• The Wild Gunman (1976)

      “A gun is never empty” my dad told me. He was looking straight at me. He was looking into my eyes. He had never done that before. That I could recall any way. “A gun is always loaded” he repeated, changing the words slightly but not the meaning. It…

  • Never Let The Fire Die (podcast #1)

    In this inaugural episode of “Never Let The Fires Die” The Official Podcast For The Alarm, we start at “the end”.  We discuss the last officially released song credited to “The Alarm.”  Then we delve back to try to understand the meaning of that song, the song credit “The Alarm”,…

  • Excerpt From The Diary Of An Atari Nerd

    Note: Here is a piece of creative non-fiction.  I’ve changed the names, and compacted some events, but everything is true that happened.  I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a fictionalized diary based on real events for a long time.  The article in the last section is the real…

  • 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…

  • 8bitrocket Consulting Combines with Humdigital.com

      8bitrocket IT Consulting has now partnered with HUMDigital.com  to provide the full vertical in digital solutions.  From ideas to finished product, ongoing support and beyond, the combination of these two consulting companies brings a new meaning to full service digital development. Jeff Fulton is now the CTO of HUMdigital.com, working…

  • MEAN Stack Primer

    MEAN Stack Primer. MEAN – at its core, MEAN means Javascript. Unlike other technology platforms, the MEAN stack allows the user to rely on a single technology for the full stack architecture (front-end, back-end, database, and MVC). Many people have heard of the LAMP stack. It was and is the…

  • 8bitrocket Launches New Consulting Service

    8bitrocket IT Consulting brings together 25 years of web application development, project management, IT solutions architecture, and book publishing experience, along and the sheer love of code, to your IT project. Owner, Jeff Fulton, has years and years of experience at companies big and small, including 15 years of core…

  • Old Crap From My Attic: Atari and Sega Extravaganza!

    Old Crap From My Attic: Atari and Sega Extravaganza: Atari 400/400/xl/xe, Atari Lynx, Sega Game Gear storage space win! Well, not exactly from my attic, but from my garage this time, and not exactly from there, but from my brother…oh, just forget where it came from and bask in it’s glory……

  • Atari Bonanza – Old Stuff From My Attic. 2600 5200 7800 800 XL XE Jaguar ST

    Atari Bonanza – Old Stuff From My Attic. 2600, 5200, 7800, 800 XL XE, Jaguar, ST I decided to do an entire Atari excavation today.  I went through every box of Atari games and hardware (I might have missed an ST box and if I find it, I’ll add it…

  • The Dead Lexicon Of Classic Video Games (Ver. 1.1)

    by fultonbot-Version 1.1 At the beginning of of the video game era, gaming nomenclature was yet to be coined.   This is our first look into the fascinating world of  “The Dead Lexicon Of Classic Video Games. The editors and writers of magazines like Electronic Games created much of the…

  • Top-10 Classic Video Game Magazine Christmas Ads, Covers, & Content

    By Steve Fulton Some of these are good, some are terrible, but all of them are memorable.   Here is a run down my favorite Christmas content from classic gaming and computer magazines like Electronic Games, Joystik, Electronic Fun and Atari Connection. #10 Subscription Pleas   Every magazine contains advertisements…

  • 1981 : Atari VCS Christmas

     In the fall of 1981, just after starting junior high school, my brother Jeff and I tried to convince our parents that we ‘needed’ an Atari VCS for Christmas. Our parents had never been very electronics or modern convenience friendly, so it was quite a tough sell.  Other than a…

  • Big Mouse And Little Mouse

    Note: A story about ‘play’. Before LEGO, before Star Wars, before video games,  there was just ‘Little Mouse’ and ‘Big Mouse’, the names my twin brother and I used to refer to one another while we played together.  The origin of those chosen names is lost forever, but the memory…

  • Interview With Ralph Baer, Inventor Of Home Video Games (R.I.P.)

