Category: Reviews

  • Atari 50th Anniversary Celebration Review with New 2024 DLC

    Atari 50th Anniversary Celebration Review with New 2024 DLC

    (original review posted Nov 11, 2022) I own pretty much every Atari collection ever produced for nearly every platform it was produced for, going all the way back to the Atari 2600 Action Packs released by Activision before the internet was even a thing. However, almost every single collection has…

  • 10 Fun Red Rat Games for the Atari 8bit Computers and your Atari 400 mini

    10 Fun Red Rat Games for the Atari 8bit Computers and your Atari 400 mini

    Red Rat was a Manchester Based Microcomputer Software Developer that started in 1985 and mostly made only Atari 8bit and ST games until 1988 when they added The Amiga ad MS Dos to their stable of platforms. The released over 20 games for the Atari 8it, 10 of which we…

  • Atari ST Goes MAGNUM!  Ocean’s 4-Hit Game Multi-Disk Pack!

    Atari ST Goes MAGNUM!  Ocean’s 4-Hit Game Multi-Disk Pack!

    We use Cyberlink 365 Video, Photo and Audio Software Magnum 4 is a 1990 Ocean game compilation released for the Atari ST. We excitedly purchased this pack in 1990 from an import shop here in California, but as we did mostly in the late 80’s and 90’s got rid of…

  • Music Review:[alternate] Declaration (The Alarm)

    Music Review:[alternate] Declaration (The Alarm)

    40 years ago  I discovered my future. One day early in the year 1984  I was watching Video One with Richard Blade.It was a syndicated TV show that many 80’s teenagers in the Los Angeles area watched on a daily, religious basis.   Without access to MTV, Video One was a…

  • Atari Proving Grounds: Galaxian. Atari Proving Grounds: Galaxian. Atari ST vs 2600 vs 7800 vs Atari8bit/5200

    Atari Proving Grounds: Galaxian. Atari Proving Grounds: Galaxian. Atari ST vs 2600 vs 7800 vs Atari8bit/5200

    Welcome to the premier episode of Atari proving grounds where we take a look at the official and semi-official games that were released  across multiple classic  Atari systems and pit them against one another to see which port we like the most.  In this episode we are covering the Namco…

  • Never Stop – The Making Of Karateka (Updated for 2023)

    Never Stop – The Making Of Karateka (Updated for 2023)

    2023 Thoughts on “The Making Of Karateka” Digital Ecplise (Note: This is an update to my book review of Jordan Mechner’s ‘The Making Of Karateka which is included at the end of these thoughts) By Steve Fulton The dog woke me up at 3:30 this morning, and then, instead of…

  • Arcade1up Atari Centipede Legacy Overview and Review

    Arcade1up Atari Centipede Legacy Overview and Review

    With 14 games and authentic controls, The Arcade1up Atari Centipede Legacy should be a must-have product for any Atari fan, but is it? The Atari Centipede Legacy is an at once partially great and also misfire that is, literally, one Wi-fi OTA update away from being near perfect. Can Arcade1Up…

  • Atari 8bit Gaming Gems Vol 2: 25 Great Games + Notes and Ratings

    Atari 8bit Gaming Gems Vol 2: 25 Great Games + Notes and Ratings

    25 more of our favorite Atari 8bit games. One per year for the first 25 years. Many more videos to come, exploring the entire library up until today. If your favorite isn’t here, tell us below. It will probably show up in a video later in the series. There are…

  • Atari 8bit Gaming Gems Vol 1: 25 Great Games + Notes and Ratings

    Atari 8bit Gaming Gems Vol 1: 25 Great Games + Notes and Ratings

    25 of our favorite Atari 8bit games. One per year for the first 25 years. Many more videos to come, exploring the entire library up until today. If your favorite isn’t here, tell us below. It will probably show up in a video later in the series. There are A…

  • Atari ST / STE Gaming Gems: Vol 5 –  20 more well crafted games

    Atari ST / STE Gaming Gems: Vol 5 –  20 more well crafted games

    20 more Atari ST/STE Games that are fun to play get the most out of the little 16-bit that could. After 4 videos of “games that rock” we are now digging into the ST library to find gems we have missed. Some of these rock, some are just fun or…

  • Never Let The Fires Die #26: War and The Alarm Central

    Never Let The Fires Die #26: War and The Alarm Central

    After a year break when there was no need for a podcast because The Alarm was basically podcasting 2 hours of content a week, we are back to discuss  the twin earthquakes that shook The Alarm world this week: War and Alarm Central.

