Category: Uncategorized

  • Atari Nerd : This Day In Atari History For May 1st

    1981 May 1: Threshold  published By Sierra On-Line for Atari 8-bit 1983 May 1 : Atarisoft releases Pac-Man for the Intellivision 1989 May 1: Mastertronic Atari ST budget UK release: SILKWORM 1990 May 1:  Atari Games US Trademark date for Hydra 2003 May 1 : Atari releases Breakout for cell…

  • Atari Nerd : This Day In Atari History For April 30th

    1981 April 30: DataSoft first publicizes Micro Painter for Atari 8-bit computers 1984 April 30: Parker Brothers finalizes prototype of Atari 2600 game Frogger II 1994 April 30: Atari Classic Programmer’s Club announce 8-bit computer products• Loopz: game releases TBA• Helter Skelter: game release TBA• Bomb Blaster: game release Christ…

  • 8bitrocket InterWeb Mash-Up For Friday April 29th, 2011

    A Note From 8bitrocket Hi everyone, I hope you are enjoying our new focus and format as much as we are are enjoying it.  We found it very hard to write lots of in-depth articles because the industry is changing so much at the moment.   We will have more in-depth…

  • 8bitrocket Daily Inter-Web Mash-Up – Thursday, April 28, 2011

    MochiGames.com Game for Today: RobotSockets RoboSockets is a new take (to us anyway) on the  classic falling item/connect/clear game play pattern.  The robots have various connectors that need to be lined-up to get clear them  from the screen.  It’s engaging with neat graphics, and fun in short bursts. Flash AS3…

  • 8bitrocket Daily Inter-Web Mash-up – Wednesday, April 27, 2011

    The Daily Briefing has been re-named back to the Inter-Web Mash-Up of old. Steve and I have both made it through 6 weeks with the new game development company, and although the hours are long, we are trying to find time for daily updates here on 8bitrocket.com. The focus will…

  • 8bitrocket Daily Briefing – Tuesday, April 26, 2011

    New Game Picks From Mochi Games Cactus McCoy : A Western-themed platformer with nice music and neat graphics. Homerun In Bezerkland :  Hit the geek as far as you can. More than a decade ago played this with penguins.  Because of that, this game probably falls into the “retro Flash…

  • 8bitrocket Daily Briefing : Monday April 25th, 2011

    Top Of Mind Jolt Here some neat new games from MindJolt.com : Green Archer : Aim and shoot arrows are various objects.  Simple and derivative, but intriguing none-the-less. Bi-Plane Bomber :  Addicting, easy to control (and wholly unrealistic, but still…) bi-plane dog fight and bombing game.  Nice scrolling, and great…

  • The 8bitrocket Daily Briefing – Sunday, April 24, 2011

    First off, Happy Easter to all those who celebrate it. Try out these new Flash Game Distribution games. We liked them the first couple times we played them. – X Missile (once you find the game through all of the ads and Free Tower defense logos). This is fun shooter…

  • Ode To A Game That Nobody Played

    This is an ode to a game that nobody played For the classes and functions and code that I made For the weeks designing how the screen would be laid With Pseudo-3D and traces that rayed With cool explosions filled with particles sprayed This is an ode to a game…

  • Atari Greatest Hits Vol. 2 DS: Atari 400 Emulator In Action

    I discovered today that the new DS title Atari Greatest Hits Vol .2 for the Nintendo DS includes an Atari 400 emulator running Atari BASIC.    The emulator is in the extras section, and as far as I can tell, only lets you type in and run it in the…

  • Get 100 Atari Classics for the iPhone / iPad for $14.99 USD

    The incredibly generous Atari’s Greatest Hits for iOS was released yesterday to the iTunes store. You can have 100 Atari classics for $14.99 or you can purchase various game packs such as the Asteroids pack, Warlords pack, or one of the many others for as little at $1.29. Many of…

  • Silverlight Not Dead: Silverlight 5 On The Way

    Last year while working at “Monolith” I had a short email argument with some upper management folks about the future of Silverlight.  They were all in a panic that “Microsoft was abandoning Silverlight” , and this was just after they had agreed to paid a vendor huge $$$ for some…

  • Watch the New Star Soccer 5 Trailer

    It is no secret that I love the football/soccer games from the 80’s and early 90’s. I was a HUGE Kick Off 2 and Kick off Player Manager fan on the Atari ST, but shed the ST for a PC just in time to miss out on Sensible. Anyway, about…