    Note: Dec.  7. 2014:  R.I.P. Ralph Baer, the inventor of video games.  This interview was conducted in 2005 for gamerdad.com For more information on Ralph Baer, see his web site. Steve Fulton When did you get the idea to create a home video game system? Ralph Baer:  August 31, 1966Steve…

  • Atari Nerd Chronicles: 1982-1983: Computer Lab

    Note: I’ve been writing these little stories on the internet for the better part of the last decade.   Out of my entire close and extended family, only a very few have taken the time to read them.  One of those people was my Uncle Richard.   My mom’s brother,…

  • My Top 100 Games Of All Time

    I (sort of) keep this list running in my head all the time. It changes often, and usually one of the most recent games I’ve played moves up higher (see Torchlight 2). These games come from every platform I’ve ever owned or played (arcade, Atari 2600, Atari 800, Vectrex, Atari…

  • What Video Game Journalists In 2014 Could Learn From Electronic Games Magazine in 1983: Standards

    Note: In the light of some more recent events in the gaming world, this seems even more relevant today than when I posted it in 2011. So here it goes again. I was looking through my old copies of Electronic Games, and I happened upon an editorial by Arnie Katz…

  • Feeling A Bit Atari Today

      -8bitsteve  

  • 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 7800 In An Alternate Universe : Games I Would Have Loved To Play

    In an alternate universe, Atari released the 7800 in 1984 In an alternate universe, Warner Brothers did not sell the Atari consumer division in 1984, but stuck with it. In an alternate universe Atari battled with Nintendo throughout the 80’s and 90’s In that alternate universe, some amazing games were…

  • New Orbeezone.com web site (Producto Studios Project)

    By Jeff Fulton (8bitjeff) – CTO Producto Studios Producto Studios  provides a mobile makeover to Orbeezone.com. Orbeez, Maya Group’s best-selling product line are the cool fun orbs that grow and change when you add them to water. The Maya Group called in Producto Studios to grow and change Orbeez website…

  • Strawberry Shortcake – Old Crap From My Attic

    8bitjeff (Jeff Fulton) This time I do mean CRAP. While other things from my attic have been true gaming or music treasures, this game, while being quite possibly the first interactive gaming experience for the Strawberry Short Cake brand, is awful to play. That doesn’t mean that hard work didn’t…

  • Bob Mould’s See A Little Light “CASSINGLE” – Old Crap from My Attic

    By 8bitjeff (Jeff Fulton) When Husker Du went “KAPUT” in the late 80’s, both Bob Mould (lead guitar, song writer and vocals) and Grant Hart (drums, song writer and vocals) went  their separate ways, each going on to create intriguing new musical projects.   Both Hart’s solo effort, Intolerance and…

  • International Day Against DRM is Tuesday, May 6th

    Here at 8bitrocket, we fully support a DRM-Free world. A place where you control the content you PURCHASE. Yes, I said purchase.  There are just pennies on the dollar for the developers of EVERY medium in today’s world of easy stolen streams and file sharing networks.  That’s why we fully…

  • BASIC 50th Anniversary: Riding An 8-bit Rocket

    I was 9 years old when I first touched the keyboard of an Apple II computer.  It was 1979, and I was visiting my friend Eric’s house.   Eric’s dad was a computer engineer at Hughes Aircraft, and he was the first person I ever knew who owned his own…

  • Applesoft BASIC JavaScript Emulator: My First Game (from 1979)

    I found this emulator the other day : Applesoft BASIC in JavaScript   last week while at GDC, and it got me thinking about the first games I wrote on my friend Eric’s Apple II back in the 70’s .  I was 9 years old when I first touched the keyboard…

  • Final Mochi Comments and Flash Game License

    Jeff Fulton (8bitjeff) In about 2005 I started this blog with help from 8bitsteve purely to experiment with game development and design. Many of the older posts are gone or missing after many transitions between various blogging software, but many still exist.  When I first started to make a few…

  • Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!! Play our old Flash Game Mission Leprechaun

    Happy St Patrick’s Day!!! In honor of this day (and my Scotch Irish roots) plus the demise of Mochi (where this game was initially published), I present to everyone who is NOT on mobile, a game I created about 7 years ago (with my sister Mari and Steve Fulton helping…

