Some New Game Development
Steve and I have both started some new personal games. Mine is going to be a Galaga / Demon Attack / Spider Fighter tribute, while Steve is going a completely different route with an Arakanoid / Tetris / Ceiling Zero style game. I started my a brand spanking new game engine by taking the Pumpkin Man / Mission Leprechaun / Bratney Escape code and reworking it completely for a sprite-based, rather than tile based game. This will also be the first game where I implement the my new game timer. So far I have the basic framework running with a game state loop, and some of the sprites, but not much else. I hope to have a working prototype by next week. It is going to be a single screen game with 3 parallax scrolling background layers. Two of them will be star fields and the third will be a crab nebulae style color field. I have no idea how to draw one of those, so I am actively looking for a good tutorial, etc. I plan to use blitting for the entire game, create a new particle engine, and experiment with multiple sized sprites (not just 32×32). Now all I need is some time to work on it.

Some games to check out
We get a few emails a week from people asking us to feature or review their games. Here are some one the ones we like enough to shout out:
Land Fill Bill by Matmi is a fun little, well made game where you throw recycling items into the right bins in a first person perspective. The music is quality, but a little annoying, although it fits the zany nature of the game. They also have some other fun games like Survivor, where you try to save a family from a burning house. It is beautifully retro in every way possible.

BonusLevel.org has a sweet little retro inspired game called Rolling Turtle. To me it is a cross between Sonic The Hedgehog and a physics based puzzled. This site features games where players can make their own levels. It’s a very cool idea.

Flashbynight has a cool selection of retro goodness. I personally like Mission Incredible – a fun, if rather simple, Megamania style blaster; and War Of Shapes – also a simple but fun blaster. This one is more like Geometry Wars than anything else.

BBS Documentary
Steve and I were full on BBS nerds in the 80’s. These havens of nerdom were the original places to find flame wars, anonymous lurking assholes, and pirate computer games. There is an incredible site and and DVD set available for anyone interested in those times. This thoroughly researched site has blurbs on every piece of BBS software that fueled this era (at least in the USA). I found an entry that covers two that Steve and I visited heavily in the 80’s: Madrona Masch BBS (located in Torrance California) or the Fort McArthur BBS, run by a great dude name Sarge.

Awesome 3-D Flash Site
Bryson Whiteman just sent over a link to a Japanese 3-d site that is entirely in Flash and in looks incredible.