasp of perspective than mine, and I was always impressed by them.

Click on the images to enlarge them, as usual!

Featured

Farter

Farter was my sister's attempt at an LCD game. The machine is shaped like a cloud of fart. It has a Fart! button.

Farter: Instructions

My sister's writing is much easier to read than mine, but I'm going to transcribe this anyway, because it's funny: "You have to escape from the baddies by blowing a fart at them. Each fart slows them down. Collect the fart captules and you will be give 4 farts. If you run out of farts you lose a life. Each level is harder. Good luck on your farting."

Blue Fart

The first drawing here is actually one of mine. I never named it, but it seems to involve running from a tiger in a jungle. The remaining two are by my sister: Blue Fart seems to have only one aim, which is to do a fart. My Head Is Sunkan Inn! explains very little. My sister always had a stranger imagination than I did.

Coco Pops

I'm pretty sure Coagri was a drawing of the wrapping paper from an orange that my sister had added a level and lives display to. I think the drawing underneath it is actually Fancy Papper Cloctor 2, which means it was a sequel to the game I posted last time and not, as I initially thought, the game that I'd based my drawing on. The rest of the page is taken up by Super Game: The Surch For Coco Pops. The top drawing seems to be based on Jungle Hunt, but everything else is copied from the back of a box of Coco Pops.

Hello

Hello. "You have to say hello to the other guy". A game that spawned a number of sequels, the first of which was in my previous post, and drawn by me.

Me! Me! Me!

This was the first of a collection of four drawings that came in a small, hand-made envelope. In Me! Me! Me!, 'You have to gusse witch is me. Harder levels each time'. The instructions for You! You! You! read, 'Same as 'Me!' only differnt people'. Mum! Mum! Mum!'s instructions read 'Same as Me Mum You.'

Clascill Tapes

Clascill Tapes is the second drawing from the envelope of games. The instructions read 'Dad has to pick the right tape. If he picks the wrong one he dies'. My Dad went through a phase of listening to a lot of classical music, which no doubt inspired this one.

Hello Again 3

Hello Again 3's instructions simply read, 'You know how to play. Good luck'. I haven't been able to find Hello Again 2. The third game in the series seems to add little except improved graphics.

Number One!!

Number One!! is the final drawing from the envelope of games. The instructions read, 'You have to find the magizine called Number One'. Presumably the gameplay was similar to Clascill Tapes.

Cat Rescue!

I'm pretty sure Cat Rescue! is one of my sister's, although the drawing of the man with boxing gloves kind of looks like something I'd do. That's definitely her handwriting though. The game itself seems like it may have been inspired by Cuthbert Goes Walkabout.

Cat Rescue Jr.

The title screen for Cat Rescue Jr., in which the pink cats from Cat Rescue are still being held hostage, by ants, and must this time be rescued by a black and white cat instead of a person. The naming of this game, as a sequel, was almost certainly inspired by Donkey Kong and its sequel, Donkey Kong Jr.

Cat Rescue Jr

The game itself is clearly inspired by Donkey Kong with its ladders, and Donkey Kong Jr with its keys. Whereas Cat Rescue! featured a fairly nondescript bug, the enemies in Cat Rescue Jr are clearly ants.

The Ant!

I'm actually not sure if my sister drew this or not; The Ant! has more in common with Cat Rescue Jr than it does with my games, and that doesn't look like my handwriting. The gun with legs does look like something I'd draw, though. Overall I'm putting it here because it was on the same kind of paper as Cat Rescue and Cat Rescue Jr. I feel like the game may have been a sequel to The Fly.

Sprites

So this is the piece of paper with Maria's drawing on it. It was a very wide piece of paper, with drawings on both sides, so I've had to split it across four images. This first one features drawings that I think were mine, which I'd drawn grids around. I think the reason I did this was because I'd seen images of how sprites were designed using graph paper in a magazine.

Various Games

Again, I think these are all mine, but the messiness of them implies that they're among the earliest drawings I have. They feature a number of centipedes, ghosts, spaceships and insects. The central image is of a game where you control a ship avoiding boulders falling into a canyon, and seems oddly familiar to me. The last drawing at the bottom is at of a pyramid with two pillars on either side of it, with electricity arcing between them, and may have been inspired by the showdown with Gozer from Ghostbusters (The movie, not the game).

More Sprites

Same technique as before of drawing a shape and placing a grid around it. I supposed the intention was to choose which pixels would be part of the sprite based on how much of the drawing filled each box, but I never actually did that.

3Ti

This, finally, is Maria's drawing, on the left. From what I remember, it represents a graveyard, with a witch and two ghosts. The witch and the ghosts were probably drawn by me. The drawing on the right was a tracing of an outline of a stain on the paper.

Bungle in the Jungle

Bungle in the Jungle is the first of Andrew's games. The layout of the game resembles board games more than it does video games, which presumably was his main frame of reference. I did have three other drawings of his that I wasn't able to find: Watch the Birdies, Haunted Hill of Horrors, and Best in the West, starring Billy the Kid.

Scared of Heights

Scared of Heights is probably the least like a board game. It looks pretty chaotic, though. I don't think anyone's getting out of this alive.

Monster Masher

Monster Masher is a series of fights against various grotesque monsters! The final enemy is a cobra, which seems like a bit of an anti-climax.