OP, thanks for posting this and bringing it onto my radar again. The GBP (with a copy of Pokémon Red) was my first foray into the world of gaming as a wide-eyed

OP, thanks for posting this and bringing it onto my radar again. The GBP (with a copy of Pokémon Red) was my first foray into the world of gaming as a wide-eyed 8 year old. In the past, every time I've tried to put something together game dev wise, the toolchain onramp has scared me away and any project I've tried to work on has inevitably failed. I wonder if things might be a little different in this case just because of the creative constraints. Of course, the cranky engineer side of my brain is saying "just suck it up and learn Unity" because of the ecosystem. But speaking of creative constraints! I've spent a while looking into an active corner of the Pokémon fandom that is concerned with making custom Pokémon games. It hinges around a pretty complete and powerful toolchain called Pokémon Essentials [1] which uses RPG Maker XP as its base. It seems to have reached critical mass enabling fans to make custom Pokémon games which faithfully reproduce Pokémon's admittedly complicated mechanics without having to reinvent the wheel. Sadly, Nintendo took it down once it reached critical mass for understandable if regrettable reasons. I keep thinking to myself that something along these lines would be incredible for game dev. RPG Maker in particular seems to be unique in how specialized it is compared to more generic ecosystems such as Unity and UE. Can anyone who has more experience in the industry tell me why that is? Is it just an economics and market reach thing? [1] https://essentialsdocs.fandom.com/wiki/Essentials_Docs_Wiki https://essentialsdocs.fandom.com/wiki/Essentials_Docs_Wiki