I missed which specific version was being discussed here (or frankly why it was being discussed) but based on your date I'd guess it was either 1.4 or 2.0 and I agree wholeheartedly that those early ones are absolutely impossible to do anything wothwile with

I'd say GM6 is the first really good version (since it had an pretty important overhaul to the view system). It's also unable to have partially-transparent sprites (using GIF instead of PNG for sprites), so it's kinda difficult to do any advanced effects in it...  I probably wouldn't be able to go back any further than GM8.1 these days :P