Renxo Booper in Booperland
Release type: Shareware
Release date: 1996
Levels: 4
Author: Fernando Sarmiento
Website: Little Nando
Related games: N/A
Game-Maker is a very powerful set of tools, particularly for its time -- and also very flexible. If you're clever and persistent, you can bend Game-Maker to do almost anything. Except, there are a few major oversights. Not many; you can count them on one hand. The lack of support for its music format (now addressed) was a big sticking point. There's the lack of even an option for an on-screen display, or display of most in-game counters in the inventory screen. There are the strict limitations to monster behavior. And then there are the control issues.
Game-Maker's character handling is painfully procedural. You map one action to one key; when no triggered action is in place, there is one idle animation. So, for instance, you can't run to the left, then let go of the key, and have your character stop, still facing to the left. You can't run to the right and press a jump key and then have your character jump to the right. If you want your character to jump to the right or left, you need a dedicated key for each behavior. You see how this quickly becomes awkward for the player.
As such, Game-Maker users have come to agree on certain standard workarounds. There is a grammar to Game-Maker control mapping, from which games only occasionally stray. If this is a platformer, then you use the numerical keypad. 7, 8, and 9 jump left, up, and right. If you need keys to climb up and down, find room in the surrounding keypad. Maybe the plus and minus keys, or slash and insert. Whatever feels natural. If you have more than one attack, try to group the keys together in a logical way -- preferably away from the keypad, so you can use your other hand.
All of which is to say, Renxo Booper doesn't follow the conventions. It's a minor thing, but it's surprising how much more difficult the game becomes when the jump keys are beneath the rest of the movement -- or, if you use the standard arrow keys, above but not spatially mapped to their corresponding directions. It's like those rare NES games that reverse the A and B buttons (Golgo 13), and how after a few minutes you feel so very anxious with the knowledge that you're going to keep pressing the wrong thing.
Once you get past that bridge (say, for your own enjoyment, by remapping the keys), Renxo Booper proves itself a very eager, ambitious game. What we have here is a platformer modeled after Sonic the Hedgehog (apparently by way of Peach the Lobster). The game demonstrates a significant effort, but leaves some room for refinement.
Most of the visuals are original; the character demonstrates a full range of motion and has access to two different attack styles. The levels have genuine flow and momentum, and in the vein of Commander Keen are stocked full of knickknacks to collect. Furthermore, the levels frequently make use of Game-Maker's limited physics. In particular, Renxo Booper is one of the very few Game-Maker games to make practical use of momentum. You will see items, for instance, that you can only reach by running and then jumping. For Mario or Sonic, this is pretty basic stuff -- but for Game-Maker it's a real power technique.
It's also nice to see a game that at least tries to use gravity-free areas for climbing. This is a thing that never quite works as one would hope, but it does significantly add to the grammar available between the player and the environment.
The presentation also is interesting, in that every scene transition is accompanied by a CG-rendered full-screen animation. Clearly someone was proud of his software package, here. Though the animation can slow things down a bit (since there's no way to skip them), they do make the package feel a bit more accomplished than your average Game-Maker production.
The game has its rough edges, though. Even ignoring the key mapping, the controls can be fidgety. Jumps are not very precise or responsive. The momentum-based lateral movement can make precise placement a problem. Where this becomes a problem is when the player faces the many obstructions throughout the game's levels that demand a level of precision that is unavailable to the player. Whether you're asked to fit into a tight space, leap to a particular ledge, or toss a grenade over a particular object, the controls and the level design aren't really speaking the same language. This isn't an unusual problem, particularly for beginning game designers, but it's a significant one here.
Overall, Renxo Booper is a bold, confident use of Game-Maker and a moderately baffling experience. For the curious, it seems that Renxo Booper lives on in other media and other game engines...
Contents
Story[edit]
N/A
Instructions[edit]
DEMOREAD.DOC:
- How to play the game:
- It’s pretty easy to play and WIN the demo, it’s not so challenging, but remember that is just the beginning of a new fantastic world, the new GAME. To move your self you may use arrows, to jump ENTER, Ins. and Del., to shoot SPACE and to shoot bombs B. To hung up from plants just use UP or DOWN.
- Joystick
- You wanna know how to use the joystick ? It’s easy. The game (inside the game) has several buttons which do different things, like, putting the music on/off, sounds on/off and joystick on/off and joystick calibration.
- F9 is JOYSTICK CALIBRATION and F8 puts joystick on/off. If you’re going to use one, choose a gamepad. We recommend you more to use keyboard, you may experience lots of problems with a joystick.
Credits[edit]
nuF eNterTainment FacTorY
Dominguez Sarmiento (c)
Manuel Dominguez Sarmiento: Music Producer
Alejandro Domiguez Sarmiento: Map producer (Partly)
Fernando Dominguez Sarmiento: Everything (Not partly)
About[edit]
DEMOREAD.DOC:
- NUF Entertainment factory presents Renxo Booper in BooperLand DEMO.
- Hello guys, I’m Fernando Matías Dominguez Sarmiento (13 years old) and I produced this fabulous game with GAME-MAKER by Recreational Designs (now is of MicroForum)
- First things first :
- Renxo Booper is (c) COPYRIGHT 1993-1997 of Fernando Matías Dominguez Sarmiento. Registered.
- SEND US an E-MAIL and tell us your rate of the game. If we can, we will send you totally FREE our demo
- of our next release SnowKid Flake (c) COPYRIGHT 1996-1997
Availability[edit]
The demo version of Renxo Booper was made widely available on shareware compilation CD-ROMs, including:
- PC Collector CD 07 (April, 1997)
Archive History[edit]
The Renxo Booper demo was added to the archive on April 5, 2015. It was located on the PC Collector CD 07 CD-ROM, hosted on KultCDs.com, during a spur-of-the-moment Web search for Game-Maker file formats.
Links[edit]
Misc. Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Renxo Booper in Booperland (2.1 MB)
- Level 1 Map (195 kB)
- Level 2 Map (241 kB)
- Level 3 Map (163 kB)
- Level 4 Map (39 kB)