  • Goodbye and Thanks Mochi Media

    On March 14th Mochiland, the blog that has been the mouthpiece for Machi Media since 2006, announced that the array of Mochi Media services for Flash game developers will go offline on March 31st.  Josh Larson wrote a logn detailed message to describe the situtation. Here is the most important part…

  • Celebrate the Web’s 25th Anniversary with O’Reilly – 50% off all Web Dev e-books

    So you have been waiting to get your hot little hands on a new bo0k to compete in the emerging market for web and HTML5 (for mobile and web). O’Reilly makes it easier today with 50% all e-books related to web development in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the…

  • Pennywise – Word From The Wise 33 1/3 7 inch Ep – Old Shit From My Attic

    By Jeff Fulton (8bitjeff) Penny Wise – Word From The Wise 33 1/3 7 inch Ep – Old Shit From My Attic. I remember picking this seminal, LA South Bay Suburb Punk Rock disc at the old Go Boy record store on PCH and Ave F.  This vinyl, 7 inch…

  • To Coin A phrase: “Flappy Birded”

    Phrase: Flappy Birded (Verb) Definition: Used when a the internet-at-large destroys an honest and earnest individual because said person had the audacity to become successful. Usually occurs when said person is not already famous  or is not deemed to be “legitimate” or “worthy” of success, and or when the product…

  • Compile Me Baby! Dedicated to the 2005-2010 Indie Flash Game Underground!

    Compile Me Baby! Dedicated to the 2005-2010 Indie Flash Game Underground! To all those that were through through the Mochi and Flash Game License Years. WE salute you.

  • Big Drill Car / Chemical People Yellow Vinyl Cheap Trick / Kiss Cover 45 RPM (all the crap in my attic)

    By Jeff Fulton Big Drill Car / Chemical People Yellow Vinyl Cheap Trick / Kiss Cover 45 RPM (all the crap in my attic) Back in college (1988 – 1993) we followed the local Los Angeles bands ALL, Big Drill Car, and the Chemical People as they played all over…

  • Torrents are killing the technical book industry.

    Torrents are killing the technical book industry and making it really difficult for me to provide a decent holiday season for my family.  I know times are tough all over, but the number of stolen copies of our three books compared to the numbers sold is almost 1000 to 1.…

  • Monday Monday Monday (Cyber that is). – Save 50% on ALL O’Reilly Ebooks & Videos

    By Jeff Fulton Monday Monday Monday (Cyber that is). – Save 50% on ALL O’Reilly Ebooks & Videos Today only, all O’Reilly E-Books and Videos are 50% off.  This includes our HTML5 Canvas 2nd Edition.  

  • Outpost 2 is quite simply the best free web game ever created!

    By Jeff Fulton (8bitjeff) A couple old buddies of mine from the UK and Germany have created what I consider to be quite simply the best free Web game ever created. It’s a retro-style top-down shooter / adventure game. Think Half Life if viewed from above. And you have an…

  • Atari 8-bit Computer Demon Attack (1982) – Full Boxed Edition (all the old crap in my attic)

    By Jeff Fulton Today we are going to take a look at one of a small handful of Atari 8-bit computer game cartridges that I have stowed in my attic. This time the game is Demon Attack, one of the most popular Atari 2600 games, but this version is for…

  • Minor Threat Salad Days 45 single with poster sleeve (all the stuff in my attic)

    Minor Threat “Salad Days” 45 RPM single with poster sleeve (all the stuff in my attic) This is a three song masterpiece of mid-80’s DC punk! Here is the next item I found in my attic.  This is the 1985 release of the Minor Threat (one of their final releases…

  • Resetting what appears to be a dead Garmin Forerunner 210

    Resetting what appears to be a dead Garmin Forerunner 210 (works for 110 also) The Garmin Forerunner 210 is a great little device that allows for both Satellite GPS distance tracking and heart rate monitoring at he same time. As well as a host of other features this is one…