Icemare with Sgt. Super

Icemare with Sgt. Super

Release type: Shareware
Release date: 1992 (original release)
Levels: 10
Author: Gary Acord
Website: Acord Games
Registration bonus: Icemare 2 and Icemare 3, hint sheet, secret bonus game, copies of all shareware games, membership in the Zapper Game Club
Registration price: $20
Related games: Penguin Pete

Tools like Game-Maker tend to include demonstration software for a reason. The user is expected to use the demos and learn from them: pick them apart, tweak them; suss out how they work. And during that novice phase, they can be raw material for a test game. If you're roughing out a courtyard, rather than spend time on your own brick and concrete tiles you can plug in some from a library. If they're not too distinctive and they suit what you're doing, then you can even leave 'em in. They're meant to be used.

The user agreement tends to cover these cases under fair use. What exactly constitutes "fair use" is hazy on purpose, as the concept is more of a judgment call than a science. To set hard lines would be to defeat the concept through an ever-present threat of overzealous application. Responsibility, then, lies with the end user, and their reading of what feels appropriate. That reading in turn depends on what the user means to do. Many games hang a new character off of the Sample animation. A game like The Descent lifts sprites and tiles wholesale, then configures them into something wholly original. These are compromises to the integrity of the author's work, but on balance they're justified as shortcuts toward achieving a larger, more difficult vision.

A game like Icemare complicates this equation by the peculiar weight it carries, which makes it hard to find or understand the author's point of balance. Icemare is, in effect, Joan Stone's Penguin Pete, one of the core demo games packed with Game-Maker, with a blocky robot in place of the original character. Despite some protests from its author, any other changes are minimal. It's got a new title screen, a new story, and all trace of the original author or Recreational Software Designs has been scrubbed from the game. In its original release, the "About Game-Maker" text is even hex-edited out of the game's executable.

So where's the pivot point here? On the one hand we have an entire game created by someone else, except for the attribution; on the other, we have a new character and story, and a great effort to claim full attribution for the new author. Again there's nothing to say a user can't do this with the demo material (though hacking out RSD's identifying text may conflict with the terms of use); the resources are there to be used how one deems best. It's just, well, consider that statement. What do we make of a situation where, given such wide berth of reasonable use, one decides to just... use it all? Then ask for a registration fee?

This is another consideration. It's easy to over-state the case in an era where shareware is largely a relic, as in the early '90s a registration fee was as obligatory as (in 2010s protocol) plugging your Patreon after a tweet goes viral. It was just a thing you did; a hail-Mary that probably would go nowhere, but hey; might as well try, right? But, the request for money is not insignificant. And neither is money requested; here, Acord asks for $20 if you like what he's done to Penguin Pete. In 2018 currency that's $36. (Yeah, inflation sure sneaks up on you.) Consider what else you could buy for that money. Say, a copy each of Pipes and Shorty Da Pimp, with enough left over for lunch.

Those two games are relevant, as each takes basically the same tack as Gary Acord's debut release (Pipes even replaces the character with another blocky robot), yet both demonstrate a comparable restraint and vision that helps to better explain their creative balance. Ideally if you're going to just take someone else's work -- even work that's essentially given away for free -- and slap your own name on it, you will in turn do it free of charge, as an exercise in flexing your wings, finding your boundaries. Neither Roy Person (Pipes) nor Terry Chatman (Shorty) does this, but Person charges half of what Acord wants, and Chatman half of that.

There is also an inverse ratio between the author's demands and their mix of attribution and original input. Though Person does not openly credit Oliver Stone or RSD, neither does he take the time to hack any reference of RSD out of his game. Furthermore, Person seems to have written original music for the game -- a puzzling development, considering how difficult the music format was to work with in 1993, especially next to the ease of RSD's design tools. So though the game is largely unchanged, Person has more to claim over his release and he puts less effort into his claim.

Shorty is another case entirely: though it's basically just Nebula with a sprite edit of Billy Blaze from Commander Keen, Chatman is entirely open with his credits, correctly attributing both G. Andrew Stone and Joan Stone, and mostly just taking credit for his own contributions. Furthermore, what credit he does claim, he does so under a pseudonym -- and then only charges a perfunctory $5, which he admits he only added because everyone else was doing it. Despite his modest changes, Chatman also does more with his game, using the sprite edit, story text, and newly recorded voice samples to turn Nebula into a genuinely funny, if strange, comedy game based around punch-up racial humor. In appropriating the work of others, Chatman twisted it to a new purpose and in so doing conceptually put more of a stamp on his release than either Acord or Person in their otherwise similar efforts.

[The documentation states] that, "You are free to enhance Penguin Pete and you may borrow any of its Gameware for use in your GAME-MAKER games" But does this mean that the game you make will forever be called a Penguin Pete game? I don't know if that's entirely fair.

— Gary Acord, email interview, 2011

None of this is to compare Icemare on its merits; the game is what it is, and must be read on its own terms. This comparison does, however, help to narrow down what those terms may be. This all goes back to the question of balance; on where the author places their weight to justify, or at least, explain the methodology behind their process. The game exhibits fewer external justifications for its appropriation even than similar projects that lift entire demo games, and similarly ask for money. So any strong justification, it seems, would have to be internal, and particular to its author's wants, needs, and personal value system. Though any work of creation is a work of communication and therefore reflective of its author's own perspective, Icemare has so few terms to engage with on a material level that as a publication it is peculiar as little more than a portal into its author's mind. As a profile piece, it therefore may serve as a key for Gary Acord's larger body of work.