  • S3:E24: Three Ghosts From Christmas Past

    S3:E24: Three Ghosts From Christmas Past

    As we  prepare for the 2020 Christmas episode of Into The Vertical Blank, here is a supercut of three Christmas stories from past seasons told for the first time, in Chronological order:  -The Best  @*#! Christmas Ever (1983) -Atari 7800 Christmas (1986) -The Christmas Train (1982-2011) Written, Edited, Produced by…

  • Using A8bit #fujinet to play “Pet” Galaga from – Homesoft Game Disk 404

    Using A8bit #fujinet to play “Pet” Galaga from – Homesoft Game Disk 404

    By Jeff D. Fulton Today we are going load up Homesoft game Disk #404 and play the only version of Galaga available for Atari 8bit 400/800/XL/XE Machines. We Will play directly an Atari 130XL by loading it over the internet via WIFI with #Fujinet! Disk 404 Download #Fujinet Here is…

  • S3:E23: Why We Are Thankful for STOS: The Game Creator

    S3:E23: Why We Are Thankful for STOS: The Game Creator

    In this episode the brothers talk about the creation of their one and only completed Atari ST game (“Zamboozal Poker Dice”) and the tools that helped them complete it:  the Mandarin / JawX Software products under the STOS banner.  Come along for the ride as they discuss the old days…

  • “Perfect!” : Book Review: Galaga By Michael Kimball

    Perfect ! A Minimalist Coming Of Age Story By Way Of The Best Golden Age Single Screen Shooter I recently finished “Galaga” by Michael Kimball, book #4 in the “Boos Fight Books” series, and I’m still kind of giddy from that “high” I get after reading something with which I…

  • Book Review: The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak

    Book Review: The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak

    When the marketing team at Simon and Schuster were calculating the target demographic for Jason Rekulak’s first novel, The Impossible Fortress, I’m sure they didn’t segment it directly to  “romantic-at-heart mid-to-late 40’s  computer nerds who are impossibly stuck in 70’s and 80’s nostalgia”, but maybe they should have.     …

  • Classic Games And CGE at E3 2004 (R.I.P. Keith Robinson)

    Note: This is a lost story from before 8bitrocket.com existed.   It was published June 1st, 2004 on Andrew Bub’s Gamerdad.com as E3 Embraces The Classics.   This was the first time I met Keith Robinson, one of the original Blue Sky Rangers from Mattel Electronics, and the owner of…

  • The King Of Kong: The Sociological Inner-Workings Of The Nerdcore

    There is a line near the end of the extraordinary documentary The King Of Kong that carries the weight of the entire film. It was spoken by a tween-age girl, but in the context of the film, that girl might be the most “adult” person to show-up on the screen…

  • Review: Extra Life By David S. Bennahum

    The experience of growing up at the dawn of the video and computer game age is one that I know all-to-well. Video games and computers exploded at the end of the 70’s and have became an increasingly larger part of daily life ever since. However, while video games and computers…

  • Review: Atari 2600 Dragonstomper.

    In 1981 a small company named Arcadia was formed with the purpose of cashing in on the craze that was home video games. The company was quickly renamed Starpath when it was learned that at least one copyright was already registered with an association to video games (Emerson Arcadia) and…

  • Book Review: The Art Of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford

    (Note: How great is this book?  I wrote this 10 years ago, and all I had to do was change about 20 words, and this review is as relevant now as it was in 2007) By all rights, Chris Crawford’s book The Art Of computer Game Design  should be a…

  • Review: Why I Loved Raiders Of The Lost Ark for The 2600

    Review: Why I Loved Raiders Of The Lost Ark for The 2600

    Wired posted an article a while back about the worst movie tie-in games of all-time, and , Raiders Of The lost Ark for the Atari 2600 made the list. It feels like I’ve been trying to convince people since 1982 that this is simply not the case, and the quest…

