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Introduction - Enemies - Level maps - Secrets - Trivia
Trivia
Origins
I first made this game in Klik & Play in 2004, and it required some work to pull off with such a limited tool. It took maybe one to three months to make. Each screen was a big sprite with pixel-perfect collision overlaying the game window, and the enemies' positions were entered manually into Klik & Play's event editor. Once I started learning Game Maker in 2005, I used it to remake Hero in one week.
Character names
As stated in the game's help file, Flip Hero was my superhero dream as a child. His nemesis was Cruiser Tetron, whose name comes from the English translation of the second boss in Life Force: Salamander on the NES. However the manual accidentally switched the names of the second and third boss which caused some confusion for me.
Music
When I made the music for Hero in 2004, it was the first and last time I composed in MIDI. The notes were all over the place and the instrumentation sounded bad on most MIDI cards. When making version 5 of Hero, I remade the music in XM format using actual scales. Most of the soundtrack was crammed into the Bebop minor scale, although I hardly understand or use the note progressions you're supposed to when composing for it. Meanwhile the Level 1 and victory themes were converted to C Major.
Half pixels
Although the game at first appears to run in a 160*160 resolution scaled to double size, it really runs in 320*320 with all the graphics manually drawn at double scale. Prior to version 5 of the game this was very noticable, as the movement and drawing of the sprites was not restricted to the 2*2 pixel grid. You can see what this looked like by setting the graphics mode to "half-pixel" in the options menu.
Seems familiar
The concept of firing left and right with two buttons was inspired by Section Z, which also contributed the idea of Generators and Barriers. Traversing a dark world without a map was mainly inspired by Metroid. Tetron's entire throne room disappearing before he starts to move is an imitation of Life Force, where bosses were usually made out of background tiles so the room had to disappear before the boss could start moving.
Hiding a secret
The hidden room in Level 5 was kind of an afterthought, and you can only find it by spotting the blinking dot at the top of the map in the bonus menu. The best-kept secrets in my games have at least one clue to finding them, but how obvious to make that clue and still have it feel "secret" is tricky. Some of my later games have particularly huge secrets, but I've no problem with spending as long as I want adding extra things that not every player will see. It feels like more a reward to find them that way.