Category: Uncategorized

  • Pumpkin Man Mid-Mortem

    Games take a long time to make. Seriously, games are a bitch to make. I started my latest game as a supposed month long project to update Pacman into the semi-modern (circa 1990) age. I figured that Pacman would be a pretty easy game to make, and I also wanted…

  • 10 Lines Of Silence For Evel Knievel

    … … … … … … … … … … The legend of my childhood, Evel Knievel died today at the age of 69.  Sure, he has not had the highest profile for past 30 or so years, and sure he did beat that journalist with a baseball bat, but…

  • Anatomy of a Flash Game: Lesson 1 – Setting up the game

    My newest Flash game tutorial is up at Mochiland.  Anatomy of a Flash Game: Lesson 1 – Setting up the game is the first in a series of articles that will show, in fine detail, how to construct a Flash game using basic object oriented methodology.   The game constructed during the…

  • Required Playing: Atari ST Games

    Title: Lethal XcessYear: 1991Publisher: EclipseDeveloper: X-TrollGame Design: Marc Rosocha, Heinz Rudolph, Claus FrienGraphics: Heinz RudolphProgramming: Claus Frien, Heinz RudolphMusic: Jochen Hippel Sifting through my huge collection of vintage games and roms, I have selected a few I have never played to test out. First up is an Atari ST /…

  • Where Is My Must Have, Retro Game Collection For The Holidays?

    Every Christmas for at least the past decade, my brother Jeff and I have traded retro game collections for Christmas. It started in 1998 when I discovered MAME and Dave’s Video Game Classics. I collected a CD of ROMS and Emulators, printed a fancy CD label, and gifted it to…

  • Pixel Chix Flippin’ Kitchen Goes Live!

    My first (as a developer) web+toy (Toys that interact with the web) project went live today: Pixel Chix Flippin’ Kitchen.   The game is “inspired” by the “Cooking Mama” DS and Wii game.  You use your mouse to mix, cut, fry in mini games trying to make multiple dishes.  Here is the…

  • History Of Atari 1971-1977

    My latest writing project, “Part 1” of the History Of Atari (1971-1977) went up today at Gamasutra. The series is culmination of nearly 5 years of research and include content from my own personal interviews with Nolan Bushnell, Chris Crawford, Ralph Baer, David Crane, and others.  You can read it here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2000/the_history_of_atari_19711977.php

  • Great Article On The 50 Greatest Game Design Innovations

    Ernest Adams has written a fantastic article for http://www.next-gen.biz about the “50 Greatest Game Design Innovations”.   There is tons of good content here to get you thinking, mull over, and argue about.  Take a look at it here: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7769&Itemid=2 Here are some of my comments about the entries: 3. Stealth…

  • Actionscript 3: Tutorial – BitmapData rotation with a matrix

    The bitmapData class has been a revelation for advanced Flash game programmers. With it, one can replicate the sprite sheet magic that 8-bit game wizards produced on machines such as the Atari 800, C=64 and Nintendo NES. I have covered the use of sprite sheets and BitmapData in a previous…

  • Hotwheels.com Spin City Game Goes Live!

    Finally, my newest game for Hotwheels.com has gone live!  “Hot Wheels Spin City Drive-Thru Dilemma” is my casual game “sequel” to “Hot Wheels Accelracers Track Mod“, released in 2005.   It is not really a “sequel” though, as it’s game-play is based on the “Diner Dash” model, not on the “Pipe…

  • MochiAds Goes Public!

    It looks like MochiAds has gone public today!  Check themout over at http://www.mochiads.com.   Also, they something new called “Customoized Ads” that looks very interesting…We’ll report more later when we know the details.

  • Implementing MochiAds in a Flash AS3 Class

    MochiAds are still in beta, but we here at 8bitrocket are firm supporters of this system. Mochi seems to be one of the few systems that is looking out for the independent developer. You can read more in Steve’s entry from a few weeks back. I am designing a new…

  • Launching Pad: Redesigning a Retro Classic #1: Pacman

    The last retro classic I redesigned was Asteroids when I created the game Retro Blaster. While I love early classic games, I also completely understand and appreciate how Nintendo, Sega, and other late 80’s innovators built upon classic themes to re-ignite the video game industry. Not only did they create…

