Influences

The biggest influence on me to take up game development was playing Cave Story by Pixel Studios. There are so many things that hit the right notes for me in this game. The memorable characters (and their fantastic pixel art,) the incredible 8-bit music, the metroidvania gameplay, and the multiple endings all contribute to making this far more than just a retro rehash. I was floored when I found out that it was the work of one man, Daisuke Amaya, over a period of five years.

The Wikipedia entry for Cave Story has additional information, including links to download the game, and an English translation patch.

This also leads me into an interesting situation with Flash and Actionscript. After spending some time with learning it this week, it seems that working with sprites is really not its strong suit. I believe that it’s more geared towards vector graphics and animation, and that it would be difficult to realize the kind of pixel art I’d like to do. I believe that I’ll continue working with Flash for smaller games to start with, but may have to look at other additional languages/environments to achieve what I really want to do. It is a bit early to tell though.

I also found a great freeware MIDI composition tool called Anvil Studio. I used to compose a lot of electronica back in the day using MIDISoft Studio 3, and this looks to be a very similar tool. I think it will come in very handy for game music once I get to that point.

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