This is very old school, like back in my DOS / Windows 3.1 days. The Incredible Machine, was awesome, and to bring back to iphone (ipod touch) would be great! If I had coding experience I would do it on my mac! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine#The_Incredible_Machine_2
Not at all. Check it before you wreck it. Sierra published that game... right? Haven't heard from them in a while. I beat the incredible machine 2 when I was a kid. Such a fun game.
If you're going to make that comparison, Fantastic Contraption sounds like The Incredible Machine, not the other way around. There are newer versions of The Incredible Machine that would work great on the iDevices. I have a version called "Crazy Machines" on my Mac and I love it. I'd be thrilled if they made a version or even just ported one.
fantastic contraptions is a tangentially similar concept, but the incredible machine had a lot more opportunity for depth. i'm not saying fc isn't a very deep game (i just got it and it has me pretty stumped in a few places), but tim was way more than just wheels and rods. i actually feel that a game like enigmo has more in common with tim than fc—you have several kinds of tools at your disposal to complete a goal, but a limited number of each—but even then, there were way more tools in tim. ramps, like ten different balls each with their own physics, balloons, anti-grav pads (which make the balloons go down!), cats that chase mice, mice that chase cheese, levers, switches, electricity, gears, ropes, dirigibles, like five different ways to make fire. the list keeps going. not to mention that the goals could be anything from "get all of the balls into baskets" to "turn on the computers" instead of the same goal every time. a game like this is just begging to be iphoned. for those of you that haven't ever played it, the incredible machine 3 is available for download on mac garden, if you have some means of running classic OS. highly highly recommended (although a lot of the puzzles are fairly easy, this has more to do with original target audience than game design)
Jeff Tunnell, the creator of the Incredible Machine might get to it someday. He was quite impressed with Fantastic Contraption though. We chatted about it on his blog not too long ago. http://makeitbigingames.com/
...no it's not. the names of the two games are synonyms. that's about the only similarity. FC is about building structures and using physics. TIM uses physics a little (weights of balls, etc), but for the most part is not a physics or a building game. much more similar to a rube goldberg drawing than anything in fantastic contraption.