  • S-Town And The Age Of The Binge Podcast

    A lot has been written online in the past week about the new podcast “S-Town” from the producers of Serial and This American Life.   “S-Town” seemed to drop out of the blue last week as a bingable, 7-episode monster of humanistic insight and emotion.   The story is about…

  • Review: Lucky Wander Boy plus Interview With Author D.B. Weiss

    (note: An edited version of  this review originally appeared on http://www.gamerdad.com in 2003) About 15 years ago, I  ventured past the realm of the “Classic Game Fan” to a destination that can only be described as the absurd.  I had been a fan of Atari since around 1977.  I’ve owned every…

  • Fact Checkers Sharpen Your Pencils: Nolan Bushnell Interviewed For NPR’s “How I Built This” Podcast

    Let me just get this out of the way, I LOVE Nolan Bushnell.  He is the visionary without which we would not have all that is and was Atari.  Sure, if he did not start Atari with Ted Dabney back in the early 1970s’s, someone else would have eventually created…

  • Review: Phoenix IV : The History Of The Video Game Industry By Leonard Herman

    Phoenix IV : The History Of The Video Game Industry by Leonard Herman  is the most well researched, historically accurate chronicle of the video game industry that you will ever find.   Almost completely devoid of conjecture, hyperbole, and opinion, the books attempts (and succeeds) to posit an impartial, fact-based account…

  • Podcast Review: Antic Interviews “Wild” Bill Stealy Co-Founder of Microprose Software

    I’m a huge fan of Antic, The Atari Podcast from Randy Kindig, Kevin Savetz, and Brad Arnold.  I’m especially fond of the interview episodes conducted by  Kevin Savetz.  The sheer volume of interviews they produce is astounding.  Many of them are with fascinating yet curious bit-players in the history of…

  • Atari Flashback Portable Game Player: Review

    I’ve been waiting for a device like the  AtGames Atari Flashback Portable Game Player for many many years.    I’ve always dreamed of holding a mini-Atari 2600 in my hands, and playing all my favorite VCS games from the early 1980’s  While I’ve had emulated game collections for the the…

  • Atari Vault : Multi-Player Breathes New Life Into Age-Old Games

    I spent much of last weekend attempting to get a multi-player games started with someone, anyone, on the internet. It was not a game of Star Wars Battlefront, or Words With Friends, or even Clash Royale. It was a game of Atari 2600/VCS Basic Math. Let me back-up a bit. Basic…

  • What Indie Game Developers Can Learn From Jordon Mechner’s Book “The Making Of Karateka”

    I’ve always been a huge fan of Jordon Mechner’s Karateka.  Released in late 1984, it was one of the major  games that bridged the gap between the pure arcade games of “Golden Age of Atari” and the richer story telling of the “Nintendo Age.”  Written for the Apple II, the…

  • Atari 8-bit Computer Games Played with The Syzygy Company’s new Classic 2 USB Stick

    I received a review version the the new Syzygy Company’s Classic Atari 2600 stick a couple months ago. It was right as my mom was going in and out of the hospital, so I didn’t get a chance to review it them, but now I have a little extra time, so…

  • Gone Home : Is The Fullbright Company The New Infocom?

    I just finished ”Gone Home”, a new, indie, PC game developed by the Fullbright Company. At $19.99 (through Steam) it’s the most expensive PC game I have bought in a long time, and clocking in at just about 3 hours, the shortest. In “Gone Home” you play a young adult…

  • Vectrex Regeneration + iCade: Proof That “Retro” Gaming Is Alive And Well In The Mobile Era

    I believe technology has reached the point where “retro” game collections can move beyond mere curious nostalgia, and truly return players to a specific time and place in their past.   I recently experienced something akin to this while playing Vectrex Regenerations on the iCade. Back in the summer of…

  • Book Review: Atari Inc. : Business Is Fun

      My review of the new book,  Atari Inc. Business Is Fun,  by Curt Vendel and Marty Goldberg is up over at Gamasutra.com Here is an excerpt:  Atari Inc: Business Is Fun  is an exciting, messy, sprawling tour-de-force that fills in a lot missing gaps for Atari fans worldwide.   The book reads…

