Adam '99

Adam '99

Release type: Unknown
Release date: November 17, 1999
Levels: 6
Author: Alan Caudel
Website: Adam 99
Related games: Adam's Birthday Game, The Adam's Birthday Saga Continues, Adam's B-Day 3: The Saga Continues, Adam 97, Adam 98, Adam 2000

By 1999, the last release of Game-Maker was five years in the past. A whole console generation had passed, and by Adam Tyner's birthday the Sega Dreamcast had arrived with the most successful launch of any game console in history. Oh, the birthday tradition continued -- but the decline had begun.

Adam '99 is the sixth of seven games (so far) in the Adam's Birthday series. Though adventuresome in a few ways, this chapter is not nearly as carefully designed as the last few -- as the storyline eagerly lampshades. Amongst the steady phase-out of MS-DOS, the continued march of technology, and the business that goes along with growing up, Game-Maker was no longer peak in anyone's mind.

Other things to take its place: a new Star Wars movie, for the first time in a lifetime. The unexpected resurrection of Nintendo's ten-year-old Game Boy, thanks to the belated export of Pokémon.

But, traditions die hard and this one has another couple of cycles in it.

Strumming around in Adam '99

Compared to the last few games, Adam '99 is simple, short, and rather slapdash. There are three levels, the middle of which is probably the most interesting. There also is a difficulty select, which basically omits half the monsters; if you choose the easy setting, the game chastises you at the end of level two and advises you to play hard mode if you want to reach level three.

Even on easy mode, Without extensive use of the save function level one may be all that you see. Death comes easily in Adam '99. You start with 25 HP, which may be drained a bit by background threats (spikes, etc.) -- but one touch from a monster, and you die, bloodily.

Complicating the issue is that the first level in particular is... glitchy, mostly by design. Bear clones don't necessarily stay on their platforms. There are lots of strange threats (exploding doorways, for instance) that lunge out of the first-gen NES style black background. And that black background -- sometimes it's solid when you don't expect it to be, and sometimes that makes it hard to get around.

The level also makes good use of the crawl move -- though if you stand up, you glitch out of the level boundaries, which the game punishes with insta-death.

However, the game is full of nice little touches -- the comic book sound effect that drifts away as Adam slings his guitar around; the animation when he launches Pikachu from a Pokéball.

Level two completely changes the format, trading the comparably large sprites and platformer design for a free-form superhero flight scenario with a flyspeck character, trailed by a nice flame effect, and a hard-to-detect, hard-to-avoid multi-block threat.

The level is what Palladia might have been like, had it been further developed. You swoop around a cityscape, looking for lit windows, which represent people to save. As you rack up your counter, a large foe stomps around the level. He moves quickly, and Game-Maker isn't so good about showing monsters at the screen's edge, so in the event you see him coming it can be difficult to get out of the way.

Level 3 returns to the format of the first level, but this time set in the world of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace -- complete with a cinematic vertical level structure and a large leap of faith at the end. The most interesting thing here is the battle droids, which emerge from Rolling Thunder style doors and explode into two pieces when attacked.

As in Adam '97, there is some extensive, if more consciously slapdash, use of .FLI animations, including footage from The Phantom Menace with Adam Tyner's face superimposed.

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Adam '98	Adam '99	Adam 2000
Adam's Birthday series

Story

Adam Tyner (on phone): "You're making my b-day game aren't you?

Alan Caudel (answering, blearily): Zzzz... huh? Oh yeah....

AND SO THE STORY GOES...

Instructions

use numeric keypad or joystick for controls

• (space) to use weapon
• p - to pick up items
• (enter) to use special weapon

• (f5) - save game
• (f6) - load game

LOAD MY OLD GAME TO SKIP TO LEVEL 2 !!! (:

LEVEL 2- touch all the yellow windows, then find the doorway out........

Credits

By Alan Caudel

Background

Website:

The newest installment in a long series of games my friend ADAM TYNER and I have made for each other's birthday every year. I got addicted to LEVEL 2 of this game...ContainsViolence!

Availability

This game was published to the On Target Programming Web site. Other distribution is unknown.

Archive History

On April 20, 2014, Alan Caudel tracked down a copy of Adam '99 and provided it to the Archive.

Links

• Adam 99 (Internet Archive)
• On Target Programming (Internet Archive)

Downloads

• Adam '99 (1.3 MB)
• Level 1 map (52 kB)
• Level 2 map (35 kB)
• Level 3 map (66 kB)