Shoot ’em Up Construction Kit (1987)

Shoot ’em Up Construction Kit (1987) by Sensible Software and published by Outlaw for Commodore 64, Amiga, and Atari ST. A surprisingly robust game making software! Also known as SEUCK, it’s interesting to note that before this, Sensible’s first title was Parallax a year earlier, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a version of the engine they used to make it. Navigating the menus is a little clunky without hotkey indicators, but you get a surprising amount of options to actually make a ‘shmup game. You can make and edit sprites, backgrounds, animations, fonts, even mix and alter the audio of sound effects. This spread amongst Commodore enthusiasts, notably a man by the name of Ray Larabie. Larabie created some games that earned him attention, and went on to have a career at Rockstar Canada working on Grand Theft Auto and Max Payne; he’s actually responsible for making the font of the GTA logo *and* the Mass Effect logo, and I can’t help but wonder if SEUCK’s option to edit typefaces was where it all began…