  • Retro Atari 8-Bit Computer Gaming – Commando for the XE Game System

    By Jeff Fulton (8bitjeff) Retro Atari 8-Bit Computer Gaming – Commando for the XE Game System Commando for the Atari XE Game system was supposed to be released in 1989 by Atari for the limited re-birth of the Atari 8-bit computer systems. Sculptured Software developed this game, Crossbow, Dark Chambers…

  • Retro Atari Lynx Gaming: Zarlor Mercenary

    By 8bitjeff (Jeff D. Fulton) One of the first games we had for the Atari Lynx was Zarlor Mercenary.   I remember purchasing it at the Manhattan Village mall in the B-Dalton Software Etc when they still sold Atari products (they even had a shelf of Atari ST and Jaguar games!).   Zarlor Mercenary is…

  • Retro Atari 8-bit Computer Gaming – Arkanoid

    By Jeff D. Fulton – 8bitjeff What a pleasant surprise. Arkanoid for the Atari 8-bit computers is a very well made game. Note: My brother Steve and I owned pretty much every Atari game system and computer until the company closed in the mid 1990’s. Using emulation, I am going…

  • Retro Atari ST Gaming – Tempest

    By Jeff D. Fulton (8bitjeff) Atari UK released a lot of arcade conversions for the ST line of computers in the late 80’s.   Many of these were packed into “gaming” bundles sold at shops all over Europe and via mail order in the USA.   I am not sure…

  • Vectrex Regeneration Closes The Loop On My Retro Game Needs

    One a summer day, just like this one, nearly 30 years to the day, I bought a GCE Vectrex with money I made from selling my Atari 2600.    At the time, it felt like an investment in the future.   The Vectrex had a black and white vector screen…

  • Sim City Social : Social Game Perfection, Cynical Game Design

    Yesterday I sat down to try Sim City Social.    I, honestly, wanted to see how EA had translated one of my favorite old school games to the Facebook platform.   I was not playing as a “joke” or just because I wanted rant about it, I honestly was hoping…

  • Retro Gamer Review

    By Jeff Fulton With traditional game related magazines falling by the way-side every day, why would Retrogamer magazine still be going so strong after 100 issues? Somewhere around the middle of 2004, I was browsing the magazine shelf at the local (now itself defunct) Borders and I found a  large yellow…

  • Chuck is gone, but it will leave a lasting impression (to modern nerds at least)

    (Jeff Fulton) The TV show Chuck had it last two episodes last night and while it never achieved a huge TV audience, it represents the type of modern,  innovative, quality TV programming that can exist if those involved use the same creativity with production as they do with writing, acting…

  • The Kinect : Only The Illusion Of “Fun”

    So I’ve been branded a “Kinect” lover by some people, and for the past year that has been a fairly accurate statement.  Before that, I was a Wii lover.  In both cases, I truly believed in the idea of “motion gaming”.  Ever since my family played hooky from work/school in November 2006…

  • Book Review: Fantasy Freaks And Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf

    Here it is, I’ll come out and say it.  I used to play pencil and paper role playing games.  I played games like Dungeons And Dragons, Palladium and Call Of Cthulhu for most of the 80’s. I was blessed with a great friend (and he is still my friend to this…

  • Pinball Mania! “Special When Lit” on Netflix and “The Pinball Arcade” For Nearly Every Platform That Matters

    When my wife and I first met, we spent countless hours playing pinball together.    In the mid 1990’s you could still find a pinball machine at most pizza parlors and multiple machines at arcades and bowling alleys.  Our standard playing style was to find a machine we liked (i.e.…

  • iWoz: The “Steve” I Always Liked Was Wozniak

    With all the hoopla about the passing of world’s greatest technology dictator and reality distortion master last week (okay, and the greatest tech visionary of the last 20 years, but’s who’s counting?), it appeared that, once again, Steve Woziank got buried under the praise for his short-time partner, Steve Jobs.…

