Alan '95
Release type: Freeware
Release date: February 6, 1995
Levels: 2
Author: Adam Tyner, Alan Caudel
Related games: Alan!, Alan B-Day, Alan '96, The Adam's Birthday Saga Continues, Bear Fun Show, Blip!
FULL ENTRY COMING SOON!
A year on from Alan B-Day, and Adam Tyner has grown in his craft. Since our last stop in on this ritual, he has developed four Mister Spiff games and transitioned from the representational (if stylized) design of a year ago to wholly abstract constructions. What elements are representational tend to represent in-jokes and comedic non sequiturs.
So it is that Tyner's next gift for his friend Alan Caudel is a direct and strange successor to Mister Spiff IV. In that game Mister Spiff seems to be revealed as Alan Caudel, complete with a digitized photograph of Caudel for his head. In Alan '95 that notion continues (though now the head has been transplanted to the body of Adam Tyner, as illustrated by Alan Caudel in 1993), as does the side-scrolling maze design of the later Spiff titles.
The digitization that would come to underscore (in turn) Jon '95, Blip!, and What the... ?!? takes hold here, in early form. There is some struggle with the palette; rather than conforming imported photographs to a usable palette, the game's two levels use the respective random palettes associated with photographs that Tyner chose to insert into the backgrounds. All of the sprites and other background elements are therefore rather washed out and... beige-looking.
Insta-death tiles seem to be deliberately placed to be annoying.
Best touch: the little guy from the yet-to-be-released Star Avenger II animating on Alan's computer screen.
One of those rare games (like the later Spiff games) to drain counters at the start of a level. It's serious about forcing the player through the motions of collecting everything.
One of the later games to use that side-scrolling maze design from Mister Spiff.
Very rigid path; mazes full of one-way walls and gravity wells, forcing the player to see one branch through to the end and then go back for another rotation. Little sense of agency for the player, except the liberty to mess up. The player goes through the motions, does what is expected, and then if it's all done correctly, gets to move on.
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Story
Surprise, surprise. Guess whose birthday it is on February 5th?
My cousin Scott's! But your birthday is February 6th. So is the point of the game. You got a case of Mentos from me, but evil clones of your friends -- Weird Al, Broom Boy, Bear-dog, and the hideous Doghead creature, to name a few, are intent on KILLING you!!! Reclaim your Mentos with your only weapon -- Watermelon Toy! Is it enough....? You'd better hope so.....good luck....you'll need it.
(Cliche!)
Instructions
Controlling lil' ol' you...
Moving: Use the numeric keypad (duh!).
Attacking: Press SPACEBAR -or- ENTER.
Enemies: Hitting an enemy with a watermelon toy stuns them for 65 ticks... only a few seconds. It's FAIRLY obvious who the enemies are.
What the Heck is the Point? Get all the MENTOS packages you can find. Dying makes you hafta replay the level and gets rid of all your MENTOS! In level one, 11 MENTOS packages opens the block marked MENTOS HERE. Cool.
Corn: It does a body corn. CORN!
Credits
ALAN'S BIRTHDAY GAME-1995
Special thanks to Seattle Filmworks and Tom Tyner.
Availability
This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.
Archive History
After an earlier wave of rediscoveries, on July 13 2011 Alan Caudel provided another archive of previously missing Game-Maker material, including the following:
Links
Downloads
- Alan '95 (203 kB)
