Author: itvbadmin

  • Atari Greatest Hits Finally Coming to the Nintendo DS!!

    I have been waiting for a good version of some Atari retro c classics to hit the DS for a while now. The old DS Atari pack is a pathetic POC, but this new one looks to make up for it and more! This $29.99 pack has about 50 games…

  • Commodore To Make PC in Classic Commodore Case: Pong Ball’s In Your Court, Atari

    It turns out, a company has bought the “Commdore” name and is planning to create a PC housed in a Commdore 64 case. that’s awesome. However, personally can’t buy one as it is simply against my Atari sensibilities to do so. However, if Atari would do the same thing, with…

  • Does The Droid-X Blockbuster OnDemand Commercial Make Sense?

    I have seen this commercial quite a few times and have always had a little “itch” in the back on my mind as I see it. I didn’t have much time to ponder this “itch” until this morning. I can’t find the commercial on-line (but I see it in online…

  • (not) Royalty Free H.264 (Might) Boost HTML5 Video & The Canvas, But Flash Still Has A Chance (Analysis) : Updated

    Yesterday it was announced that MPEG LA, the patent holder for H.264 (MPEG-4) will “never” charge a licensing fee for video encoded as H.264 and delivered for “free” over the internet. What does this mean? Well it means that Firefox and Opera, two browsers that have so far held-back implementing…

  • Going Solo (from the corporate beast) #6 – The First Month

    Working at home and on your own without a corporate sponsor has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that I am home every day and can work the hours I choose. I get to see my family much more than ever before and even a couple times a week…

  • More Games I Might Play Again (Flash Game Micro Reviews)

    Ahh, here I am, its a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Southern California, and I am in doors, playing YOUR games. God I hope they are good this time… Hikouki Tomodachi (FGD) (82% Retrotastic) – A very fun, and well done 1 or 2 player vertical scrolling blast-fest. Darts and Beer…

  • Vacation Game Brainstorm: Mark Twain was here…?

    So I’m on a short trip with my family on California Highway 49, in the Gold Country.  Specifically, we have been roaming Calaveras County, the very same county made famous by a certain Samual Clemons in his story the local Frog Jumping Contest. Now, there is a lot of history…

  • Tutorial: Turn Your Flash Game Into A Google Chrome Web App (beta)

    While the Google Chrome App Store will not be available until October 2010, you can still package-up your apps and test them as Chrome Web Apps.   Google has some extensive documentation on the subject, but we are going to slice it down and show you the easiest path to success.…

  • Atari Nerd Interweb Mash-up

    Here are some of the more interesting Atari related retro gaming related tidbits I found while trolling across the infobaun. The Classis Game Room HD Reviews Atari 2600 Video Olympics – The only way to play pong on the 2600! (literally and hyberbole). Who doesn’t like Ice Hockey Pong with…

  • The Future Of Web Games: The Google Chrome App Store

    1Up.com is running a story from GDC Europe about the Google Chrome App Store.   From the details provided, it looks like Google has a real winner on their hands.  Here are the highlights from the article. Google Chrome App Store Launch Date: October 2010 Supported Technologies: Flash, HTML5/JavaScript, C++ Installation:…

  • Games I’ll Play Again #3 – Flash Game Distribution and Mochi Reviews

    I find it easier to get into my day if I play a few games first.  Digging through the Mochi Latest and Flash Game Distribution feed, here are some games that were good or bad enough for me to want to take a second look (at some ethereal unspecified future…

  • 8bitsteve Interviews Steven Levy, Author Of The Classic Computer Industry Book: “Hackers”

    Steven Levy is one of my heroes.  He’s genius author who has the rare ability of making technology subject not only palatable, but down-right fascinating.   He has written tons of great books, and written for magazines such as Wired and Newsweek. Steven Levy’s book, Hackers: Heroes Of The Computer Revolution…

  • Games I’ll Play Again 8/16/2010 – Flash Game Distribution and Mochi Reviews

    It would be easy to just go to the Mochi featured game list and hit those as they have been pre-screened for me. No can do, bud. That would leave out the wonderful world of games that don’t get much attention (most deservedly so). Today I will be going through some…

