Author: itvbadmin

  • Press Space To Win Is Pretty Awesome

    Press Space To Win is pretty awesome I was trolling message boards and portals this morning because of my inherent need to procrastinate rather than work on the three games I have going at once. On the Mochi boards I found a link to a  YouTube video of this game…

  • Classic Electronic Games Magazine Issue #1 Online Now!

    Classic Electronic Games Magazine Issue #1 Online Now! This is the one that started it all! All modern and classic video game magazines  would probably not have been the same without this incredible magazine. The hard workers at RetroMags.com have scanned each page into a JPG. Then they compiled the…

  • Issue #1 of Classic Video Gamer Magazine Available Now!

    Issue #1 of Classic Video Gamer Magazine Available Now! A new Downloadable and Print Magazine covering the world of Retro Games has been released. Hoping to become the American version of the famed UK Retro Gamer Publication (I just got the issue with Game Boy on the cover and an…

  • Flash indie game development interweb-mash-up : May 29, 2009

    Flash indie game development interweb-mash-up : May 29, 2009 The more often I write these, the shorter they become, but the longer it takes me to dig up new and interesting stuff. This week I had to cast a net a little wider than usual.  I did find a little…

  • About US: Mission Update : Inform-Instruct-Inspire

    Inform. Instruct. Inspire. Yesterday Jeff and I decided we wanted to clarify why we have this web site.    Sometimes I think of  it as a Frankenstein’s monster of a concept.  It’s a blog, but not one.  It’s a community, but not really.  It has games, but it’s not game portal. …

  • Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 18 – 20

    Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 18 – 20 Note – I am rapid (wishful thinking) prototyping a retro game in my spare time and keeping a diary of what I do each hour of the project. In the last couple weeks I have had some major distractions and have not been able…

  • ComeToPlay’s non-contest Flash Game Contest

    ComeToPlay’s non-contest Flash Game Contest I don’t shill for everyone that writes in asking up to promote their product, contest, game, or site. I usually sift through the requests and add the best ones to a Mash-up. Come2play emailed us yesterday about a pretty cool contest (really a revenue opportunity)…

  • The History of 8-bit Computer Games in The USA #1 : CGW Nov/Dec 1981

    The History of 8-bit Computer Games in The USA #1 : CGW Nov/Dec 1981 I never read Computer Gaming World Magazine when I should have. When I finally purchased a PC in 1992, I started to read it and kept doing so as a subscriber until it died late last…

  • Programming By Google? A Quick Poll

    This week I worked on a project with some “new” CSS/HTML and AS3 concepts that I had never used together in any prior project. I was fairly successful by the end of the week, and most of the time I “programmed by Google”: When I got stuck I searched for…

  • Diatribe: Writer’s Block and Video Ads

    I’ve had writer’s and programmer’s block for about a week now.  I’m sorry there have not been any “interesting” blog entries coming from me since then.   To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by the reception to “…palindromes…”.  While I knew it was not a blockbuster, the Flash game…

  • What types of free music clips / sound do you want?

    New Music Clips are a-coming and an offer to you. I am planning to sit down and make some new free music clips and some sound fx this weekend, but I don’t know what to create. Normally, anyone can use the 11khz versions of our music and sound clips for…

  • Flash indie game interweb-mash-up : May 19, 2009

    Flash indie game interweb-mash-up : May 19, 2009 It’s been quite a few days  since I last mashed-up the infobaun looking for Flash game development related blogs, scribbles, games, articles, and assorted thing-a-ma-whose-its to entertain myself, and hopefully others, but mainly me. There was a whole lot of shaking going…

  • How can Casual game designers use the list of top selling comsumer items?

    How can Casual game designers use this list? In the Sunday newspaper (yes, I still get one of these ancient documents) this morning there was a list of the top 10 selling consumer products (in the USA I presume). I’m not quite sure how accurate the list is, or how…

  • Wiiware Support For Flash Met With Fear, Derision:Analysis

    Reports came out this week that Nintendo would start supporting Flash as a development platform for Wiiware. While there was some positive support, for the most part, this news was met with derision, fear and hand-wringing from the Wii gaming communities.   At Cubed3: “Nintendo does have strong policies and…

  • ST Amiga Format Magazine ONLINE (For real!!!)

