For those of you who have been around for, like, a really long time, you may recall a crummy forum fiction game called Quest For The Forum (called Quest To The Forum in the topic ) being made in RPG Maker 2000 for roughly a year 13 years ago by some kid called Rocketboy680 .
Well, that kid was me at age 12. After finishing the game (which, quite embarassingly, took a whole year), I was ready to upload. However, my internet connection sucked and couldn’t complete the upload. Buckling under the pressure of releasing a game that had been waited on for a year (as well as speculated multiple times as being completely fake), I took the coward’s way out and just totally abandoned the forum.
So I was looking through old CDs I had burned while growing up, and found a copy of Quest For The Forum. I really, really thought that this game had gone the way of the dodo with multiple computer migrations. Being that I’m a 25 year old professional programmer now, I decided to give it a look to see how far I’ve come.
It isn’t pretty.
I think that’s all of the preface that this “game” really needs, so I’ll cut to the chase: since I finally found the game and had spent a year promising to release it but ultimately cowarded out, it’s time to right that wrong.
I present to you, in all of its total lack of glory, Quest For The Forum: Quest For The Forum
I don’t particularly recommend actually playing it, but I felt beholden to finally release this.
This late release isn’t really any attempt to reclaim any kind of good standing because, let’s face it, the ultimate result isn’t worth the wait either way. But, if anybody is interested in how this abomination came about, I’m going to leave some commentary below.
Oh jeez, where to start?
So, I came up with the idea for making this after playing the two Rescue Reidman games, and this couldn’t be more obvious. I followed a similar pattern: forum fiction game about rescuing the forum made in RPG Maker 2000. However, there were a couple criminal mistakes I was making going in:
- I was 12 years old and sucked at design
- I was hardly present in the forum long enough to make coherent forum fiction
- I self-inserted as the main villain
- I was working almost entirely with stolen assets
- I was making a game about an Earthbound forum and at the time had never even beaten Frank in Earthbound
So, right from the start things were a recipe for disaster.
Another user going by NessAndHisFurby was kind enough to PM me and help me flesh out some parts of the story (which ultimately resulted in NAHF also becoming a self-inserted villain). My biggest crime after the completed development of the game was to send NAHF a PM with multiple Megaupload links to chunks of the game and then essentially shoving all of the duty off on him before disappearing (I don’t think that all of the links even worked, so he was pretty helpless).
When I was 12 years old I was a real jerk. NessAndHisFurby, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry I was such a jerk.
I’ll quickly go over a couple of the ideas I had for the game which I considered interesting at the time:
- I ripped off the idea from Mortal Kombat: Deception of having a main character age to be an old man over the course of a long quest involving traversing realms.
- The realms were different segments of the Starmen.net forum and site (there were fan comic caverns, a fanfiction forest ((with no trees)), locked topic graveyard, etc.)
- There’s a sparring guy in the first world who could help the player level up without needing to grind too much, though I hadn’t executed this idea well.
- You battle “Rocketboy680” throughout his rise to power, so the player and he are always somewhat on the same footing.
Anyway, it’s all pretty stupid. My lazy 12 year old design ranged from poor map design…
Worth noting: this map is shown here at 1/8 of its actual size and there is nothing there. Not even random encounters.
…to poor writing.
The whole thing is a mess and should only really be explored today as a morbid curiosity, if at all.
Anyway, I hope you all will forgive me for my past sins. Trust me: actually playing this abomination will not make it easier for you to sympathize with me. I only uploaded it now because I felt it was my duty to finally provide what was promised so long ago.
I also have a dA acccount where I occasionally post drawings, but not very often.
I also made a game called See No Evil
I’ve been waiting years for this to come out! I even gave Rocketboy680 a shoutout back in 2015 in a Famicompo Pico entry, having made an Earthbound/Mother 2 cover, completely unaware that Rocketboy680 did continue down the path of creating games (I myself became a musician, KungFuFurby… that’s about all I’ll put here, otherwise this would quickly go out of the scope of the Quest For The Forum).