Incredible Machine, The

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/incrediblemachine/incrediblemachine.htm

This series always drove me nuts. It's a puzzle game where you need to arrange a series of parts to assemble a Rube Goldberg-esque machine to solve some kind of task. This article also addresses the Crazy Machines series, one of many similar game series.

[Weasel]

I see Bobinator probably never got the sound working properly on the original PC version; it actually has support for Sound Blaster cards and the soundtrack for those is quite catchy and pleasing to the ear.

[derboo]

The Crazy Machines games are also available on Nintendo DS: www.crazymachines-ds.de/

The Graphics differ quite a bit, as one would expect.

There's been a couple of expansions since the release of the game, with Crazy Machines 2 Add-On coming out in 2008.

Doesn't that read like future tense somehow?

The official Title of the German PC version is cm², might add that as an alternate title. The first Add-on has also been available in retail there, and there's a "Gold Edition" with both the main game and add-on, too.

EDIT:
Just in case of interest, here is an ebay seller who ships both NDS games internationally (NO credit cards, but paypal, might want to ask about shipping costs first)

cgi.ebay.de/Crazy-Machines-2-DS-NEU-OVP_W0QQitemZ250530106241QQcmdZViewItemQQptZde_entertainment_games?hash=item3a54c20b81

cgi.ebay.de/Crazy-Machines-DS-NEU-OVP_W0QQitemZ250533384740QQcmdZViewItemQQptZde_entertainment_games?hash=item3a54f41224

[Deleted]

Nice article of one of my favorite series. I especially like TIM2/TIM3.

Some comments:

* Typo: "They're both avaiable only through Steam, as far as I know."

* Typo: "Also, they're selling a pack of all the TIM games on Good Gold Games, so it shouldn't be too hard to pick up and try out."

* There's a TIM clone named Mechanic Master for DS that could fit in the article.

[blackdrazon]

The article doesn't mention much of a difference between TiM2 and TiM3.0, but GOG and Wikipedia say there are "interface changes" and something about scaling. I guess these are just superficial though.

One thing I always liked about the early TiM games over modern flash-based physics puzzlers is simple: simple physics. Modern physics puzzlers are the only genre of gaming short of actual gambling where you can do the exact right thing and still be wrong. True, I don't think it's worth the trouble to create a simplified physics system when working ones exist but I can't count the number of times I've been turned away from the proper solution to a puzzle because Box2D decided to hiccup at the wrong time.

[icupnimpn2]

Great to see some Sierra & Dynamix love. I've always been fascinated with the TIM games, with Toon Machine being the first I actually purchased. I'd like to check out those German, umm, homages to TIM. So, good on Bobinator for including them.

One TIM-alike missing from the article is notable for a connection to Jeff Tunnell. It's called "Chain Reaction" and was published by Garage Games:

www.gametunnel.com/html/reviews-48.html

Tunnell, of course, helped to found Garage Games, which created the Torque engine. Chain Reaction wasn't developed by Tunnell, but still, it shares some of the TIM DNA. Maybe you can do some digging and include it as an update to the main article? Might be hard to track down, but hey, that's the whole point of this site, right?