Gaming Hacks

Create Console Game Levels

Extend the length of your game by creating new levels and sharing them with the world.

Some console games aren’t games as much as they are pure construction kits. Other titles are fun in their own right and just happen to include the ability to create new content that’s as much fun as the game itself. How can you exploit these console-creation kits to have more fun than actually playing the game you bought and trade your creations with other people online? Let’s pick a few of the best, most fun-to-use console-construction tools that came as game add-ons and discuss the communities around them and ways to add and contribute your own ideas.

Tip

An honorable mention goes to the granddaddy of all construction kits, the track editor on Nintendo’s classic 1984 release, Excitebike. Unfortunately, after you painstakingly designed the track and played it, it would vanish as soon as you turned off the machine. There wasn’t even a password system to retrieve the design again! In those days, it was a one-time act, but if you use an emulator that supports snapshots, you’ll finally have the chance to save your work.

Tony Hawk Series

Spanning at least six titles over multiple hardware iterations, the Tony Hawk series from Neversoft and Activision, an addictive skateboarding games in its own right, has gradually improved its Create A Park feature. It debuted in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 for PlayStation. The current iteration in Tony Hawk’s Underground allows uploads and downloads ...