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
FULL ENTRY COMING SOON!
Developers of a tool like Game-Maker include demonstration software for a reason. As a user of the design tools, you're meant to pick the games apart, tweak them; figure out how they work. While you're learning, you can mine them for raw materials. Say you want to toss together a nature study; just grab some existing grass and flower tiles. If they're not too distinctive and they suit what you're doing, then fine. Leave 'em in. They're meant to be used.
Legally, there's rarely a boundary with these agreements. It would be hard, and self-defeating, to try to define just where fair use ends and full-on appropriation begins. What about a game like The Descent, that lightly edits stock tiles and sprites then combines them into a wholly new form? What if you were to include a level from an existing game? Multiple levels? What if you were to take a whole game like Nebula and expand it with new levels, items, and abilities? (Andy Stone even suggests that users do the latter, as an exercise.) The answers are in most cases gray, and depend on a perception of intent. Extenuating factors include an underlying honesty, demonstrated in things like credit and attribution, and an expectation of financial return.
It's tiresome and impractical to draw up a strict licencing framework for what amounts to spare parts and schoolwork, so it's common to just release this material as a gift to the user. Do with it what you will; may it help you in your efforts to create something new.
The onus of responsibility is therefore on the user, to avail the tools to hand with care, judgment, and a sense of personal pride. It's up to the user to determine whether or not a shortcut is warranted, to what extent that debt merits acknowledgement, and what sort of a reputation they want to build for themselves. Typically, a tool like Game-Maker attracts users who need to create. The greater the effort one puts into a work, the more of it that one creates one's self, the greater one's sense of pride. If they happen to repurpose a brick or stone texture, or skin a new character over an existing animation, the weight of the element's origin is incidental to the weight of the new purpose.
How, then, do we read a game like Pipes or Icemare? Gary Acord's first release is to Penguin Pete much as Roy Person's Pipes is to Pipemare: take one of RSD's demo games, swap out the character sprite for a hastily designed robot, change the title screen and credits, and call it one's own. Instant shareware release. Again there's nothing to say they can't do this with the demo material; it's there to be used how they judge 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?
[Not about moral dimension; more puzzlement over the components of a creative drive.]
One wonders about the relationship between Sgt. Super and Jaxon Zoose.
Contents
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
Resources
The entire game, save the character sprite, is largely 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
Misc. Links
Downloads
- Icemare with Sgt. Super (439 kB)
- Overworld Map (? kB)
- Maze 1 Map (? kB)
- Maze 2 Map (? kB)
- Maze 3 Map (? kB)
- Maze 4 Map (? kB)
- Maze 5 Map (? kB)
- Maze 6 (and ending) Map (? kB)
- Underwater Map (?4 kB)
