Alex the Alligator 4 comes to mind.

http://allegator.sourceforge.net/

oh, yeah, I saw that one. Pretty damn addictive!

The Mac version uses Allegro 5.

Beat Hazard Ultra is an Allegro 5 game as well.

I think these are our cohort competition, but our real competition (the reason people don't use allegro more, and the reason you don't see high caliber projects) is because people are moving to Unity and browser based game development. C/C++ is a tough place to start.

The unreal engine makes use of C++ quite extensively and now that it's open source it will probably attract a lot more developers. I strongly doubt that they'll switch to a lower level API though.

I think the biggest barrier to entry is probably the C/C++ language itself. I love working with it, but it took me a good 4 years to really learn it. My philosophy was that, if I learn C++ really well, then C#, Java, PHP, Objective-C, etc will all come very easily, which is true. I must say learning Haskell this year was quite a challenge though, I felt like I was starting over, but functional programming I think is a good way to learn how to code better in C-like languages.

I like C# too, for asp .net web development, but I just find tools like Unity and Unreal are overkill for a good bunch of 2D projects. Using C# / mono has a performance penalty that has to be worth it. Using really high level libraries has advantages for rapid development, but when you try to make something pretty big and custom, you end up either having to buy a bunch of plugins, or you write a fair amount of boilerplate code anyways to get what you want.

In my own game project, to really get what I wanted, I'm not sure how I really would have done it in Unity. First of all, there are very few aspects of C#/ Unity plugins that I feel would have sped up my development. I think certain parts of the GUI would have come faster, but I really wanted a very custom look and feel. I further customized that for iOS and Retina by hand.

I also have over 100 network events. While RPC would have made that easier than the way I am doing it, I still need 100+ network events, and I still need an event system that will be able to send messages to all my game objects. Unity helps eliminate a lot of boilerplate code, but you still have to be a good programmer and write a fair amount of code to write something big and interesting. Unity will never be able to code the game's logic for you, which is the bulk of my code.

But that doesn't really matter because having to use C/C++ is a realistically big deal for people in 2015. No GC, have to understand pointers, STL, know how to compile and use third-party libraries, etc. I can see how that is not very appealing in 2015.

An object-oriented port of A5 to C#, with some way to easily deploy your program on browser,desktop,mobile would probably score some nice points with people. I am sure there are a fair amount of people who are just intimidated by C/C++, but wish they had finer control than Unity.

A direct port to a higher-level language defeats some of the point of using a high-level language. Some of the design decisions were affected by C. The API could be redesigned with the power of a higher-level language. Of course, you could go ahead and build a Unity killer in C# or Python or whatever that uses Allegro 5 under the hood. I don't think it would work out being very good unless you were strongly motivated to do it, and do it for a specific purpose.

I don't get how a lot of people use unity or other high level engines, all the engines like unity ask you to pay if you release a commercial game made with it. Also, c/c++ is the standard for game development, using c# will affect performance, they're not native and run inside a vm(pretty much like java). I just thought that people would want to avoid using these engines/frameworks, specially because of flexibility.

yeah, I know I'm just being obsessive, as I read somewhere, "99% of the times, the engine is fast as in fast enough". For simple 2d games it doesn't make any difference to run the game inside a vm

you know, I've been using libgdx for some time and the reason why I came down here(yea, "down here" means "this low level" xD) is because with frameworks, it's all about magic. You write, let's say, an "update" function, and it gets called every frame. You implement an interface(abstract class for c++ devs), and your class now manages the input. Everything works kind of obscurely, you never get control over how things works. That's annoying, and the reason why I don't like frameworks(although it was easier to get things done).

Not necessarily famous, but wasn't there a Tetris champion who practiced using Allegro Tetris? I couldn't find the thread.

Before, people who wanted to make games had no choice but to learn C and use low level libraries like Allegro or SDL. Many were not up to the challenge and got nowhere. Those people now use existing game engines, and if they work for those people, then that's great for them!

But Allegro 5 is for people who want pedal-to-the-metal performance and low level control. Or for new programmers who understand that it's best to learn programming the hard way by starting with C. Unity and Javascript frameworks, etc are not competitors, but tools for a different, less hard-core audience.

Finally, while I'd like Allegro to have more developers, I don't use it because it's famous, but because it does what I need it to do.