  • Mochiads: Maybe The Best Thing For Flash Game Developers Since…Well…Flash

    I’ve been experimenting with the beta version of MochiMedia’s Mochiads system for the past few weeks. My first impression is that, when Mochiads finally rolls out to the public, it will help revolutionize the viral/free Flash game landscape. Mochimedia have already been providing a very useful product named Mochibot for…

  • Flash CS3: Actionscript 3 (AS3) Game Primer #3: Bitmap Collision Detection

    Flash CS3: Actionscript 3 (AS3) Game Primer #3: Bitmap Collision detection One of the great features of Flash AS2 and AS3 is the ability to use the non-transparent colored pixels in a bitmapData object to accomplish pixel level hit detection. In this tutorial, we will build upon the last last…

  • “Free Fireworks” Flash Engine Launches

    Today we are launching our SECOND in a series of free, configurable game/activity engines for the web (following closely on the heels of “Free Jigsaw“).  This one a further evolution of our “fireworks show” engine that can now be configured for almost any purpose. You can watch fireworks launch, and/or…

  • Atari-infogrames, On The Ropes?

    “Retro Rogue” martyg, a frequent visitor to our fourms (“frequent” is a relative term on our forums) has written a very detailed and insightful article about the fate of the Atarinfogrames.    In the article, martyg writes: Atari management has had more changing faces and directions than a chameleon stuck in…

  • Flash CS3: Actionscript 3 (AS3) Game Primer #2: Asynchronous key detection for arcade games.

    In Adobe’s attempt to “improve” every aspect of Actionscript, they deleted some features that arcade game programmers have relied on for years. One of the most fundamental aspects in most arcade games is accurately timed user input detection. Sadly, this has been made much more difficult (but not impossible) in…

  • Electroserver 4 Announced! Supports 200,000 Concurrent User Multiplayer Flash Games!

    The guys over at Electrotank have finally announced the released of ElectroServer 4.0, (ES4)their massive update to their already impressive Electroserver 3 multi-player socket-server.   ES4 is more than just a simple version upgrade.  New features for ES4 include: 200,000 concurrent users.  Site like Webkins now get about 30,000 concurrent users using…

  • “Free Jigsaw”, A Free, Configurable, Animated Jigsaw Puzzle Engine For Flash.

    Free Jigsaw is free-to-use, configurable, simple, Jigsaw Puzzle engine written in Flash. “Free Jigsaw” can support any number of images, and supports “animated” puzzles using .swf files. You can re-skin the the presentation of “Free Jigsaw” by editing the included .xml file and providing your own background and button images.…

  • Flash CS3: Actionscript 3 (AS3) Game Primer #1: Tile Maps, XML, and bitmapData

    One of the most useful advances in Flash 8 and CS3 for game developers has been the use of raw bitmap data to render on screen images. The CS3 / AS3 implementation has been changed from AS2, so this tutorial will go through the basics of creating, loading, and displaying…

  • A Tribute To Larry Snyder From The Midnight Coders, makers of WebOrb for Flash

    (Larry Snyder: 1940-2007) I was very upset to learn today that Larry Snyder has passed away., The 67 year-old was head of sales for Midnight Coders, the developers of WebOrb, an ASP.NET 2.0 replacement for Flash Remoting.   I’d been in negotiations with Larry for the past 7 months to purchase…

  • Where is the great, all-encompassing history of Atari?

    OK, now that I’ve suffered through the Atari bashing in the well-written but overly biased Commodore love-fest On The Edge, and complete disregard for Atari history in books like Fire In The Valley and Accidental Empires, I’m ready to ask the question: Where is the great, all-encompassing history of Atari?…

  • Wii.HotWheels.com Arena Launches! Includes Multi-player Game For Wii Opera Users

    Over at http://www.hotwheels.com they have just launched the Wii Arena (http://wii.hotwheels.com), a section of the site dedicated to users coming to the site with the Wii Opera Browser.  Among the games offered (including simplified version of very popular TrackMod Game) is the brand new Multi-Player on-line Collectible Card Racing Game: Finish…

  • Flash CS3: Actionscript 3 (AS3) Primer: Where does my code go?

    Actionscript 3 is complete re-write of the Actionscript language that fuels Flash’s ability to create dynamic content and games. It could be said that AS3 is such a departure that many designers and some programmers will be left in the dark by this new version. I for one, think AS3…

  • Creating Custom Events In Flash AS3 (ActionScript 3)

    I’ve only been working with Flash AS3 for a very short time, but I’m already very happy with it. Even though it is not as accessible as AS2, the power of the new language features are unmistakable. One very powerful feature of AS3 is the built-in event handling. Event handing…

  • An 16-bit road less traveled: Atari ST (and Amiga) Games – 16-bit degrees of separation #1.

