My roots
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=2aCxJBbqzS0[/youtube]
You might not know it, but I have a history with this old gentleman. This video was part of the instructional tutorial for Klik & Play. I still remember when I was around 10 (11? I forget) years old reading about Klik & play in Highscore magazine (before it turned into an adult mag) and since I was really into making text-games at the time in QBasic I was sure I had to get it.
It was about 500kr (~$70) so I first asked one of my close friends if he was interested in sharing the cost with me, but he wasn’t. And he said even if we got it that I would probably hog the disc (smart guy).
When that failed I pleaded to my parents to get it and thankfully I was able to pursuade them. Klik & Play isn’t very remarkable by todays standards, but I must admit it’s quite ingenious in it’s design. You create your own animated objects or use the premade ones that came in the box. You assign archetypical behavours to them (bouncing ball, platform, race car) and click play. Additionally there was a simple yet powerful event system that easily let you trigger game events based on conditions that you composed (when lives = 0 go to ‘Game over’ screen). The same ideas behind Klik & Play lives on in the more recent ‘The Games Factory 2‘.
While Klik & Play didn’t make me a professional game developer, it did have a major influence in my later choices in life to become one. And to learn real programming. Seeing this video again on youtube, some 15 years after the facts is incredibly nostalgic and a reminder of why I ended up here in the first place.