  • Atari Greatest Hits Vol.2 For The DS Now Available

    Atari hs just sent us a press release for their “Greatest Hits volume 2” for the Nintendo DS.  We loved the first one, and this one looks like it will be just as good.   Check out the Atari release below: ATARI’S GREATEST HITS: VOLUME 2 NOW AVAILABLE AT RETAIL…

  • Road Test: Adobe “Wallaby” Flash->HTML5 Converter Preview Version

    A couple days ago, Adobe released a preview version of  “Wallaby”, their Flash->HTML5 converter.  It’s been a badly kept secret for the past few months that Adobe was working on something like this, but with the release they have finally come clean on their efforts. Here is what they says…

  • Listen to the live LAPD radio stream mixed with random ethereal music

    OK, so this is way off topic (game and retro-wise), but you can expect a little more in this “random awesomeness” category now and then. The site YouAreListeningToLosAngeles.com is simply a live feed stream of Los Angeles Police radio  chatter (provided by radioreference.com) played over a random selection of ethereal…

  • Retro Blaster, Pumpkin Man and Jack’s Beach Blitz added to Google Chrome App Store

    I have started to add some of our arcade games to the Google Crome App Store. Retro Blaster Asteroids on steroids with many power ups to purchase and bosses galore. Pumpkin Man If Pac-man had included 30 different mazes, multiple power-ups, door/key puzzles, transporters and more it would be something…

  • Ultimate Unscramble #1 and #2 Now In Google Chrome Web App Store

    I went ahead and added a couple more free educational games to the Google Chrome Web App Store today: Ultimate Unscramble #1: HTML Color Words Ultimate Unscramble #2: Countries And Flags It appears to be very simple to add new apps to the store. The interface is easy to use,…

  • Palindromes Plus Now In Google Chrome Web App Store

    I just tested out one of our games, Palindromes Plus,  in the Google Chrome Web App Store.  You can check it out here:

  • Flash Player 10.2 Released: Stage Video Is Finally Here – But What Is It?

    I can recall Adobe talking about stage video for a long time.   It’s a new feature in Flash Player 10.2 that is supposed to speed-up video layback considerably.   In many ways, this appears to be Adobe’s way of combatting HTML5 Video.  If you are curious, here is what…

  • Flash Game Competition (Stanford, Adobe, Mochi, JayIsGames & more!)

    In conjunction with the Stanford Dance Marathon / Hackathon 2011 (?!), Stanford University is throwing a three week long Flash Game competition with the theme of Benevolence.    Squize, Iain Lobb, and Keith Peters (along with Steve and I)  will be judging the games. We can’t just pick the best game,…

  • Help Beta Test The Flash Develop to Mac Bridge

    The Genius Squad (I mean that in every non ironic and non flippant manner) over at FlashDevelop.org has created a FlashDevelop to Mac bridge in the beta of FD 4.0. It must be used with Parallels or VMWare, but it looks promising. They need beta testers. I plan to get…

  • Gamasutra Warns Of The Coming “Gamepocalypse”

    Over at Gamasutra they have a greta new article by Tadhg Kelly named What Games Are: The Mac App Store And The PC Gamepocalypse. The pie ce crystalizes some thoughts that have been bandied about in 8bitrocket.com towers for the past few weeks: The App Paradigm Shift.  Tadhg says that…

  • Quick IOS Packager Test Results

    Over the last few days I have been experimenting with creating a very simple arcade game in both HTML5 and AS3. The HTML5 version I packaged up with PhoneGap and tested on my iPod Touch. The AS3 version I wrote twice. The first version uses built in Sprites and the…

  • Free History of Llamasoft Book!

    Via Jeff Minter’s Twitter, I just downloaded the nearly 200 page History of Llamasoft book that is being given away for free. If you had any type of 80’s computer and played games on it, you probably had at least one game filled with Llamasoft Beasties. Here is the link…

  • PhotonStorm’s Cat Astro Phi an indie game of the week selection at Gamasutra

    Cat Astro Phi, by PhotonStorm’s Richard Davey, is one of the brilliant games selected this week for the Gamasutra “Best Of Indie Games”. Cat Astro Phi is a masterfully crafted, retro-inspired, maze-based exploration-adventure-shooter that should please any game player, especially those who prefer a little retro in their morning game…

  • Indie, Web , Flash, Retro Game Development Interweb Mash-up – Dec 5, 2010

    16k Contest Update We added a new Sponsor and prize to the 16K game contest.  There are 10 days left to get your 16K game in. We have already received a couple games from Ace The Super Villain, so he is way out in front in both quality and quantity. Also,…

  • Chrome App Store Coming In December? Plus, Mozilla Has An App Store Too!

