GameMaker is a name given to two different pieces of computer software written for two different platforms by different people. It is not to be confused with Game Maker (two words) or with Game-Maker created by Recreational Software Designs in the early 1990s. Gamemaker is also the name of a game-making educational curriculum in Arvika, Sweden.
GameMaker is the name of computer game creation software written by Garry Kitchen and published by Activision for the Commodore 64 and the Apple II. The program includes "Sprite Maker" for designing animated sprites, "Scene Maker" for creating backgrounds using a palette of four colors and several basic MS Paint-esque functions (such as line, circle, and paint bucket), "Sound Maker" and "Music Maker", as well as the tools to construct a game. The Commodore 64 version had arguably more features, especially in the Sound Maker module, taking advantage of the sound and color capabilities it had that the Apple II lacked.
To demonstrate the versatility of the program, several demonstration files were included. Among them were a demo sequence featuring animated sprites and music, a recreation of the David Crane classic Pitfall and a birthday greeting.
Two add-on disks were released for the Commodore 64 version - Sports and Science Fiction. These included sprites, music and backgrounds for loading into GameMaker.
GameMaker was made for the same purpose as the above program (simplified game development) for Mac OS 7.5 and up including Mac OS X. This GameMaker was written by Al Staffieri Jr. The latest build is 3.9.95, and it is still under development for future versions.