About Me

Hi, thank you for visiting the ABA Games website.

Let me tell you a little bit about who I am. My name is Kenta Cho, and I am the sole person behind ABA Games. Game development has been my lifelong hobby for over 40 years now.

In the 1980s, as a child, I was captivated by computers after programming in BASIC on a Sharp PC-1500 pocket computer. As I delved deeper, I moved to machine language on the NEC PC-6001 to create faster action games.

Around that time, I was an avid reader of "Mycom BASIC Magazine," which published game programs submitted by readers. I was impressed by seeing how original games could be created with compact code and learned the value of sharing source code. Having my own game, "METEORITE," published in the magazine was a valuable experience.

I was also greatly influenced by the arcade games of Namco in the 1980s, such as Dig Dug and Xevious. They showed me the importance of novel mechanisms in game design. Simple yet addictive gameplay from games like Nintendo's Game & Watch and various LSI games also taught me a lot about how unique core mechanics can create diverse gameplay variations.

I have created over 400 games so far, all of which are released as open source and are free to download. Thanks to this open approach, some of the games I developed have been ported by volunteers to various platforms like Mac, Linux, and consoles.

I would like to mention some of my representative games, including Noiz2sa (my first shmup for Windows), Tumiki Fighters (which became the basis for the Wii game Blast Works), Gunroar, rRootage (where I used my own BulletML language), Torus Trooper, and more recently, Paku Paku, known as "1D Pac-Man".

What really drives my game development is the urge to make games that I, myself, have fun playing. I love the creative journey of taking game mechanics I've seen in places like 'Mycom BASIC Magazine' or old arcade games, borrowing or tweaking them, and then coming up with ideas to turn them into actual games. To speed things up, I also build my own tools and libraries, like crisp-game-lib. I'm not stuck on any particular tech; I use various programming languages, always focusing on making the game fun.

Looking ahead, I want to continue challenging myself to create new game rules and algorithms. My current big idea is to explore methods for having computers create entire games using generative AI. I want to engage in "meta-level" creation, guiding AI to produce novel games.

Game development remains a great source of joy and a lifelong hobby for me. I find it fun to enjoy the "changes" in technology and explore new approaches. As I shared in my e-book, "The Joy of Small Game Development," my message is simple: "Let's make games together and have fun!". I hope my games and their source code can be a starting point for anyone interested in creating games.