Shadow's Reach

I've been getting a lot of messages that read along the lines of the following 'nice game, but why is it in RPGMaker 2000?' to which I thought I should probably respond.

I've been a fan of RPG Maker 2000 since I first discovered it back in my university days and spent a lot of time playing with it on small projects before deciding to commit my energy to making a full game. In this time I also experimented with the (then relatively new) 2003 edition and found that whilst it had some cool new features, I didn't like it as much as the 2000 version. So I began work on SHADOW'S REACH, building elements of the game and populating the worldmap with towns, cities and other locations whilst working on the script and such simple things as item descriptions and names. By the time they announced that a new version of the engine was going to be released for windows XP, I was already well underway and had put in a lot of work at the early stages of the game (visable in the demo).

It's always been my aim to make a game that has the fun look and feel of the old SNES games, and when the XP edition was released I felt that whilst the games on it were awesome, they no longer felt like they'd just dropped out of an old-style cart. This is completely understandable, since XP and VX are fully fledged professional tools. Similarly the content I'd already made wouldn't shuffle across to the new system and I have no understanding of the scripting language they use. So I march on with 2000.

I sometimes think that 2000 gets a bad rep just for being an older model. It works, there are some fantastic examples of games made on it that are just as fun as the newer ones are, and if you can live with a level cap of 50 then why not? True, most games churned out in those early days and most examples of 2000 and 2003 since are horrible rtp based messes, but this game isn't and stands on its own merits. When I have completed Shadow's Reach there is a very good chance I will buy a proper copy of VX and with a TEAM create something 100% original and new. Right now I'm an army of one working on a game with a broad scope and lots to do, and 2000 serves my needs for working in that way. So in summary? Love 2000, don't mind the rest, don't mind playing on an older model as long as the GAME is fun. If somebody wants to not play the game just because it's in 2000 then that's their choice.