Author: itvbadmin

  • Atari Movie: War Room Debate On The Upcoming Atari movie

    Not much on the proposed Atari movie front for the past couple weeks, but I did stumble on this episode of  an online  “show” named The War Room in which these four guys, (most which know very little about Atari), debate the idea of the Atari movie,  It’s pretty entertaining.…

  • Dispatches From The Transient Programmer #3: Digital Dream Home?

    I’ve been working for the past few days on a game to salute one of the “amenities” at the hotel here, namely the “Free Beer”. The game is named “Free Beer” and in it, you simply make an attempt to drink as much “free beer” as possible before you get…

  • Dispatches From A Transient Programmer #2: Free Beer

    As a transient programmer (with a family) we are living in a “suite” hotel.  I never realized the the true purpose of these establishments until a few weeks ago when I went looking for a place for us to stay during our “gap”. At a regular hotel, you get a room,…

  • Fresh Kill Five: July 9, 2008. A Biased pick of cool Flash games

    This week we take a look at 4 games by MyGame.com and a great new pinball title by gamingyourway.com. I only call this a biased pick because I choose mostly retro style games to showcase. Plus, we all bring our own biases to the table when we critique anything, so…

  • 8bitocket Diatribe July 8, 2008

    iWoz never an Apple Fanboy Back in the 80’s I was an Atari fan boy. The 2600 was the first video game system that Steve and I would kill for, and to this day I still play my Atari ST and 800 favorites via emulation. That being said, I always…

  • Dispatches From A Transient Programmer #1: The Move

    I believe that crime stories in the local newspaper are written in way to make the reader feel more comfortable about their surroundings, no matter how awful the story, so that people will stay put and continue to buy newspapers. A good example of this is the use of the…

  • Free Flash 4th Of July Interactive Fireworks Show

    This is just a quick reminder to say that you can enjoy our Free Fireworks Flash interactive Fireworks show on the 4th Of July (or any other day).  I originally built this Flash “interactive toy” to entertain my 4 year old daughter (now 10)  in 2002 when we could not get…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web Mash-up: July 3, 2008

    This one is more MASHY than usual. Along with the regular Flash only focused material, this week I decided to concentrate on the world of game creation as a whole, and especially retro game programming. I have mostly chosen only those sources that I feel will aid Flash game developers…

  • Tutorial: AS3. The basics of tile sheet animation (or blitting).

    In this article we will discuss the anatomy of a basic AS3 Flash blit operation, which is useful for rendering game graphics at high speeds. The information in this tutorial can be applied to almost any 2d development language that allows the use of bitmaps and transparency to render a…

  • Doublestuff! 8bitrocket.com Mid-Year Stats Report

    Back in December we looked at our 2007 stats. We had just reached our first milestone by getting an Alexa.com ranking and we were so excited we posted our final traffic for the year. Here is a summary of that post: From December 14 2006 until Dec 14 2007: 1.…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe June 20, 2008

    The World of 8bitrocket Things have been busy here at 8bitrocket towers. Steve is moving to a new house and I am preparing for a new baby to arrive into my old one. These little life experiences have left little time for brand new games and tutorials, but we do…

  • Designing Arcade Game Graphics – A free book!

    I have been researching and writing a few new basic tutorials on using blitting for arcade games. In my search for some simple graphics to use, I once again came across the Ari Feldman sprite libraries. Along with his incredible, free library of sprite sheets, Ari has made something even…

  • Management Sucks Finally Finds A Suitable Game!!

    Finally, a game about work. I’ve been looking for a good Flash game to launch the Management Sucks game repository for some time. Idea Killer from Othmar Wicke (http://www.otwic.com/) is just the type of game I have been looking for. In this one you play a jaded customer of an…

  • Atari Movie Report: June 25 2008

    Today we start a regular column reporting all the news we can find about the upcoming Atari movie.   Today we have a great new interview with Nolan Bushnell from cbsnews.com : GameCore: During the early video game craze, was it true Hollywood actually pitched the idea of a Kramer vs. Kramer…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : June 24, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. This week we take a look at new Flashgamelicense features, Mochiland articles, GameJacket opportunities, optimization, source control, Color Fill (again), Law Of The West Pinball, as3gaming.com, and PixelWelder’s custom event broadcaster class. What’s new in Monetization?: Flashgamelicense…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe June 23, 2008

    Another Two Gone It seems that corporate America and creative talent just don’t seem to mix very well these days. Steve and I work at a rather large American company and we have been fighting all powers that be for 12 years now to ensure that we keep a cutting…

  • Home Computer Wars Alpha Mission: Post Mortem for a Failed Viral Flash Game

    For many years I’ve wanted to make a game set in the 80’s that literally had Atari fighting against it’s competitors for world domination. Ever since I tried to program my first game in STOS on the Atari ST, the idea of a shooter of this type was firmly embedded…

  • Flash Retro Game Showcase #6: June 19, 2008

    A depressing week as far as “new” retro inspired games go. It is getting more and more difficult each week to sift through the wealth of “new” “super click”, “dress-up” and other “copy-and-paste-grammer ” (coined by Chris Cutler) developed game engine re-skins to find legitimate contenders for this list. I…

  • Atari Nerd Chronicles: Kenny Brown and The Atari 400

    When Kenny Brown moved to Manhattan Beach in 1980 from Philadelphia PA and started 5th grade in my class with Ms. Nash, I did not like him at all. The Dodgers were playing to win the National League West that year, and Kenny could do nothing but root for the…

  • John Harris Asks: Where Are The Atari Fan boys?

