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[Stij]

Seeing Launchball reminded me of this...

Does anyone else remember this series? Man, I grew up on those games. I remember getting away with playing them all the time as a Wee Lad because they were "educational".

Some related games I've found:

Tube Twist
Roll balls through needlessly complex levels. Pretty slick presentation, but I haven't tried much of it.

Professor Fizzwizzle
Guide a little professor through some of the most evil puzzles known to man. Don't let the kiddie presentation fool you, this game is HARD.

Armadillo Run Another sweet TIM-esque game, with realistic physics.

Any other games like this you guys remember?
DISCUSS.

[Kairos]

I remember one of the games, it was called Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions. I remember a long time ago I borrowed the game from my 5th grade teacher and got addicted to doing random things with it. Fun times 

[waruwaru]

Those games were really fun!  I liked them

It's amazing that this is what computers can do these days...

[Stij]

Yeah, that was the one I played. (Contraptions)

Another one:
Widget Workshop
This one is more about programming and whatnot then wacky physics puzzles, but it's still fun.

Also, has anyone heard of a game called Da Vinci's Marbles or something along those lines? All I remember is that it involved rolling marbles and the sketches of Da Vinci, and it was great. Published by Maxis I think.

Also, waruwaru, that is awesome. Reminds me of Crayon Physics....

[Headmade]

http://www.crazy-machines.com/
Crazy Machines. There are several addons to this and also a sequel on the way.

[Akhel]

I always liked these very much. I remember playing the first three games when I was quite young and having lots of fun with them.

[th15]

I remember playing TIM on the sandbox mode and playing a makeshift game of battleships using ships made of bricks and nitroglycerine shells.

[Tr00jg]

Aaah... TIM. Man that was fun. The best was when you designed pixel perfect non-sensical contraptions that also worked in solving the level.

[Stij]

I just got Even More Contraptions.

*WAVE OF NOGALSTIA*

Ah, it's good to play this again, even if a runs a bit weird on my new computer. I'd forgotten how good the music was too.

[TeeGee]

Damn! Why you guys had to remind me of this wonderful game? Don't you have any respect for my time?



I remember when I used to meet with a pal, just to solve some TIM levels. "Screw Starcraft, let's solve some contraptions!".

I'm wondering why the idea hadn't hit the casual market yet... Too chalenging?

[fish]

too good.

[Alex May]

I have two game designs that are based on or are inspired by this.

The first is slightly more influenced and sees the goals for each level being replaced by water-based objectives; you have a water source and have to redirect the flow of water to achieve these objectives -- perhaps to create a certain amount of flavoured water, or to put out some fires, to more complicated objectives like divert the flow to simultaneously fill up a steam engine and turn a water wheel that somehow lights a fire that boils the water that drives the steam engine. You'd have a certain amount of components to place in the level just like TIM and Chromatron, and wouldn't be able to screw a level up, only get closer to completing it.

The second is more interesting for me and will probably be what I attempt as my next project after the one I'm on now. It's a factory game where you make food. The idea is to capture the essence of a fully-functioning production line, so that you could zoom out and watch all the machines working, all the stuff going through tubes and along conveyor belts and so forth. You know those animated GIFs of little blue balls going around factories? Like that. You'd start out with basic ingredients and be able to combine them in different machines to make different products - you'd then be able to sell these for profit or use them to make more interesting (and valuable... and tasty) products. The method of doing this would pretty much be ripped straight out of Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana where you have a set of recipes and certain ingredients in each are wild - swap out that ingredient for something else and see if the product that comes out changes. You might get something very surprising!

[Stij]

So, sorta like TIM meets Burger Time? Seriously though, that sounds like a cool idea. It could add a resouce-management element to things...

[th15]

It's amazing that the first iteration of this game was sold in 1992! It's a decade ahead of its time really.

[TeeGee]

It's amazing that the first iteration of this game was sold in 1992! It's a decade ahead of its time really.

What's funny, I wasn't thinking so back in the '92, when I got the game (okay, I was a kiddo, but meh). There were quite a few innovative games back then. This one was just a yet another type of gameplay for me, not some revolution that pushed the gaming forward. Nice to see how you learn to appreciate things after some time.

Damn... I still think it would work fine as a casual game. Of course, you would have to somehow remove the pixel-perfect aproach towards solving the puzzles, but the core is totally casual.

[moi]

It's amazing that the first iteration of this game was sold in 1992! It's a decade ahead of its time really.

What's funny, I wasn't thinking so back in the '92, when I got the game (okay, I was a kiddo, but meh). There were quite a few innovative games back then. This one was just a yet another type of gameplay for me, not some revolution that pushed the gaming forward. Nice to see how you learn to appreciate things after some time.

Yeah at the end of the eighties most of the games were innovative (they had to since most computer were graphically very limited).
It's a bloody shame that the industry has become so boring.

[th15]

Were they really all that fantastic or is it just because all of them were new? Or maybe it's just that, like any old stuff, we only remember the truly great titles while the tide of mediocre releases fade into the mists of time (at least, that's what Richard Rouse III is suggesting in this book of his I'm reading)? I'm looking for a list of PC games released in the 1980s, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_list_of_PC_Engine_games has some but it doesn't seem to be very complete before 1990.