Let's assume that as with Shorty Da Pimp the registration fee is less an attempt at profit than at conformity. This is a safe bet, despite Acord's assertions that even in recent years registrations continue to roll in, because to be frank there's a reason why the shareware model collapsed. Regardless of a program's merits, only a slim margin of the top performers made any money -- and this was no secret. Again the request was a ritual, that served to establish one's work within a form, within a culture. It served as a vague stamp of legitimacy: that you were serious enough about your work to want to make money off of it, regardless of whether or not that money would ever come.

Skidding on thin ice in 'Icemare'

Ambition; legitimacy; acceptance; reputation; respect; admiration. These are currencies much like money, and like a promissory note none can be minted freely. All are part of a compromise, much like and very much tied to the material aspects of creation. And the target of that promise can vary from a group to an individual to one's own self. For many artists the whole point of creation is a promissory bargain with one's self, with respect or acceptance hinging not just on the end but the route employed to find it. The greater the effort involved in a work, the more original that work may be, the greater the potential payoff in the form of pride. Every shortcut is a compromise with that goal, offsetting the pride in the aid of reaching the goal at all.

As point of reference, consider the inverted ratio between attribution and original input in the above sample. Though all three authors lifted someone else's work for their own ends, it would seem that the more one is motivated by personal pride, the more one tends to accept credit in proportion to one's work. So it seems fair to say this is not the model of creation involved in Icemare.

So no, the author isn't in this for individual pride or accomplishment. The point isn't the process of the art; it's the fact of its result. Specifically, the public fact. The important thing about Icemare, that outweighs and justifies every other factor, is that it exists, and carries Gary Acord's name. It's the first release of Acord Games, which allows Gary Acord to add "game designer" to his list of credentials alongside prize-winning boxer and founder of modern comic book fandom (?). Acord even ties this story together with the splash screens and text files strewn throughout his work, describing his collection as the "World's Greatest Superhero Games."

Consider again the symbolism of the shareware ritual: asking for registration means joining the development community; the amount that you charge for a registration, that is statistically unlikely to bear fruit, reflects more than anything the perceived value of your work. Icemare costs twice as much as Pipes and four times as much as Shorty Da Pimp. Why? Because it must. Because this is the point of the whole exercise.

Icemare is less a game than a declaration; a demand for a certain small-stage niche recognition: I have come; I now claim the title of Game Developer; and you will recognize the importance of this event. To credit anyone else would be to diminish the author's claim, and to puncture the showmanship. Ignore the man behind the curtain.

Acord's later games would by necessity involve a bit more investment on his part. He would never put nearly as much time into the actual game design as into the mythology around them (particularly the self-mythology), but in time he would assemble a formidable cosmology of intertwining characters and storylines, creating his own hobbyist DOS analogue to the crazy DC and Marvel comic book universes. Icemare is Gary Acord's first colony in what would become his own little kingdom, of self-described repute, on the rocky and inhospitable peninsula of game design that was the 1990s shareware scene.

For people who want something, the ends always justify the means. And what Gary Acord was after was a legacy. That legacy begins here.

Story

Trapped in arctic ice flows, a nuclear powered submarine is torn apart, its sections strewn about on the arctic ocean floor and numerous huge icebergs.

Sgt. Super has been recruited by Earth's Super Powers to undertake the rather dangerous task of finding & recovering the lost sections of the submarine from the icy waters & regions. After Sgt. Super gets the 8 submarine pieces, he'll be able to board the ship & reach the game's final scenes.

Instructions

Use the following keys to move Sgt. Super.

• ARROWS move up, down, left or right.
• Z - jump left.
• X - jump right.
• SPACE BAR - throw harpoon.
• M - throws snowballs.
• B - drops bombs, if you have any.
• N - jump up and back down, killing some monsters.
• P - pick up objects.
• D - drop objects.

Power level of weapons is:

• Harpoon (lowest)
• Killing Jump
• Snowball
• Bomb (highest)

Touch a bomb and you acquire it. Food (such as algae, fish, some starfish, some crabs) increase hit points.

Items such as mines and pebbles increase score. Gold increases money. Hearts add a life.

You can also use the numeric keypad (set NumLock to on). 4,6,8, and 2 move left, right, up, and down. 7 jumps left, 9 jumps right. The 'j' key jumps straight up.

Credits

Acord Games

Resources

The entire game, save the character sprite, is based on Joan Stone's Penguin Pete. Some of the tile properties are different, and there have been some small alterations to the maps.

Availability

Distributed through contemporary bulletin boards, through the author's Website, and through several third-party mirror archives.

Archive History

On November 7, 2010, Demu.org maintainer Swizzle pointed out the archive of Gary Acord material on the site -- which was swiftly added to the Game-Maker Archive.

Links

Interviews / Articles

• Inside the Mind of Gary Acord (Gamasutra)

Listings

• archive.org entry
• demu.org entry

Misc. Links

• Play Icemare online

Downloads

• Icemare with Sgt. Super (439 kB)
• Overworld Map (253 kB)
  • Maze 1 Map (214 kB)
  • Maze 2 Map (90 kB)
  • Maze 3 Map (112 kB)
  • Maze 4 Map (120 kB)
  • Maze 5 Map (25 kB)
  • Maze 6 (and ending) Map (55 kB)
  • Underwater Map (75 kB)