    John Harris over at Gamasutra.com has a fantastic new artical named “Game Design Essentials: 20 Atari Games” in which he spends a massive amount of time (23 pages!) discussing the brillant game designs that came out of Atari’s coin-op division from 1972-1998. At the beginning of the article, John asks…

  • Fresh Kill Five: June 16, 2008. A biased pick of fun new Flash Games

    This week we once again  visit Agame.com and Mochiads to find games that we love to play. Our choices: Captain Zorro, Uchuforce 2, Speed X, Diamond Frog and Midnight Race. Finding good games to play is not as easy as it sounds. There are so many stinkers out there now,…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : Jun. 17, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. This week we take a look at the latest Mochiads Friday winner; generating friendly URLS and AS3 platform games; Interdisciplinary tensions (teaching programmers some needed design skills), cool games from Sokay and GamingYourWay; flashperfection.com collection of game…

  • Flash Retro Game Showcase #5: June 12, 2008

    OK, we are back. Sorry we missed you last week, but we were having trouble with our main source of games. Mochi Publishers. It seems that their service is so popular now that it has become very difficult just to get to their site to find games!! Since I have…

  • J2Games.com And The Return Of Bill Kunkel, The Game Doctor

    Bill Kunkel, the pioneering video game journalist who’s alter ego “The Game Doctor” appeared in the original Electronic Games magazine from the 80’s as well as the 90’s version, has finally returned for the 21st century as “The Game Doctor” with a regular column on the retro game site J2Games.com.…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up: June 9, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. This week we take a look at some new Mochiads additions; A look a free dev tools from GamePoetry; Emanuele Feronato’s latest (and best), and a fresh kill 3 selection of games from both Triqui, and Kongregate.…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe June 9, 2008

    Wii Fit Kicks My Ass! No Joke, I’ve been an avid runner and workout nut for years now, and I have never had a better workout than an hour of Wii Fit running, strength and yoga training! It’s fun, and the balance board trains you perfectly in core strength. I…

  • Site Down (Again)

    The site was completely down yesterday (yet again). The server had a blown raid drive and the hosting company, while working hard to fix it, has no contingency plan, so we were S.O.L. for about 20 hours. This seems to happen with large traffic increases to the site, but not…

  • Review: Commadork and The Hidden Collective Experience of 80’s Vintage Computing

    80’s Home Computers: The Hidden Collective Experience The world is awash with collective experiences into the 21st century. In fact, it’s very hard to find something that is experienced by an individual without the ability to somehow communicate that experience with others. Every hobby, comic strip, graphic novel, book series,…

  • Commadork and The Hidden Collective Experience of 80’s Vintage Computing

    80’s Home Computers: The Hidden Collective Experience The world is awash with collective experiences into the 21st century. In fact, it’s very hard to find something that is experienced by an individual without the ability to somehow communicate that experience with others. Every hobby, comic strip, graphic novel, book series,…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe: June 5, 2008

    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…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up: June 2,2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. In Adopt Some Coding Conventions for Projects: Sloppy Code SUCKS!, Colby Williams tackles the thorny issue of using coding conventions and give you some examples of his application od standards. Also available are his Actionscript 3 Math…

  • GameStorm (2008) Retro-Casual Game Idea Generator

    Never Again Can You Say You Don’t Have An Idea For a Game! This is not that game, but a tool for developers and would-be game designers to help them come-up with new game ideas, organize them, and save them. The application is designed to spit-out one of 544,404,385,800,000,000 possible…

  • Our Latest Goes Live

    A new game of ours, sponsored by Addicting Games, has gone live this morning. It is called Bratney Escape the Madness. It is based on an AS3 tech-demo engine that I put together to demonstrate blitting, tile based movement, and message/sound management in an entity base framework. It turned into…

  • Scotty Dawg Flash Blog Launches

    One of the best Flash developers in the world,  Scott Delamater  has finally launched his own Flash related development blog, Le Maitre d’Something .  Scott is a Flash savant.  Anything he has to say on the subject should be read by anyone with even a remote interest in the topic. …

  • Flash Retro Game Showcase #4: May 29, 2008

    This week we cover 4 different retro-style Flash games in four completely different styles. All four styles happen to be some of my absolute favorites of the genre. We have a great bolt-on shooter, an arcade racer, an Breakout/Arkanoid contest, and finally, a platfomer in the style of classic games…

  • Ultimate Checkers Launches, Uses Our Free Fireworks Engine

    Ultimate Checkers, a free online, single and multi-player Checkers game with great A.I, leaderboards, bonuses,  etc. has launched using our Free Fireworks engine.  Free Fireworks  is an engine we created that allows a user to create interative fireworks shows that can be reskinned with music and graphics to fit whatever…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe May 28, 2008

    USA v. EnglandI watch all of these USA players every chance I get: in MLS, foreign league games, friendlies, etc and I am always sticking up for them when they get put down by soccer snobs for being no good. The fact is, we have some great players, and on…

  • Fresh Kill Five: May 26, 2008 An 8bitrocket Biased Selection of Fun New Flash Games

    This week we visit Agame.com, and Ugoplayer.com to find 5 new releases that we love to play: Alien Slayer 3D, Galaktoid, Go Go Plant, James The Pirate Zebra, and Boxes. First we visit Agame.com (a portal that has never accepted any of our games …humph) and find out exactly what…

  • Retro Gaming in Mac OS X 10.5 #1 : Atari Games

    I have recently switched from Windows XP to MAC OS X 10.5 and one of the things I feared upon switching was losing the capability to play all of my old Emulated games. I own a copy of EVERY retro game compilation for the PC and Playstation 2, and use…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : May. 26, 2008

    news.as3gaming.com is doing an excellent job of culling together blogs and resources on Flash gaming, AS3, etc every day. Add it to your book marks or your Bloglines, put it in your RSS reader, add it to your face book or Myspace page… or whatever the kids are using now.…