  • See It Quick: Actual Deleted Scene From Return Of The Jedi: Luke Becomes A Jedi

    I know this is totally off topic, but it will probably be removed very soon.   This is an actual deleted scene from Return Of The Jedi that shows Luke’s transformation into a Jedi.  It’s less than 1 minute and better than Episode I-II-III combined. Note: Try this link if the…

  • Games I’ll Play Again #1 – Flash Game Distribution Reviews

    Using the last few days of the Flash Game Distribution feed, here are a list of games that I played quickly and were interesting enough for me to want to play again. I have given each a quickie  grade based on my first impression.  Take the grades with a grain of…

  • Going Solo (from the corporate beast) #5 – A Valuable Lesson Learned

    I knew it was going to happen some time, but I didn’t think it would be so soon. I don’t want to give out too many details, but I just want to say that getting taken by a  client is no fun. I guess everyone must go through this, and…

  • 8bitrocket.com Interviewed!

    Steve Savage over at Fan To Pro took the time to interview us last week about all things 8bitrocket.  If you are intersted in that sort of thing, go over here and take a look: http://www.fantopro.com/blog/2010/08/an-interview-with-steve-and-jeff-of-8-bit-rocket.html#more Also, we have added  the Fan-To-Pro RSS feed to our Industry Feeds page…

  • HTML5 Canvas Resize On The Fly, In An HTML Page

    I’ve been playing around a lot with the HTML5 Canvas lately, and I discovered some very interesting things that about the size of Canvas as displayed on an HTML page. The best way to show these is to show a demo of what I’m talking about first.  Here is a…

  • Space Gate Enemy Path Tutorial by Barnaby Byrne

    Barnaby Byrne (Aka Badger Manufacture) has just released is latest retro inspired Flash Masterpiece, Space Gate, at Odo Games. I was some impressed with the games and the intricate enemy patterns within that I asked if he would be kind enough to explain to our readers exactly how it is…

  • Featured New Flash Retro Game: Space Gate

    We are incredibly proud to present our first new featured retro Flash game on the re-vamped 8bitrocket.com: Space Gate by Barnaby Byrne (AKA Badger Manufacture). As the first ever sponsored game by the wonderful new portal, Odo Games (run by Richard Hoddinott), Space Gate is one of my favorite Flash…

  • 8bitrocket Industry Feed Page

    One of the new features we implemented when we moved to WordPress was a GameTab-like page that lists the latest posts across a number of our favorite Flash and other game blog sites. We call this the Industry Feed page and you can access it here (along with the top-nav…

  • Killa Appz By Dave Berzack : I Laughed, I Cried

    We need more stuff like this.   The thing made me laugh out loud about about 20 times.  Bravo.  I hope Dave gets some consulting work out of it. “Props to Adobe” “My mind on my mark-up and my mark-up on my mind” – classic.

  • Intel/TheGameCreators Game Development Contest (Dark Basic)

    Intel & The Game Creators (Dark Basic) has a new Netbook Game development contest.  Games must be written in Dark Basic.  First prize is $5000. The competition opens on 4th August 2010 9AM GMT. The closing date for entries is 3rd October 2010 at 12PM GMT. You can check out…

  • Play Halo 2600 Online Now!

    Ed Fries has created a new home brew Atari 2600 masterpiece, Halo 2600. You play Master Chief as you run around the multiple 64 screen levels blasting baddies, and collecting weapons and other goodies. Check out the Atari Age thread on the creation of the game. There are physical carts…

  • Vortix Games Reviews The Essential Guide To Flash Games

    Hey, I just noticed this review from Vortix Games for our book The Essential Guide To Flash Games.   It’s a very nice review, and I think it really captures what the book is all about.  Here is a quote: “It is not a book for coders or a book for…

  • If I Won The Lottery I’d Open An Atari Store

    If I won the lottery, I mean like $100,000,000 lottery, I would open an Atari Store. It would be in some kind of upscale mall or location  like Downtown Disney, Universal City Walk, The Beverly Center, The Grove, downtown San Francisco or Times Square The store would act just like…

