Early Game Creation and Modding

by Darius Kazemi on August 29, 2007

in know_your_history

I was looking around at places that had been linking to the Orbus Gameworks site, when I stumbled upon this description of someone’s attempt to get MegaZeux running on the Nintendo DS. And then I remembered, oh yeah, MegaZeux!

MegaZeux was a fan-made upgrade of the ZZT game creator, which was the first project by Epic MegaGames, now known as Epic, that company that makes gears and war and stuff. ZZT provided Epic with the cash to make Jill of the Jungle, their first “real” game. But I’ve posted about this history before.

Anyway, MegaZeux was pretty cool, and pretty much top of the line for game creation tools back in the day, especially for overhead adventures. Modding first-person games like DOOM was just barely starting to catch on in 1994. I remember in 1993 I used to download all the crazy Wolfenstein 3D editing utilities from a local BBS and create my own levels. But that was all cloak-and-dagger stuff. It was only when DOOM came out that the developers officially encouraged fan-made levels and mods.

Looking at all those old editors is a real trip down memory lane.

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