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Top 10 “Other” Ways To Punish A Laptop Computer (Besides Shooting It 8 Times) (Video)
By Steve Fulton [iframe width=”550″ height=”440″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/OugrYsr7pOA” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen][/iframe] A few weeks ago we saw a video of a guy punishing a Windows laptop by shooting it with 8 hallow point bullets. Now while we are all for punishing Windows laptops (they certainly punish us all day long), we think…
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Stuck trying to think of a mobile game idea? Try App-o-Tron.
By Jeff Fulton If you are stuck spinning your wheels, trying to think of the next “Angry Birds”, “Fruit Ninja”, or “Plants v. Zombies”, why not try the App-o-Tron mobile game idea generator. It couldn’t hurt and probably will come up with better ideas than 90% of the current games in…
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Atari Clarifies Pong Indie Developer Challenge Royalties
We received this from Atari’s PR Team today to clarify royalties on winning games: “Pong Indie Developer Challenge was conceived as a way for the gaming community to celebrate Atari’s and Pong’s upcoming 40th anniversary. It is a great opportunity for indie developers to have a successful launch on a…
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Instead Of Lighting Up The Indie Game Dev Community, Atari Pong Contest Raises Familar Questions About Ownership And Intellectual Property
“Enter Game Development Contests At Your Own Risk!” We’ve written about this in the past, both online and in our book The Essential Guide To Flash Games. “Game Contests” are not always what they seem. Not “all” mind you, but many “contests” are simple ways for sites and publishers…
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While iOS Builds, we play Atari 800 Games
(Jeff Fulton) The History of Apple (early at least) and Atari are linked together in many ways, so it is fitting that while we compile iOS apps, we play Atari 800 games on the machine next to the Mac. Thought it would be fun and nostalgic to post these today.
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Up Atari’s Sleeve: An $100,000 iOS Game Contest To Reimagine Pong!
So, what Atari had up it’s sleeve was a $100,000 contest to re-imagine Pong. While this might appear to be a let-down for fans angling for something new (i.e Roller Coaster Tycoon 4, Food Fight 2012), for indie developers it’s an AMAZING CHANCE to help redefine the quintessential…
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Atari has something up its’ sleeve…
So Atari has something special to announce tomorrow. We are hoping it is something classic…
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Distellamaps : Ben Fry Visualizes Atari 2600 Code : Suitable For Blowing Your Mind (And Framing)
Sometime it seems like we miss some pretty good stuff because we are busy working and not trying to scour the interbaun for really cool things (any more). One of those things that appears to have passed us by are Ben Fry’s Distellamaps. These were made almost two years…
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8bitrocket.com Interviews Johnny Wilson Former Editor Of Computer Gaming World
By Steve Fulton (Note: A Portion of this interview ran on http://www.gamecareerguide.com/ December, 2011) Johnny L. Wilson was the editor of Computer Gaming World magazine for about 10 years, and in that time he saw computers games rise to become the dominant game medium of the 20th century. He is the co-author of…
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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…
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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…
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Flash Gaming Summit Coming up Fast! (March 4th)
The Flash Gaming Summit returns again this year as the première event for Flash game developers. We were honored to both be invited to speak (we could not sync up our plans unfortunately) and to be judges in the game competition. We LOVED the first one we attended, and…
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Interesting notes on External Interface JavaScript Call-Backs To Flash
This week we had a big project due for a new Movie that is coming out in a few weeks time. The majority of the site was built-in Flash but I needed to use an External Interface call to JavaScript in order to display dynamic content…
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8bitrocket.com Forums Are Back To Manual Registration
The 8bitrocket.com forums are using a manual, closed registration system. If you are already a member, please click here: If you would like to request a membership, please send your name and email address to into(at)8bitrocket(dotcom, and we will get you registered. Why have we down this? Because we were…
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Atari Vets “Getting The Band Back Together” To Rock Mobile Games Like’s It’s 1979 All Over Again
Denis Koble, Rich Adam, Ed Logg, Lyle Rains, Bruce Merritt, Tim Skelly, Owen R. Ruben, Ed Rotberg, Bob Smith, and Rob Zdydel are forming a game company named Innovative Leisure, and you should take notice. If you don’t know who those guys are, they are the designers, programmers, and masterminds…
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Atari Nerd Fantasy: What If Our Games Had Been Released As Cartridges For A Classic Console (photo)
We were thinking over the weekend that it would be nice to have some kind of physical way to represent the many games we have made over the years. Since most of them have been web games, they are fleeting digital objects to everyone (except us that is!). We decided…
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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…
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When Social Media Fails
This week I found out that someone I know is in a very bad situation. Actually, the situation is dire, really horrible, and honestly, unimaginable. I went to school with this person, and for a couple of years we spent a good amount of time together. This person is…
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Star Wars Uncut The Director’s Cut Released : Another Sign Of The Apocalypse?
