OK. Basic, four-step plan to programming cool games:

(1) Program a basic, but COMPLETE, Tetris clone. "Complete" will be defined in a moment. You'll need to learn the basics of something like OpenGL or DirectX to do this. You'll also need to learn some Win32 API stuff, assuming this is in Windows. You will learn many of the basics of game programming, including core functionality like input-reading, graphical rendering, and sound rendering. You will also learn a lot of programming. THIS IS ONE OF THE HARDEST STEPS!

(2) Program a full Arkanoid/Breakout clone. You know, where you're this little paddle and you bounce a ball up to break bricks? (This step is optional. If you feel that you're ready, go ahead and skip this step...If it turns out you weren't ready, come back to it.) This will simply give you a little bit more exposure to math, as you have to use ball-bouncing angles a lot, and will expose you to slightly more advanced gameplay mechanisms, such as power-up items and extra lives, which are absent in Tetris.

(3) Program a full Pac-Man clone. This will force you to create some basic AI (in the original Pac-Man, all four ghosts used DIFFERENT AI schemes!). Also, you will have to use power-ups, extra lives, level-completion conditions, and levels loaded from data files. Those last four things are all things that you would have learned in making your Arkanoid clone, which is why the Arkanoid clone is optional.

(4) Program a full Super Mario Brothers clone. Do not limit yourself to the original Super Mario Brothers. This will force you to learn side-scrolling, more complex level-linking (think about pipes, warp zones, defeating Bowser, flagpoles...each can move you to another game level or a different part of the current level, and they do so in a variety of ways). Also, think of the depth of powerups if you use a system with many suits like SMB 3. There should be a between-levels "world map" system.


"Complete" here means that the game is so polished that you can hand it to someone and walk away, and they can use it. Think about any game in the Mario series...The menus, the high-score board, the game...Everything works together seamlessly and without Miyamoto standing there and telling you how to do it. Note that "polished" does NOT mean that the graphics have to be good. It can look awful, that doesn't matter to you, who are learning to program. It just has to work and be thorough and have all of the features installed correctly.