    ST Amiga Format Magazine ONLINE (For real!!!) On the heels of yesterday’s find of ST Action scanned reviews on Atari Mania, I hopped over to wonderful Amiga Magazine Rack site to find that they have all of copies of the combined ST Amiga Format magazine scanned for your perusal. The…

  • ST Action Magazine Online! (Some at least) on Atarimania.com

    ST Action Magazine Online! (Some of at least) on Atarimania.com Back in 1988, one of the few places to get Atari ST or Amiga imported games (or any games for that matter) were in specialty shops such as Computer Games + in  Orange County, CA (well before Marissa, Ryan, Summer…

  • Attack of the Killer Mutant Bingo Wings Added to Retro Arcade

    Buzzard Games’ very unique and fun Attack of the Killer Mutant Bingo Wings has been added to the 8bitrocket Retro Arcade.   This game looks as feels like an early Atari ST or Amiga game and features some very compelling game play. The goal is to PLAY BINGO as you blast…

  • When Golden Age Video Games “Wore The Leather Jacket”

    I’ve been reading Benjamin Nugent’s American Nerd lately.  One of the aspects of nerdom that he points out is the need for nerds to “coin phrases”.  Obviously, we at 8bitrocket.com have tried our share of this.  From “Midcore Gamer” (between “casual” and “hardcore”) to “vink” (virtual ink) we have attempted…

  • Hey, They Used Our Kung Fu!: Free Jigsaw , hezekiah.hu

    Almost 2 years ago, we published our very first game on Mochiads. It was a Jigsaw puzzle engine I had been toying with since Flash 5. The concept of the program was very simple: Allow users to configure the Jigsaw puzzle engine with a .xml file. They could swap colors,…

  • Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 16 – 17

    Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 16 – 17 Note – I am rapid (wishful thinking) prototyping a retro game in my spare time and keeping a diary of what I do each hour of the project. I have only found a few hours to work on Solar Fortress (pronounced Star Castle)…

  • Hey They Used Our Kung Fu! #1: Clint Herron And “Falling With Style”

    Hey there 8-bit Rocketeers.  This is the first ever installment of “Hey, They Used Our Kung Fu! Where we highlight developers who have made use of our web site to make cool stuff.  This first email came from Clint Herron a couple weeks back: I used your minimalistic Asteroids tutorial…

  • 8bitrocket.com Will Be Reporting From E3 This Year As An Official Media Outlet

    We have been to E3 in Los Angeles many times, but always as “industry professionals”.    This means that, while you can attend, you are seen as a kind of pariah to the exhibitors.  You can look at most everything on the show floor, but the people manning the booths would…

  • Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 14 – 15

    Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 14 – 15 Note – I am rapid prototyping a retro game in my spare time and keeping a diary of what I do each hour of the project. Hours 14 and 15 were all I have been able to muster on Solar Fortress (pronounced Star…

  • Atari Nerd Retro Inter-Web Mash up – May 7, 2009

    Atari Nerd Retro Inter-Web Mash up – May 7, 2009 What’s new (and old) in the world of Retro Atari consoles, computers, and what not. Atari 2600 – Play 50 Classic Atari 2600 games online, free (in java or emulated in java). – Retro Thing has a very cool article…

  • Tutorial: Clearing a blit canvas by erasing only the portions that have changed (using damage maps or a dirty rect).

    Tutorial: Clearing a blit canvas by erasing only the portions that have changed. This is commonly called damage mapping or  dirty rect processing. (Squize called this a Damage Map. I have heard that before but didn’t know that it was basically what I was doing here). That’s a mouthful, but…

  • Garage Sale Treasure Hunt: Zelda , Mario Nelsonic Game Watches for $1.00 Each!