The current Mayan Countdown has us at 331 days left until the end of the world, so we here at 8bitrocket.com have decided to spend some time looking for stories that we think show that something weird is going on this year. The next Sign Of Doomsday: Star Wars Uncut : The Directors…
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Corporate Development Work Almost Killed Me
(Jeff Fulton) Corporate Development Work Almost Killed Me First the good news. I no longer work for a large corporation and I am am doing very well health-wise. Except for a few minor exercise related injuries, I am the healthiest I have been since 2006. From 1997 – 2006 I loved…
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336 Days Left : The Next Sign Of The Apocalypse : Microsoft Adds Achievements For Coding Into Visual Studio
The current Mayan Countdown has us at 336 days left until the end of the world, so we here at 8bitrocket.com have decided to spend some time looking for stories that we think show that something weird is going on this year. The next Sign Of Doomsday: Microsoft Adds Achievements For Coding Into…
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Stop SOPA and PIPA: To quote an old NRA slogan. If you OUTLAW web sites, only OUTLAWS will have Web Sites.
(Jeff Fulton) Even our Book Publisher is against SOPA and PIPA O’Reilly, (our book publisher) is one of the many companies with intellectual property that would supposedly be “saved” by massively under-thought and over-protective SOPA and PIPA online Intellectual property bills, is going dark today (along with Wikipedia, and many other web…
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346 Days Left : Next Sign Of The Apocalypse : The Kindle Fire Holding It’s Own Against The Apple iPad
The current Mayan Countdown has us at 346 days left until the end of the world, so we here at 8bitrocket.com have decided to spend some time looking for stories that we think show that something weird is going on this year. The next Sign Of Doomsday: The Kindle Fire Holding It’s…
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Where is the Point Blank Remake?
(Jeff Fulton) Point Blank and Point Blank 2 were 2 of the best party style games for the original Playstation. You needed a “gun controller” that oddly hooked up to the video “in” on your TV and to the controller port to make it work. I have both still on an old…
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348 Days Left : Next Sign Of The Apocalypse : Tom Chick Goes Solo
The current Mayan Countdown has us at 348 days left until the end of the world, so we here at 8bitrocket.com have decided to spend some time looking for stories that we think show that something weird is going on this year. The next Sign Of Doomsday: Tom Chick goes solo Tom…
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349 Days Left To Code: Next Sign Of Doomsday : Bob Cringley Quits Writing About Technology
The current Mayan Countdown has us at 349 days left until the end of the world, so we here at 8bitrocket.com have decided to spend some time looking for stories that we think show that something weird is going on this year. The next Sign Of Doomsday: Bob Cringley Quits Writing About…
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351 Days Left To Play: Next Sign Of Doomsday : Adobe Sales Are Up
The current Mayan Countdown has us at 351 days left until the end of the world, so we here at 8bitrocket.com have decided to spend some time looking for stories that we think show that something weird is going on. The next Sign Of Doomsday: Adobe sales are up It turns out,…
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352 Days Left To Play: First Sign Of Doomsday : Atari Defends Its’ Intellectual Property
The current Mayan Countdown has us at 352 days left until the end of the world, so we here at 8bitrocket.com have decided to spend some time looking for stories that we think show that something weird is going on. The first Sign Of Doomsday: Atari starts to defend its…
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My Interview With Johnny Wilson (CGW) Live on GameCareerGuide.com
A few months back I got the urge to catch-up with Johnny Wilson, the long-time editor of Computer Gaming World. I do this from time-to-time. I get nostalgic about old games or magazines, and then attempt to look-up some of the personalities and get them to speak on record about…