  • The 8-Bit Game: Digesting Archon

    (By 8bit Jeff Fulton) The word “Archon” roughly translated from Greek means the ruler of a particular nation or state. The 8-bit computer game, Archon was the king or ruler of “real-time” strategy in the early 80’s well before the genre was actually “invented”. While it does not bare any…

  • Book Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

    Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is the the best book about video games you will read this year.  However, this is not a history book, nor is it a personal narrative.  Instead, Ready Player One history lesson in 80’s pop culture wrapped inside an engaging sci-fi story. The story…

  • Two Great New Video Game Books You Should Check Out

    It appears that we are in a “gaming book” renaissance the likes of which we have not seen since the  since the early parts of the 21st century when Dungeons And Dreamers, Masters Of Doom, and The First Quarter all fascinated us with inside stories of games being made and played. While there have…

  • The Pac-man Dossier Kicks Ass!

    If you are at all interested in building a maze chase game in the Pac-man genre, or are just interested in the technical details about the game or how to play it, check out the incredibly detailed Pac-man Dossier by Jamey Pittman. This treasure trove of information contains everything from…

  • Book Review: Replay: The History Of Video Games by Tristan Donovan

    I can honestly say that The new book Replay by Tristan Donovan is the best book about the video game history ever published.   Donovan’s book unseats The First Quarter by Steven L. Kent (the previous title holder) by taking a broader, world-wide approach to the subject. Donovan was  inspired…

  • Review: Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 For The Nintendo DS

    Playing retro games is much adu about nuance.   If the little things do not feel “right”, the overall game is usually failure, no matter how much effort went into recreating the past.  Nuances are much more than graphics: they also come in the form  timing,  sound design, responsiveness to…

  • Simply Brilliant: Dulldudegames

    One of our super-brilliant readers, “AndyGoesToHollywood”, sent over link to Dulldudegames because he wanted us to take a look at Iain Lobb’s simply brilliant game design tool. I am very impressed, especially with the platformer widget. I don’t think there is any way to have it show you the code…

  • Games I’ll Play Again: Retro-styled Flash Game Micro Reviews

    Again I find myself with a few minutes between asset delivery and code re-writes and instead of doing something practical like working on Solar Fortress or Lunch Battle (or any of the 100 other games I have started and not finished), I am playing other people’s games. Here are a…

  • Review : Atari Haunted House – Wii : Plus Win A Copy!

    Note: This is the first a new series of articles where we review new games from a retro/viral/indie/web game developer/technical writer perspective.  Since we are not a game review site, we don’t want to review every game out there, but games that fit our perspective (retro evolved, retro remakes, indie…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Reviews Section

    This is the new “reviews” section that collects all of our reviews together!

  • Review: New Star Games Sensational World Soccer 2010

    Wanna play some digital footie? Synopsis:Sensational World Of Soccer 2010 Review.Are you a USA fan who wants to replay the England match and try to put more goals by the hapless Robert Green? Are you an England fan who desires the opportunity to massacre a virtual  Tim Howard?  Are you…

  • EGM Magazine Spring 2010 Review: EGM Returns In Stunning Fashion

    I was never a huge fan of EGM magazine.  Its’ name was too close to Electronic Games, and it always appeared to be written for a generation of gamers just beyond my grasp.  However, with few options, I subscribed in 2008, only to have the magazine go out of business…

  • Retro Game Disasters: Super Breakout On Xbox Live Arcade Game Room

    I love playing retro games, but sometimes those retro games simply do not translate to modern platforms.   A very good example is the Super Breakout arcade game (originally designed in part by Ed Logg).  Super Breakout is one of my favorite arcade games, and also one of the best arcade…

  • Gaming After 40’s Video Podcast Is Exceptionally Retrotastic

    In the past week as I’ve been home sick with pneumonia, I’ve had some time to peruse Dale Dobson’s Gaming After 40 blog. I have to say, I really like what I see. Dale takes a skewed and humorous, but loving view at video games. In fact, his view very…

  • “Gaming After 40” Blog Hits The 8bitrocket.com Sweet Spot

    Hey, for all you guys (and gals too I suppose) who are interested in blogs about the history and current state of video games,  I just discovered a very well-written and insightful one named “Gaming After 40”  Here’s a note from the About page: “I’m in my early 40’s and…

