There are lots of free and free trial game making programs on the net.
I prefer to program in DarkBASIC which is a version of BASIC that has commands for sprites, 3D object, etc. for game making. You can get a 30 day trial at
http://darkbasic.com/download.php but I recommend DarkBasicPro because it has a better interface.
"The Game Factory" is also popular and doesn't require programming to make simple games although the interface is a little hard to learn. I think it is now free without a time limit. MultiMediaFusion (MMF) is also available from
http://clickteam.com for a 30 day trial. It is a sort of upgrade of the discontinued GameFactory.
"Game Maker" is a similiar program that is available free on the web at
http://www.cs.uu.nl/~markov/gmaker/You might also want to check out the free "Scrolling Game Development Kit" (GameDev for short) at
http://gamedev.sourceforge.net/If you don't want to program or design your own games, you might want to hack a rom. My favorite program for beginners is "Lunar Magic" It allows you to move, copy, and change the size of objects in "Super Mario World" and then play it in a emulator. You can get it at
http://uct2.net/~fusoya/lm/ but you will need to download the rom from somewhere else if you don't have it already.
If you are really serious about making a game I suggest you learn C++.
PASCAL can be used for games, but I think it is a little difficult because it doesn't have commands specifically for game coding Nonetheless, a great game has been made in Turbo PASCAL by Mike Wiering (mike.wiering@wxs.nl). The whole game is below 64K You can get the game and the source code at
http://home.wxs.nl/~mike.wiering/mario/Enjoy !)
I prefer using DarkBASIC for game coding. If there are any DB users out there that want to share DB stuff or work together on SNES type games let me know.
"First we had commands, now we have arguments." - dbheaven.com
