Adam '97

Adam '97

Release type: Unknown
Release date: November 17, 1997
Levels: 8
Author: Alan Caudel
Related games: Adam's Birthday Game, The Adam's Birthday Saga Continues, Adam's B-Day 3: The Saga Continues, Adam 98, Adam 99, Adam 2000

The fifth game in the Adam's Birthday series, Adam '97 is probably the pinnacle. The games reach a height of ambition and creativity here, which combined with a confidence of design result in one of the better platformers designed with Game-Maker.

The first thing to hit you is the stylization; here Alan Caudel has assembled a world with its own fairly coherent visual language that does its darnedest to transcend Game-Maker's limitations. The first, rather gentle, level is the best example of this: a pastoral scene of green and blue, with rolling hillocks and stone structures. As will become common, the grass patterns all slowly animate, creating some unavoidable artifacts along the screen edges and upon scrolling.

The level is nicely designed, with some conscious reflection of the character's abilities; there's nothing the player can't reasonably be expected to do with the character's stock move set. Special items are hidden in clever, playful locations. The enemies and hazards pose no unfair challenges to the player... at least, not yet. The greatest threat that Adam faces here is from tomatoes, that inertly wait around the scenery for Adam to bump into them. To underscore the tranquility of the level, bunnies and flocks of birds peaceably flit through the countryside, neither looking to harm Adam nor paying his systemic violence any heed.

Beware the innocuous in Adam '97.

As to that violence, Adam '97 offers the player a wide and varied selection of attacks and special moves. Adam starts with a standard double-bullet projectile, then gradually finds new items that unlock new abilities. Generally each move has a different, unique use -- the rockets and bombs less so, but mostly the game shows thought as to their application and introduction. The items tend to make tricky tasks easier, and the game makes a point of establishing these tasks to encourage the items' use; without the shield item, just try crawling through the Mr. Dot level.

Although the levels tend to be designed around Adam's move set, this is not always a benevolent thing. Given the strangeness of some of Adam's animations, e.g. his eccentric jump physics (exploit to your own peril in level two) and his knock-back effect upon injury, later levels can take a glee in making life difficult for the player. It's these scenarios, like the unreasonable leap of faith in level five or the knock-back fury of the Mr. Dot generators in level four, where the special moves come into play.

At times the sadism goes beyond the player's control, as in level three. Here the player is thrust down a wind tunnel, then plunged into a flue of lava. The best one can do is scramble to collect as many hearts as possible while sliding down the corridor, and hope the fortification is enough for Adam to last most of the way down the flue. Adam will die, regardless; the question is where it happens. If he can last long enough, his death animation will be interrupted by a level transition and he will die at the start of level four. Otherwise, he will die on his way down the flue -- and, back to the start we go. Let's hope we get enough hearts this time.

Among other quirks, Adam '97 marks the start of the ultraviolent death animations that become a staple of the Adam's Birthday series. Adam's head explodes, and monster sprites of viscera cascade outwards. This is just one of several experiments with monster birthing, including the word bubble in Adam's idle sequence, urging the player to "Hurry Up!" and some clever particle and stream effects in moves like the flame jump and laser cannon.

The levels too exhibit some interesting effects, like the huge bouncing tomatoes in level two (giving a rare use to Adam's duck maneuver), a clever "invisible" maze in level five betrayed using slightly different vibrations in jiggling background tiles, and the virtuosic use of monster tiles in level six to create a Thunder Blade styled single-screen parallax effect while the player steers the Millennium Falcon through gaps in oncoming columns (The Star Wars trilogy was remastered and re-released this year) on its way to destroy the enormous photographic head of Adam Tyner.

This is just one of several clever .FLI animations that, given the available tools in 1997, must have taken some real time and effort to patch together. Another real winner, and competitor for the most hilarious moment in any Game-Maker game, comes when the player misses that absurd jump in level five, and falls into a blackened void... only to near-seamlessly transition to Pythonesque animation of Adam tumblimg into the mouth of a photographic Mr. Bear.

The presence of Bear and Mr. Dot are just two of many call-backs to monsters and threats from earlier games. The juxtaposition of these old stock elememts with a new and exploratory context creates a satisfying sense of growth; the series seems like it's going somewhere, developing, finding itself as it finds its potential. Nowhere is the series' identity as clear as in Adam '97.

But, there are still interesting times to come...

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Adam '96	Adam '97	Adam '98
Adam's Birthday series

Story

It's your birthday!! Get all the presents in each stage!!!!!!

Some stages don't have any presents! q:

Instructions

Numeric Keypad:

• 7, 8, 9: Jump left, up, right
• 4, 6: Walk left, right
• 1, 3: Crawl left, right
• 2: Duck

Attacks:

• Space: Double Bullet
• Enter: Rocket (with item)
• V: Flame Jump (with item)
• B: Bomb (with item)
• N: Double laser (with item)
• M: Shield (with item)

Get these:

• First aid kit: Health
• Adam head: 1-Up

Press "P" to pick up items.

Credits

ME ME ME!!!!!

I did everything!!!!

Alan's my name!

I made the whole animation sequence at the end too!!!

Believe it or don't!!!!

Availability

This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.

Archive History

On August 1, 2011, Alan Caudel forward a third wave of games, previously thought lost:

• Adam '97
• Adam 2000
• Dummy Duck 5
• Yurik 2

Links

• Older clip (YouTube)
• Play Adam '97 online

Downloads

• Adam '97 (1.5 MB)
• Level 1 - Outside - map (163 kB)
• Level 2 - In the City - map (138 kB)
• Level 3 - Mr. Lava - map (6 kB)
• Level 4 - Mr. Dot - map (21 kB)
• Level 5 - Pit O Death - map (22 kB)
• Level 6 - Zoooom - map (22 kB)