Where are the 'Construction Set' Games?

mbishop asks: "After reading an the article on games decreasing brain activity, I thought back through childhood to when there were an abundance of 'construction set' games. I owe much of my music education to 'Music Construction Set'. These games were unique in that you could not only save a creation, but you could compile it into a standalone program that someone else could play even if they didn't have the original software. Creation was very easy, no programming necessary, and fun. My guess is that these sorts of games do much to increase the brain activity of the player. What are the 'Construction Set' games of today? Is there still a market for them?"

"I know that most PC games today have editors where a player can create their own levels and share them but users still need the original software. Even worse, consoles, which have the larger market, don't have enough storage (except maybe for the XBox) and aren't open enough to encourage players to create their own games and share them."

C :I think I see mbishop's point. Legos are still alive and well, but I don't see as much evidence on these types of toys in today's TV commercials. It seems those commercials are more interested in pushing the latest licensed crap instead of pushing toys designed to stimulate your child's own imagination. Of course, a simple Google search may yield a result or two, but that still doesn't answer the real question. Computer-based sets, would be a nice alternative, but nothing beats the real thing where children can use their own hands to create something they can show their paernts. Where have all of the Heathkit's, the chemical experiment toys and the other types of "builder" sets gone, and are they due for a revival, soon?

Comments

Re:vast conspiracy?

[Zathrus]

Pinball Construction Set did not require the game to play the pinball tables. I know - I released a half dozen or so pinball games out into the BBS scene of the time and you could download them and play them without PCS. I even saw them listed on shareware/freeware disk compendiums a couple years later (which was cool for a 10 year old...)

They're unplayable now -- ignoring the CGA graphics, it was one of those old games that didn't properly handle increased clock rates. Run it on a 386 and you lost the ball instantly because it was running too fast.

There's a modern version available now... Visual Pinball, which seems pretty good. Much more complicated, of course, but we're comparing CGA and 4.77 MHz to SVGA and 400 MHz.

Re:Bill Budge's Pinball Construction Set

[DeadMeat (TM)]

You might want to check out the heir apparent to PBCK, Visual Pinball. It's not quite as easy to get a grasp on (for the really fun stuff you need to do some scripting) but it's much more powerful than PBCK. Plus, the price is right.

One of the more interesting projects done with VP is to recreate arcade pinball machines; you can even hook up a special embedded version of MAME to emulate the LED display.