  • Review: Kill Screen Magazine Issue 0

    Review: Kill Screen Magazine Issue 0 I’ve written had many stories through the years at 8bitrocket.com about video game magazines. I’ve covered personal stories about magazines like Electronic Games that influenced me while growing-up. I’ve interviewed some of my heroes of the first era of video game journalism like Bill…

  • A closer look: The Games Of Ace The Super Villain #1: Aceroids

    A closer look: The Games Of Ace The Super Villain #1: Aceroids Ace is a relatively new Flash game developer. Having cut his teeth making games with Game Maker, he has started to port some of his ideas to to the Flash platform. Steve and I have gotten to know…

  • Flash Retro Game Inspirations: Atari 2600 Outlaw

    Flash Retro Game Inspirations: Atari 2600 Outlaw (Atari 2600 Outlaw in the great Stella Emulator) I literally have an entire pile of started, but unfinished retro games sitting in folders on my development machine. I start and never finish at least 10-15 games  a year based on some whim, (examples:…

  • The greatest song ever written? Code Monkey By Jonathan Coulton

    Code Monkey – Jonathan Coulton   I’m not sure what else to say.  I’ve listened 10 times in a row… 

  • Kill Screen: A Video Game Magazine That Aims For The Mature Mind

    If you are like us, you constantly lament the demise of great game magazines like Electronic Games and Next Generation. Those magazines went beyond the standard news/preview/review/strategy format of most gaming tomes to include in-depth articles on subjects like sociology and future of the hobby. However, even those publications still…

  • A Youth Well Wasted: Lee Bradly Bogs His Youth In Video Games

    UK game journalist Lee Bradly has been writing an on-going blog chronicling his youth playing video games.  His series, A Youth Well Wasted is a a fascinating story about his friendship with a kid whose dad was a Sega executive.  As you may know, we here at 8bitrocket.com have been…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: October 26, 2009 (10 new games reviewed)

    Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: October 26, 2009 (10 new games reviewed) Games Reviewed: Street Fighter 2: CE, GraveShift 2: The Sewers, Zombie Taxi 2, Globulos Challenge, Froggy, Lost Mouse, WS Cup 2009, Battlerun, Speed Game of the Week: Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition I don’t know why I haven’t got…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-Up October 20, 2009 (11 new games reviewed)

    Mochi Game Review Mash-Up October 20, 2009 (11 new games reviewed) I wanted to do a full blog and site mash-up today (along with Mochi Game Reviews), but I that task is so daunting, I decided to stick to just reviews for another day. I searched out retro games again…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-Up : Oct 14th, 2009 (Games where things shoot at other things day)

    Mochi Game Review Mash-Up : Oct 14th, 2009 (Games where things shoot at other things day) These were always my favorite types of arcade, video, and computer games, so I scoured the “Coins”, “Featured”, and “Recent” Mochi lists for some arcade blastin’ titles to review. Games Graded: Tank Destroyer, Gravitor,…

  • Jeff Minter’s Grid Runner Revolution PC Review

    If 8bitrocket.com had it’s very own “Mt. Rushmore” containing the faces of four video games designer/developers who have influenced us the most they would be: Dan Bunten (programmer/designer of MULE and Seven Cities Of Gold) Chris Crawford, Atari 8-bit evangelist and the author of the first ever book about the…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: October 7, 2009 (11 Games Reviewed)

    Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: October 7, 2009 (11 Games Reviewed) Today the game selection kind of made me feel like I was looking though some of the various pirate crew Atari ST and Amiga late era disc menus from the 90’s. Some gems, some odd games with bad foreign translations,…

  • The Dark Spire: Super-Old School 8-bit computer RPG on the DS: A Perfect Flash Game Candidate?

    When people talk about “old school” role playing games these days, they are usually referring to Final Fantasy or Dragonquest or some other JRPG released near the end of the 80’s. Those are good games mind you, but hardly old school. To me, “old school” RPGs are nothing of the…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: Friday, Aug. 14, 2009 (18 Games Graded)

    Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: Friday, Aug. 14, 2009 (18 Games Graded). I am still catching up with the non-featured games today. It will possibly be Sunday before I actually get to them all (sans most of the Dress Up games). There are some nice quality games, some puzzling ones, and…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-Up:Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009. Kick Ass Game Day.