  • Help – Trackback spam

    We are new to the WordPress world. While 99.99% of everything in this new land is awesome, there a a few annoyances. The biggest is the literal flood of Trackback link spam from “viral marketing” and “affiliate workers”. We get dozens of track-back link spam to mostly (99%) complete crap…

  • No More Corporate Teat – #4 – Feast or Famine

    It has been exactly one week since I stepped outside corporate America to have a go on my own as an independent developer. Those 16 years spend toiling under the thumb of increasingly Office Space and Dilbert-esque corporate environments cannot be completely discounted as a waste of my time though.…

  • Atari “Asteroids” Movie Director’s Quote

    In a recent interview with ComingSoon.net , the director of the upcoming Asteroids movie, Lorenzo di Bonaventura had this to say about the concept: “…we really went after a mythology on the level of “Star Wars.” We’ll see if we succeeded or not, but it’s not a simple like, the…

  • No More Corporate Teat – #3 – The First Day

    Today was the first real work-day of my non-corporate development life. Since I have an iPad contract that starts up soon (I am a little scared as the client is delaying a little on getting it initiated) I decided to re-acquaint myself with Xcode and the iPod/Pad development work-flow. First…

  • A TRON “Legacy”?

    There will be a new TRON movie out this year and no one could be happier than I. I loved the first TRON movie when it was released back in 1982. While it was not a great movie, it came out at the exact right moment for me, smack-dab in…

  • RSS Feedburner Feed Fixed

    One thing we forgot when we moved the site was to update the Feedburner to point to the new site. I just remembered to do it this morning. Here is the new Feedburner RSS link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/8bitrocketcomBlog …which also happens to be the OLD Feedburner RSS link…go figure 🙂

  • No More Corporate Teat – #2 – The Last Day

    Today was my last day as an employee of a major corporation. I am very sad to leave so many of my friends, but excited at what the future holds. I am in the midst of setting up the consulting arm of 8bitrocket Studios called Twin Engine Web Systems. There…

  • Tutorial Mess : Please Help

    In our recent move, there was simply no good way way to move over all of our tutorials.  We altered the format so many times in 3.5 years, that moving them to something structured like Word Press was a huge problem. We have fixed as many issues “automagically” as possible,…

  • Does The Windows 7 Phone Open-Up Silverlight Games Development?

    Microsoft recently released the beta of the Windows 7 development tools, and Silverlight is big part of that release.   Silverlight can used in conjunction with the XNA framework which gives Windows 7 Mobile apps access to Xbox Live, among other features.  As well, (and as it should be), Windows 7…

  • New 8bitrocket.com Site Opens

    If the DNS has propagated, you should be looking at the brand-spanking new 8bitrocket.com web site. It should look much like the old one, but a bit more generic as well. We are working on theming to get back a bit more of retro-on, but for now, this will work.…

  • No More Corporate Teat – #1 – I Quit!

    This is the white (wipe) -board I have used weekly for 13 years to note to-do lists and other things necessary for my day job. I only have one more “to do” this upcoming week and that is to pack my belongings and not let the door hit me on…

  • The Polish Adobe Flex User Group Really Likes ‘The Essential Guide To Flash Games”

    We’ve reached Poland!  The Polish Adobe Flex User Group just reviewed The Essential Guide To Flash Games, and they seem to really like it! “In my opinion, it is the most valuable book about seriously flash games developing available on the market. The most important thing: authors does not avoid…

  • Undercooked: The Origins And Evolution Of 8bitrocket.com

    In The summer of 1996 we started a site named WheatMedia.com, dedicated to web design. This was our first domain name, and first real foray into tackling the World Wide Web.

  • Contest: Jay Is Games Casual Gameplay Design Contest #8

    Design a game that incorporates the theme Sandbox . It doesn’t have to be complex nor large in scope.  You may use any browser-based technology platform Due date: August 1, 2010 Contest Site: http://jayisgames.com/archives/2010/06/game_design_competition_8.php