The Gamer's Quarter

[kirkjerk]

Lately I've been thinking about games derived from the work of Takeo Igarashi:
http://www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo/
Sounds like the guy has his a laboratory named after him!
http://www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/
(Is that kind of naming more common in Japan? Or is it possibly more like a common name in Japan?)

Anyway, his cool idea is a program called Teddy, how you can do a fun rough form of 3D modeling by sketching 2D shapes.

I think his idea first got put into game form in "Magic Pengel". The monster creation was a lot of fun, but while you could take your creation out for a hop, combat was Pokemon-ish Rock/Paper/Scissors, and so some of the physicality was lost.

Currently I'm turning back to Graffiti Kingdom. At first glance, this is a tragically flawed game. The editor is a bit more engineery and less intuitive than Pengel, but maybe more powerful. And combat is physical, even if a bit button-mashy.

But there are significant flaws everywhere in the game, from the way menus work in the attack and movement editor, to how the camera control is backwards, to terrible, terrible kiddy storyline and writing. Which is funny, because the production values are pretty high.

(Some critters made in the editor, I guess it is pretty powerful! http://s73.photobucket.com/albums/i213/halfbaked7777/ )

On Takeo Igarashi's page I saw there was also a GC game, Amazing Island, which got mixed reviews but was too cheap on half.com to pass up. Haven't received it yet.

Still the first time I played Pengel, it was a revelation. Having a sketched creature come to 3D life was amazing.

Conceptually, if nothing else, these games are worth checking out.
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[ApM]

So would you say it's worth tracking down Magic Pengal even if I already have Grafitti Kingdom and have basically no interest in the actual gameplay portions of either?

I can't stand to actually play Grafitti Kingdom, but building creatures is awesome, and I greatly appreciate that they let you do it right off the bat, as much as you want.