    Mochi Game Review Mash-Up:Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009. Kick Ass Game Day. All great games today! Just this batch will have you playing awesome free games for weeks. Who needs a Wii or Xbox Live Arcade with this set of gems? Pretty much all of them could have been Game of…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-Up:Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2009 (14 Games Graded)

    Mochi Game Review Mash-Up:Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2009 (14 Games Graded). .Again, Wednesday seems to be “new release” day at Mochi. I couldn’t get to all the games (many of them Dress up games), but I will attempt to cover them all this week as releases slow down. 8bitrocket Featured Game…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: Tuesday, Aug 11, 2009 (11 Games Graded)

    Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: Tuesday, Aug 11, 2009 (11 Games Graded). My hat’s off to the Mochi staff once again for always doing a great job of selecting the Featured games. I do (once in a while) find games that I think should have been featured that the over-worked Mochi…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: Monday, Aug 10, 2009 (26 Games Graded)

    Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: Monday, Aug 10, 2009 (26 Games Graded). So, I take one day off (Sunday) and the “fit hits the shan”. There are so many truck loads of new Mochi games every day, and I have no idea how portal owners keep up (if they do at…

  • Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Thursday, Aug 06, 2009

    Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Thursday, Aug 06, 2009 I know you are going to play the world tiniest violin for me, but reviewing games is hard. No matter how much I try, I’ll never be able to grade every Mochi game, as there are a flood of new…

  • Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up:Tuesday, Aug 04, 2009

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  • Mochi Game Review Mash-up: Sunday July 26, 2009

    Mochi Game Review Mash-up:  Sunday July 26, 2009 It’s Sunday, a day I normally leave for TV shows on the DVR and playing with my kids outside. But,  I’m trying to get a good handle on the quality of Mochi Games, so I am reviewing the latest 9 games on…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-up: Saturday, July 25, 2009

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  • Play the new free Atari STE Game rOx in Windows with a single mouse click!

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  • Book Review: American Nerd, The Story Of My People by Benjamin Nugent

    I did not think that I would write a review of this book.   I start reading dozens of books like “American Nerd” ,but in all honestly, it is the rare one that I actually finish.  Even though I am a huge fan of non-fiction, I’m really not a fan of…

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  • Retroshoot added to 8bitrocket Retro Arcade Hall of Fame

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  • Three iPhone Game Video Previews

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  • iPhone Game Reviews: Aqua Jigsaw and Jigsaw Wild From 99Games.in

    Jigsaw puzzles have been a staple of web-based Flash games for many years. The combination of hi-res images and and the mouse/web interface made a nice platform for easy to play and easy to digest small jigsaw based games. The iPhone touch interface takes this to a slightly higher level,…

  • iPhone Game Reviews: Rainbow Ninja

    Rainbow Ninja is a tough game to review, since it is not really much of a game at all. It’s more of test of the ability to read words and see colors. It is very similar to one of the games on the Nintendo DS game Brain Age. In that…

  • iPhone Game Reviews: Fleck And Pseudemys From SurvivorSoft

    iPhone Game Reviews: Fleck And Pseudemys From SurvivorSoft Note: We have recently opened up the Apple/Mac/iPhone/iPod section of 8bitrocket.com. In this section we will be exploring both playing games and making games for these platforms.   Fleck Fleck arrives like a lamb and then slays you like a lion. Underneath…

  • Movie Review: Chasing Ghosts: Beyond The Arcade

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  • The 56k Connection : PigRace Review

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  • The 56K Connection: Fisherboy review.

    Fisher Boy,  http://www.box10.com/fisher-boy.html California wildfires have caused more than 60,000 people to be evacuated from their homes and we’ve had 3 days of constant television coverage of the devastation.  Although I’m not in any imminent danger, soot and ash is flying through the air covering everything with a layer whitish…

  • The 56K Connection: Olive War ‘ Attack 1: Veggies from above review.

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