    Yesterday I was at a “Save The Teachers” rummage sale in California (they are firing teachers right and left here because our state budget is out of whack and parents are bit concerned about 50 kid classrooms with no aids, librarians, PE, music, etc). Anyway, this rummage sale was interesting…

  • Flash indie game interweb-mash-up : May 1, 2009

    Flash indie game interweb-mash-up : May 1, 2009 “A kinder, gentler machine gun hand” Blogs, scribbles, games, tutorials, and assorted what-not from around the info-baun that might, probably, and should (but not always) concern the indie Flash game development community…and sometimes just crap that I want to post about (because…

  • Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 10 – 13

    Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 10 – 13 Note – I am rapid prototyping a retro game in my spare time and keeping a diary of what I do each hour of the project. This another update on my latest mini retro remake, Solar Fortress (pronounced Star Castle). I got off…

  • Tutorial: Using Bit Wise Operations To Create A Repeatable Sequence Of Multiple Level Designs In Code

    When creating my game for the Urban Squall 4K Competition a couple months back, I decided to go back and try to remake an old game that was written in ActionScript 1, and bring it into the modern era. Since Breakout is one of my favorite games of all time,…

  • Solar Fortress Chronicles 2: Hours 5 – 9

    Solar Fortress Chronicles 2: Hours 5 – 9 This is a short update on my latest mini retro remake, Solar Fortress (pronounced Star Castle). I wasted a lot of time today working on collision detection for Solar Fortress today. I think I finally have a decent path toward my final…

  • Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 1 – 4

    Solar Fortress Chronicles: Hours 1 – 4 I am in the midst of creating a game of ever expanding scope called Blaster Mines. It started out as a relatively simple extension of Mine-X 4K. The initial idea was to make a game similar to Bosconian and get it done quickly…

  • A Toy Never Played With Is Not A Toy At All : …palindromes…

    Above is one of my favorite songs by one of my favorites 80’s/90’s bands, Drivin N Cryin is named "A Toy Never Played With Is Not a Toy At All". I found myself humming this song to myself a couple days ago, and I had no idea why I was…

  • 8bitrocket Still Tweeting…

    OK, we are still Tweeting… http://static.twitter.com/flash/widgets/profile/TwitterWidget.swf

  • Game Programming Tutorials: What Would You Like To See?

    Hey all you 8bit Rocketeers out there! Jeff and I have been culling through our email and web traffic info over the past few days in a quest to figure out what type of content to fill this site with. What we discoverd was this: People love tutorials. So, that is…

  • …palindromes… goes live

    Our new game, …palindromes… has been released today for distribution.  You can play it below:  http://games.mochiads.com/c/g/___palindromes___/palindromes.swf …palindromes is a word game.  the object is to unscramble the palindromes as fast as possible.  click any two letters to swap them. This game was created as a test to see if this…

  • Interview with Retro Shoot Creator, Dave Munsie

    Interview with Retro Shoot Creator, Dave Munsie RetroShoot Dave was nice enough to take time from his busy schedule to answer a few questions concerning his latest Flash masterpiece, RetroShoot, and to wax nostalgic on his Atari ST roots.8Bitrocket:You were pretty prolific as an Atari ST Magazine disk game developer,…

  • Silverarcade Goes Live: A Couple Of Our Games Featured

    The guys over at SilverArcade have launched their portal dedicated to games made in Silverlight.  They are offering a $.50 eCPM, which is quite good. Since they have acceptsed a couple of our games, and since I think it is a cool idea, I’d like to see them build some…

  • 8bitrocket On Twitter: 4/20/2009

    OK, we have finally entered 2008!  8bitrocket now has a Twitter account. You can follow our useless updates here: http://twitter.com/8bitrocket Here are updates in a Twitter Widget: http://static.twitter.com/flash/widgets/profile/TwitterWidget.swf

  • Retroshoot added to 8bitrocket Retro Arcade Hall of Fame

    Retroshoot added to 8bitrocket Retro Arcade Hall of Fame Dave Munsie’s incredible title, Retroshoot has been added to the 8bitrocket Retro Arcade Showcase. His first indie Flash game is good enough to be only the 6th game we have ever felt deserved to be given a Gold Medal Hall of…

  • Calling All developers: Have You Used Our Code Or Tutorials For a Game?

    Jeff and I were talking yesterday and we realized that many people have used our tutorials and code for games and we have no idea who they are! In fact, we don’t really have a clue about who the people are that have made use of any of the things…