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spaceport.io Takes some of the Pain Out of HTML5 Game Development By Helping you convert AS3 to HTML5
Wow, it’s getting hard to keep track of all the exciting new APIs, SDKs and platforms emerging for HTML5 game development! We just took a look at Ben Savage’s spaceport.io project today, and it looks really interesting. There is both an SDK that helps you to convert…
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Atari Nerd Chronicles: The Best Christmas Ever
Although I had no idea in early 1981, my brother and I were video game obsessed twins on a collision-course with the pinnacle of ultimate geekdom: computer ownership. We both loved arcade games and owned an Atari 2600 that we played constantly. We spent all of our money on…
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The 12 Years Of Atari Christmas 1981-1992
On Christmas ’81 Atari gave to me, a VCS under the Christmas tree On Christmas ’82 Atari gave to me, two arcade conversions and a VCS under the Christmas tree On Christmas ’83 Atari gave to me three Swordquest titles two arcade conversions and a VCS under the…
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HTML5 Canvas Game: Tic Tac Pro Quack The Glass – Goes Gold
8bitrocket in conjunction with Producto Studios and in association with TicTacDontion.com is proud to announce the launch of our HTML5 Canvas only game targeted to work on ANY HTML5 browser platform (mobile or desktop). 8bitrocket and Producto Studios did all of the game programming in HTML5 and TicTacDonation.com provided the…
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Atari 80’s Christmas Commercials (More Filler For A Slow Week)
Nothing brings back 8-bit Christmas memories like atrocious video game commercials from the 80’s. The funny is, we LOVED these commercials. They represented the mainstream accepting our love of Atari and video games…at least that is how we thought about it. Anyway, here are a couple for your viewing…
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Atari History Book Kickstarter Project Launches
By Jeff Fulton Marty Goldberg and Curt Vendel have launched their Kickstarter.com project to help get their massive Atari History book project off the ground. Here is a video about the project: [iframe frameborder=”0″ height=”410px” src=”http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ataribook/atari-history-book-volume-1-beginnings-to-1984/widget/video.html” width=”480px”/]
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Image Gallery : From Altair To Nintendo : Christmas Themed Computer And Video Games Ads and Editorial Pages, 1975-1989
When I was growing up, getting into the Christmas spirit usually involved reading my favorite computer and video game magazines and paging through the special Christmas content created just for the holiday. Since the physical magazine era is quickly coming to a close, I thought we would salute the golden…
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Italian Review of HTML5 Canvas : fantastico!
Here is a review of our book HTML5 Canvas in Italian. The English translation appears to be pretty positive, however, the Italian looks better…so here is a quote in Italian: L’esempio che viene discusso e realizzato è veramente fantastico: un video puzzle. Si tratta di un video che viene diviso…
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HTML5 Puzzle Game : Color Drop : Game Demo + AS3 vs. JavaScript Code Comparison
Color Drop was game that was featured in our book The Essential guide To Flash Games. Earlier this month I decided to to see how hard it would be to tackle a similar game for HTML5 Canvas for the next version of HTML5 Canvas for O’Reilly. Color Drop HTML5 Canvas is…
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What the hell are you running from?
When I was in 5th grade I started to run. I ran with a friend named Richie and we would circle the play ground of our Manhattan Beach grammar school 20 or 30 times per recess. I was never interested in running as a competition, just as something to do.…
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8bitrocket 5 Year Anniversary : Throwing Up the Past and Top-10 Of Everything We could Think Of
Today is our 5 year anniversary. It’s been a roller-coaster-ride-kinda-year here at 8bitrocket Towers, with many ups and downs, sharp turns and thrills, but at the end of the ride, we just feel like throwing up. When we started 5 years ago, there were almost no sites talking about making…
