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[sergiocornaga]

I was inspired to create this thread after reading through another thread where it surfaced that many TIGers used to draw games as kids, platformer-style levels and that sort of thing. I did this a massive amount and, well... I still have mine.

Hopefully I'm not the only person who held onto their precious paper video games and I'm really looking forward to what else people have to show. I shall start off with a very small portion of what I've created over the years. Descriptions beneath images.



This is probably one of the earliest things I could be bothered digging up. As you might be able to see, it's just one sheet of paper out of a stack of hundreds.





A lot of what I made was very obviously inspired by existing games. These two pictures are part of a large series of Heart of Darkness fangames. Later books (such as one pictured below) bear very little resemblance to the original game, though.



Judging by the quality of this one, I was probably far too old to be still drawing these at the time of its creation.



In addition to platformers, which formed the majority of games I drew, I also made quite a few choose your way adventures. These were intended to replicate point and click adventure games. Popular subject matter includes science fiction, film noir, fantasy, and several bizarre attempts to fuse the three together.



This one was more in the vein of Western RPGs such as Ultima Underworld or Might and Magic.



One of my favourite parts of those games was the ability to equip your character with different types of armour and weapons, something which transferred quite well onto paper. Actually aligning clothes is extremely fiddly though- a big design flaw.

I think that will do for now! As I've said, I have more, but I'm more eager to see everyone else's. Don't let me down!

Oh, one last thing: I also read somewhere that there was a thread much like this over at The Gamer's Quarter, but I wasn't able to locate it. Admittedly I didn't look too hard. A link would be appreciated though. Never mind.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Mine can be found here: http://rinku.livejournal.com/1994/09/29/

When younger I sometimes wrote design documents of games I wanted to make. I wrote those up in 1994, when I was around 15-16.

[bateleur]

Mine can be found here: http://rinku.livejournal.com/1994/09/29/

"THE LEGEND OF CRYSTALIS"... isn't that the subtitle for Final Fantasy XIII? Did Squeenix buy the rights off you then?

Also, I love "ring, does what?".

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Crystalis is an NES game. That game I designed was a kind of unofficial sequel.

[Adamski]

What...long nails you have 

I once made a cd-case mock up of a virtual pet. It's still lying around somewhere..

[Cymon]

That is awesome. More impressive that you still have them.

I once drew up the levels for a game that was exactly like Wizards and Warriors, except upside down and underwater. I'm pretty sure those documents are gones-ville now.

[deadeye]

I have nothing left over but I remember drawing up levels for a Calvin and Hobbes platformer.  And many SMB3 levels, before SMB3 came out (they all looked a lot like SMB2).

I know there were plenty of others but I can't remember any of them.

[handCraftedRadio]

My brother and I used to do draw games on paper all the time. We started whenever our compulsive liar friend told us that sega would make your game if you designed all the levels on paper and mailed it into them. He also told us that a friend of his created bomberman that way.

[Xion]

I made a few of these too, but looking back through my old old sketchbooks, I can't for the life of me decipher what they were supposed to be/how they were to play. Alot of them dealt with ants, though.

[William Broom]

I had tons of these but I think they are all gone now. I'll try to dig them up later. One thing I clearly remember was the problem of making a 3D game on a 2D piece of paper. To get around this, I had a little symbol that indicated when the player passed over it, the game switched from side view to top view. The result was basically a sidescroller but with a few top down mazes thrown in at random. But I guess by drawing my level from multiple angles, I was unknowingly taking the first step toward Cubism :D

[Annabelle Kennedy]

We started whenever our compulsive liar friend told us that sega would make your game if you designed all the levels on paper and mailed it into them. He also told us that a friend of his created bomberman that way.

 :D :D :D :D

i wish i had stuff like this....

[Gnarf]

I made sort of a Bomberman board game. I think it was inspired by what I imagined RoboRally was like. I played it once against my sister. It took forever and wasn't a lot of fun and when I won she accused me of not having explained the rules properly. Great success.

Also made some sort of squad based wargame-alike thing. I'm not sure if I finished making it, although I'm very sure it never got played. I did print out a ton of little character sheets for like the squad-members though. I think they were gangsters.

[Chris Whitman]

My brother and I used to do draw games on paper all the time. We started whenever our compulsive liar friend told us that sega would make your game if you designed all the levels on paper and mailed it into them. He also told us that a friend of his created bomberman that way.

Did anyone not grow up knowing that one kid who was a compulsive liar about video games? It's like some kind of archetype that transcends geography and culture.

[William Broom]

Hm, I think you're right. I remember one kid at my school who would tell us various Pokemon-related lies: That Kanto and Johto were real places in the Pacific Ocean; that the morning's episode of Pokemon had announced there was a new Pokemon called 'Mewtwomew'; and that you could 'destroy the world' using Metronome, by waving your fingers back and forth like a metronome for exactly 2 hours. This last one sounds kind of like a creepypasta as concocted by an 8-year-old.

[Gnarf]

Our liar had this awesome game on his computer and he was going to burn a copy to a CD for me but then he couldn't because there was something wrong with his CD burner and it was burning things backwards.

[Chris Whitman]

Pokemon, CD burners? I'm old.

Most of the video game lies when I was a young'un were along the lines of secret codes for Contra that would let you play as an alien or bullshit like that. It was always a NES game and it was always a secret code that would let you do something crazy.

Edit: actually, I remember a lot of that stuff starting with the NES. Maybe it was because that was the right age group for that kind of thing, or maybe it was because before that the only systems anyone had were Atari consoles, and obviously they did fuck all but depict blocks moving around, so there wasn't really any way to make up interesting lies about them.

[Gnarf]

Note that between the first and the second line I wrote that this was at the time when CD burners were all new and no one had them, and that he probably did not have a CD burner, or the awesome game, and possibly no computer either.

[William Broom]

I remember making up a few lies myself, actually. One time these guys were talking about Starcraft, and I had never played Starcraft, but I wanted to join in, so I made up some bullshit about a cheat that gives you a 'big red ball' that can destroy enemies from all the way across the map.

The other thing I used to do was test ideas for games by telling my friends about them as if they were real. If my friends said the game sounded cool, I knew it was a good idea.

Now I think about it, I used to lie about shit all the time when I was a little kid.

[Tanner]

i didn't know a compulsive videogame liar.
i WAS the compulsive videogame liar.
i helped my friend get through banjo-kazooie despite never playing the game, not having an n64, and never seeing a faq.
i just sat there with him and bullshitted while sounding like i had done it all before and that it was easy as hell.
man, now that i think of it, i missed out on a lot of great games as a kid, if the amount of bs i made up is anything to go by.

[sergiocornaga]

What...long nails you have 

They're... they're useful..!   

By the way everyone, if you don't have any childhood paper games to show you could always makes some now in the style of your childhood drawings.