Hello its blogging time once again and its anniversary time again! As you can tell from the title, today marks the 10th anniversary when I first got into writing games. While I had been playing video games for a long time it took a while for the hobby to take hold of me, and game design would have been out of the question. But I did eventually take a chance on it, and that first game was Oswald The Owl.
The story of Oswald The Owl begins with the middle school I went to at the time: The Little Schoolhouse. Opened in 1973, It was one of 2 middle school's In Del Rio, being located at 605 Amistad Blvd.
The problem was in 2015, they were planning on closing the middle school operations, something that did not sit well with me. But this gave me an idea: make a game that could be used exclusively within the the school. How I thought this would help has unfortunately escaped me over the years but I do remember how I cam up with the game, and that was when I went to the local bowling alley's game room to play an arcade game I had fell in love with: Ms. Pac-Man.
Developed by General Computer Corporation (or GCC) and published by Bally Midway in 1982, It was the first sequel to Pac-Man. It boasted new mazes new ghost patterns, new cutscenes, and new bonuses. I became obsessed with the game, every time we stopped by I asked my parents for quarters so I could stop by and play the game.
It also gave me the inspiration for my initial game concept. Taking influence from it, Fellow Midway made Pac-Man sequel Baby Pac-Man, and the game Dragon's Lair, I came up with a maze game in which when an enemy would appear or you got to a powerup. However, this concept was scraped because I felt that it was too complicated. Later that night, I sketched out the main character of the game. Taking cues from Sonic The Hedgehog, I came up with the character of Oswald The Owl. The characters characteristics were picked as an owl could represent learning and the red color to meant match the schools branding.
By then I also had something to make the game on, A online version of BASIC called QuiteBASIC.
It was a very simple only allowing for basic graphics and text input and output, but it did allow for making simple games. It included 3 games: Pong, Breakout, and Snake. And the idea was to incorporate the concept answering math problems as the game progressed. However all that really happened was it displayed a math problem and only displayed the answer when you got a game over. Looking back, it really is more of a hack then a proper game, but it at least gave me a small experience in programing.
I drew and colored the manual by hand and it played on the 70's game theme with drawings of old arcade games the code for the game code itself and even a backstory where Oswald gets placed into old games via VR simulation.
The game made its debut at my next middle school I gave it to one student for trial, and got it back. the only problem I didn't think to make more copies so I only had one copy to loan so after that initial trial I never got anyone else to loan it (Yeah, I really was not thinking this through back then was I? Some things never change!).
Despite this, I did make a sequel shortly after, this time themed after 80's arcade games and features a new character Olive, Oswald's sister, who would appear in a two player mode. However after that, I never made anymore and both charaters faded away.
But they didnt stay down for long as Oswald made a was redrawn and put on my personal graphic deisgn brand logo illustration. Although it was the first draft it was the first time the character had been used in any of my work in over 8 years.
So overall, while I may have certainly made mistakes with the game, it did certainly get me on the road to who I am today, and paving a future I never thought I would have. That's all I have for today, and as always, Thanks for reading! See you next time!
Note: At the time of writing I don't have the original documents with me, But I will scan them and add them in the future, so stick around for updates.