Garry Kitchen's GameMaker


Garry Kitchen's GameMaker is an integrated development environment for the Commodore 64, Apple II, and IBM PCs, created by Garry Kitchen and released by Activision in 1985. It is one of the earliest all-in-one game design products aimed at the general consumer, preceded by Broderbund’s The Arcade Machine in 1982. Several sample files are included: a demo sequence featuring animated sprites and music, a recreation of Pitfall!, and a birthday greeting.
Two add-on disks are available for the Commodore 64 version: Sports, and Science Fiction. These include sprites, music, and background elements for loading into GameMaker.

Construction

GameMaker is divided into five tools, each of which consists of a graphical interface controlled with the joystick:
The programming language used by GameMaker is reminiscent of other early programming languages like BASIC, but with several proprietary and tightly integrated graphics and sound facilities.
Rather than enter the language via keyboard, GameMaker uses a novel contextual menu-based system. The user selects possible instructions, and then customizes the active objects of the instruction, such as variable names or numbers.

Limitations

Some limitations of Gamemaker are imposed by the Commodore 64 architecture, some by the software itself:
Computer Gaming World called GameMaker "excellent". COMPUTE's! Gazette called it "a thorough, complete package that makes it relatively easy to design arcade games that actually work."