    I started with 8-bit degrees of separation last week where I investigated some rare/forgotten Atari 800 games. This week I’ll take my investigation up to the 16-bit level. Here is how the game is played. First I choose a random Atari ST game, then I search out related games, developers…

  • 10 Ways To Help Get Traffic To Your Flash Game

    We at 8bitrocket.com have been trying promote our games at a grassroots level for the past few months.  In that time, we have met with some marginal success getting our games seen and played.   If making your game is hard enough, getting people to see it and play it is…

  • Retro Blaster Update: A new high score has been obtained in Retro Blaster.

    A player who goes by the name of Stephen Allen has sent in a picture of his score and a successful completion of the game: 101,773,150 points! This is the current recorded high score by someone other than me! Thanks, Stephen (if that’s your real name), for taking the time…

  • An 8-bit road less traveled: Atari 800 Games – 8-bit degrees of separation.

    I have loads and loads of Atari 800 games to play via emulation. I have tried nearly 1100 in my quest to try every game available. Today I decided to play Atari 8-bit degrees of separation. I will start with one random 8-bit Atari 800 game, play it, review it,…

  • Bob Cringely Finally Discovers Flash!

    I don’t know how I missed this.  I’ve been reading Bob Cringely’s column at pbs.org for the past 10 years or so, and I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with it.  Bob was one of the first people to embrace “Geek” culture. His book “Accidental Empires” is a must-read for anyone…

  • Space Eggs Cracked Open!

    A new game, called Space Eggs, has launched on 8bitrocket.com.We want more games on this site, so I have been going back and finishing up ideas of games I started a while back. The first was a game called Gradient Asteroids Optimized. It was the beginnings of the first game…

  • 3 Flash “Fireworks” Activities For The 4th Of July

    Here are 3 different interactive Flash activities for the the 4th of July: Raindown Fireworks Show This activitiy was designed to promote The Alarm’s single “Raindown” last year.  It is an interactive show.  The fireworks will got automatically, but it you press the [space bar] you can configure the color…

  • Sploder Game: Fantastic Journey

    OK, here is my last Sploder game with the current engine.  It’s called “Fantastic Journey”.  Travel through a human body to fight of disease and infaction in the legs, arms, heart, brain, etc. Play Below:   http://www.sploder.com/player.php?s=7ntjxvst Make Your Own Game

  • An 8-bit road less traveled: Great Atari 800 Games Part I

    Great 8-bit home computer games didn’t start and end with the C=64 in the 80’s. Classic 8-bit computer games were enjoyed on many other computers, the Atari 800 being arguably the premier computer gaming platform in the USA for about 3 years (1980-1982). This dominance ended when the low cost…

  • Sploder: Making My First Game : Death Cavern X1

    I just finished my first “game” using Sploder.  I suppose it is almost identical to most “first” Sploder games.  It includes a massive, intricate playfield, and some randomly placed obstacles and pick-ups.  You can play it below: http://www.sploder.com/player.php?s=6g9n55ng Make Your Own Game Making a game in Sploder is very easy. …

  • My Second Sploder Game: Sploder Pac-Man

    For my second Sploder game, I decided to try to make something that was not necessarilly a full-on shooter.  Since Sploder has a “collectible” object, I decided to try to create a game as close to Pac-Man as possible.  The result is below.   http://www.sploder.com/player.php?s=uq9zx991 Make Your Own Game   As you…

  • Hilarious “History Of Flash ActionScript” Video

    Legendary Flash developer Scott Delamater produced this video last year for Flash’s 10th anniversary.   If you were there from the beginning, you’ll understand just how much Flash has grown in the past 10 years. Check out the video here.

  • Midnight Flash Game Design #4: The Cold, Clammy Grip Of Reality

    Well, my plans for working an hour a night on a game in June were completely thwarted by reality.  After 3 days of development, a friend of Jeff and mine requested help to finish a project.  We spent nearly 7 days helping to build this game for the Bridezillas TV…

  • Sploder: A Cool New “Game Construction Set” Site

    I just followed a banner ad from our site to this new Web 2.0 style “user created content” site named Sploder .   Sploder is a site that allows users to create their own “games” and share them with people, embed them on other sites, etc.   It’s a really cool application that…