How about a game which is a twist on (any) old-skool arcade game. Ie. You play one of the enemies in Galaxian, but you find that you have been made intelligent somehow (think of short-circuit). So YOU are being attacked by "the player" and have to survive, escape or kill them.

Reminds me of some tv show I saw (I think it might have been a Twilight Zone episode) where this kid plays a computer arcade game day and night... I think he has to maneuvre through a maze or something and fight etc, and when he finally reaches the end (in the middle of the night, all alone in the arcade), he''s sucked into the computer.

The next day, another kid starts playing and the first kid is now the virtual character, running for ''his'' life.

KETCHAVAL:
I think your idea is brilliant. With a classic game like that, a lot of players will have instant recognition.

quote: Reminds me of some tv show I saw (I think it might have been a Twilight Zone episode) where this kid plays a computer arcade game day and night... I think he has to maneuvre through a maze or something and fight etc, and when he finally reaches the end (in the middle of the night, all alone in the arcade), he''s sucked into the computer.

I remember but I think it was a TV show called friday the 13th (and old show , I think that show aired 19th june 87). I also rember the kid could only get to level 7 and the game was supposed to end at level 12 . He really wanted to beat the game so he broke into the arcade . He played the game to level 12 and beat the game . It burst out into flame and it said , "are you ready for the next level" . THe kid shouted , "there are no more levels I beat you ". THen the machine said "Human you are good , but not good enough , we now proceed to level 13." Video game characters came out of the game in 3d , and he started blasting them away even the last bad guy . Then came a glowing sphere came out and started chasing him he could nt shot it or dodge it so he screame "Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh", there was a bright light and the scene ended.

The next morning , after school his friends went to the arcade , the place was trashed , only one left the game . His friend went to insert a coin , and he saw his best friend had now become the bad guy in the game , he gasped and was about to run when he bubmped into the origional guy in the game.

Sorry about that , I remember the show so vividly , I just had to......... As a matter of fact I remember the game play , Im going to make it into a game , Ill get back at yah int 2 weeks( right now I m working on another game , should be finished in a day or so).

HOODRAT: Exactly! Thanks for bringing back the memories

Ya I remember both those movies, they were good. A game like that would be awesome.

How''s about just including refrences to the old games. In a racing game as you are passing the river you can get extra points by running over the frog in the road :-)

It''s not really that much of an original concept, and a similar thing is being discussed in the Game Writing forum, one of my favourite books is Terry Pratchett''s "Only You Can Save the World", where a player finds that the enemy want to surrender, but aren''t allowed to by the players.

I just think that it could be pretty neat to write a *simple* arcade game based on such a thing. Especially if you combined it with a good AI system for the "enemy player".

It might even be relatively emotional to see the other "aliens" on your side mindlessly flying to their deaths at the hand of the player.

Imagine if the player got a power up which gave him powerful firepower (like in Xenon 2). Then the player would be the equivalent of the end of level boss !

How about not making one side AI, but have both sides controlled by a player?

Imagine playing Galaxian but certain enemy spaceships are controlled by human players (unpredictable, trying to kill you).

Feels a little bit like the ''what if you could play a puny goblin'' in MMORPGs. You''d pretty much be cannon fodder, but hey, you might get a thrill out of it.

Okay, back to the topic.

Woohoo... I''m on day 4 on my C++ in 21 days course. %Another two weeks and I''ll be a master programmer!%

Well, back to Ketchaval''s origianl idea:
I think playing as the ''badguys'' could work quite well. Imagine, if you will, that you can personally order your ''troops'' to conduct specific attacks and then automatically retreat and regroup. Each type of unit would know different attacks and when shot apart could leave varying parts (power-ups) for the opposition to scavange.

Well, at least those are some ideas to think about, though I don''t know quite what you''re imagining. (I was thinking ''Action Real-Time Strategy.'')