    According to Wired.com, the Google Chrome App Store is set to launch is early December.   As well, Mozilla has announced The Open Web App Ecosystem which reads essentially like their own version of Google Chrome App Web Store.    Here is the feature list from the Mozilla Labs blog:…

  • Silverlight Apps For The Xbox Live Arcade? They May Come Soon.

    Earlier this year we predicted that Microsoft would start to focus Silverlight on their own platforms as it loses ground to HTML5.  Well, this recent story on Wired.com points to towards that predictions becoming a reality.   Tim Carmody or wired.com says: “It feels like a smart move. Xbox 360…

  • Indie, Web , Flash, Retro Game Development Interweb Mash-up

    Here is the “mash-up” for this week. I have had a little time to visit some of my favorite blogs, magazine sites, retro message boards and more. There are some reviews of games and our second ever portal review (at the request of the owner, so don’t go thinking I…

  • Active.Tutsplus HTML5/RIA Roundup Includes Our Thoughts

    Active.TutsPlus.com recently ran an article about HTML5 that rankled a few feathers among developers.  Their intentions were good, but the result was not what they intended. Instead of crying foul, or simply defending themselves, they went out and asked some industry people to comment on HTML5/Flash/Silverlight.  We were honored be…

  • Help me find a good AS3 IDE On The Mac

    For the last three years I was very happy using the incredible Flash Develop via Parallels and XP on my Mac. I would use Flash CS3 in OSX to create and edit assets and then tie the whole project together with FlashDevelop in XP. Although Flash Develop is free, I…

  • Adobe Max Day 2: Dave Berzack And Filthy Mouthed Puppets

    The Adobe Max day 2 general session was a well produced set of fake TV shows designed to entertain the creative and technical class attending the event.  Most of it went of pretty well, but for me the highlights were: Dave Berzack: Remember Berzack’s video “Killa Appz” that came out…

  • Adobe Max Flash Game Update: 3D, Controllers & Terry Paton!

    We just got out of the Adobe Max 2010 general session.  There was a lot of information about where Adobe is taking Flash.  They showed Google TV working with Air apps, and some really nice looking e-magazines developed with their HTML tools.  However, we are here because of Flash games,…

  • Adobe Max 2010

    8bitsteve will be @ Adobe Max next week in L.A., so we will try to report any public news in real-time from the conference.   This year, there is a lot of emphasis on Android, multi-player, and HTML5 tools.   Things are moving fast in our world. We’ll try to…

  • Atari Haunted House – Wii Contest Winner

    We’d like to congratulate Syd Lexia for his winning entry in our “Wii Atari Haunted House  Contest”.  We asked readers to describe an Atari 2600 game that they wouls like to see remade in the 21st century by Atari.  Here is Syd’s Idea: Syd Lexia :Without a doubt, Swordquest 2011,…

  • Mac Steam: A Bonus!

    So here is something really cool I just discovered.  I decided to install the Mac version of Steam, so I could look at some downloadable games.  When I got it installed, I logged-in with the Steam account I made nearly 6 years ago when I first bought Half-Life 2 for…

  • Intellivision Lives DS (2010): Signed And Numbered for $19.99

    Honestly, while I played the Intellivision 100’s of times at my friend Eric’ Barth’s house back in 5th and 6th grade, I’ve never owned one.  At the same time, most of the retro collections of Intellivision games have not been implemented properly because it is very hard to replicate the…

  • Simply Brilliant: XKCD New Map Of Online Communities

    Take a look at the map. We definitely fit into the “Plains of Awkwardly Public Family Interactions”, and are nearly entrenched in “Niche Market Mountains” while actually drowning in the “Bay of Drama”, clinging to a life raft floating passed “Tech Blogs” our our way to in the giant “Sea Of Opinions”. At…

  • Simply Brilliant: Keanu Is Sad / Sad Keanu Meme

    This is not game related so I created an entire new category on the blog for things that I feel are “simply brilliant” and need to be shared. I would have just “liked” this to my Facebook page, but there is no like button on the page. My favorite part…