Game-Maker: Sandbox Edition Guide
Credits and license
RSD Game-Maker was made from 1991 to 1995 by Recreational Software Designs: G. Andrew Stone, G. Oliver Stone, Oliver Stone Jr. and Joan Stone. In 2014 Andy Stone released its source code under the MIT License, saying that “porting Game-Maker to modern OSes is the first step” to preserving the games people made with it.
This version is a modified fork of that code by Lewis Moten, who bought Game-Maker in 1992 with snow-shoveling money. Running in a browser is the simplest way to reach every modern computer, and everything here reads and writes the original file formats, so games made today still play in DOS and DOSBox. The web port, both the 1994 desk and today’s web editor, was written with Claude Opus 5.5: AI assistance did most of the porting and code generation. It is MIT licensed too.
Who made each part of the original, every game’s authors, the people, the AI tools and what each one made (the Sandbox games and The Bard of Bizarre’s game by game), and the software and fonts used are on the Credits page.
The 1994 license and today
When Game-Maker was sold, its license let you install it on one computer at a time and give a game you made, free, to no more than ten people. Wider sharing needed RSD’s permission: for shareware, its manual granted every owner a license as long as the game asked a registration fee of at least $5 and the author paid RSD 10% of the fees each quarter, and selling games meant a commercial license with royalties per copy. The shareware disks sold in stores for a few dollars paid for the disk, not the game; the registration fee went to the author.
None of that applies to this edition. Under the MIT License you may use, copy, change, share and sell Game-Maker and the games you make with it, with no limit on people, fees or royalties; just keep the copyright and license notice with the program. The registration fees, order forms and Sandbox Software’s address in the Sandbox games are part of their 1990s story: the games are free. The Sandbox and Bard of Bizarre games were all made in 2026 for Game-Maker: Sandbox Edition; each is presented as a fictional release from the 1990s year it gives. The Bard games’ voice clips are the exception to the MIT License: they are for personal, non-commercial use only. The CD’s shareware games are still their authors’ own, and really are from the 1990s, which is why they are play-only here.
The desk’s hacking tools
The desk’s PC has 1990s-style tools for cracking, hacking and editing (GMCRACK and its KEYGEN, SAVEHACK, HEXEDIT and more). They are mainly for debugging: switching a game between shareware and registered to test both, editing and backing up saved games, and looking inside Game-Maker’s files. They act only on the pretend PC and this site’s own data. Nothing here cracks or generates keys for any real product: GMCRACK’s key is worked out the way Game-Maker’s own code, now MIT licensed, checks it, and the “warez” are this project’s own free files. They are here to show what that era felt like, not to encourage software piracy. Please support the authors of the software you use.
GIF is a service mark of CompuServe; FLI is Autodesk Animator’s format; Sound Blaster, CMF and VOC belong to Creative Technology; the OPL2 chip is Yamaha’s. The CD’s sample and shareware games belong to their authors. PKUNZIP was PKWARE’s and VPIC Bob Montgomery’s; the ones on the desk are look-alikes. Sandbox Software, its BBS and the desk’s hardware brands are made up.