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King of American Kong
I have been feverishly trying to put the final touches on my latest game, Pumpkin Man, but have been stalled by…
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Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : Feb. 14, 2008
The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. On GamingYourWay.com, Squize has finished his latest commercial…
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Tutorial: Using Flash CS3 and Actionscript 3 to create Atari 7800 Asteroids Part 3
In Part 1 we covered creating an array of pre-calculated vector values for animating our player ship. We also covered caching…
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Bookworm Adventures Review
Bookworm Adventures Platforms:PC Links: Official Site Game Play: A serious update to the Pop Cap classic Bookworm Deluxe. Fight monsters…
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Alien Shooter Vengeance Review
Alien Shooter Vengeance Platforms:PC Links: Official Site Gameplay:Blast scores of aliens in this 2.5D isometric shooter. The game has the…
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Mid-CoreGamer.com Update, Mid-Core Manifesto 1.3, Mid-Core Gamer Review Format
We have been working feverishly to get our support for the Mid-Core community launched. We have received tons of feedback, and…
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Midcore Gamer: Update, Web site, Wiki, Creative Commons
We’ve had a flood of interest and feedback over our Midcore Manifesto posted last week. and much of it has been…
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Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : Feb 7, 2008
The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest to Flash game developers. Scott Jeppesen, a friend, and recent new…
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Anatomy of a Flash Game: Lesson 2 – Creating Enemies And The Game Environment
The good people over at Mochiland have posted part two of my four part tutorial on making a game in Flash…
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West Coast Loss is East Coast Gain
In a few days, our good friend and fellow game programming/playing guru, Alan Donnelly will be packing up his life (and…
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SFXR: Completely awesome Sound FX Generator For Games
**** Note, if you cannot find SFXR at the ludumdare blog any more, you can find it http://www.woolyss.free.fr/chipmusic.php#generators . This site…
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Mid-Core Gamer Manifesto
A few weeks back, we here at 8bitrocket.com declared ourselves to be Mid-Core Gamers. Jeff’s declaration was met with a smattering…
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Flash Game Development Blog World : January 31, 2008
The latest in Blog entries that might interest Flash game developers. Gaming Your Way has a new entry on Wii Game…
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Tutorial: Using Flash CS3 and Actionscript 3 to create Atari 7800 Asteroids Part 2
In Part 1 we covered creating an array of pre-calculated vector values for 36 angles. These 36 angles were used to…
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Flash Game Development Blog Finds : January 23, 2008
The latest in Blog entries that might interest Flash game developers. Jobe Makar’s Blog has a very interesting entry on enemy…
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Tutorial: Using Flash CS3 and Actionscript 3 to create Atari 7800 Asteroids Part 1
In this series of tutorials, we will explore some optimization techniques to create a fully blitted Asteroids style game. Although the…
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Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: MovieClip Buttons In MovieClip Classes
(Note: I’m converting my Flash game “Spin City” from AS2 to AS3 so it can be re-skinned for another project. I’ve…
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Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: GetURL()
(Note: I’m converting my Flash game “Spin City” from AS2 to AS3 so it can be re-skinned for another project. I’ve…
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Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: Update
This is just a quick update to say that the Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3 series will continue this…
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Trading Games The Easy Way : Goozex + Scotch Size 0, + APC
If you are like me (and Lord help you if you are) you have been buying and playing video games for…
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Flash Game Programming Inter-Web Round up
I like to search the inter-web for juicy nuggets of Flash Game programming wisdom in my free time (what a boring…
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Planet Source Code For Flash Game Development
Recently, I needed to find possible methods to create accurate movement for a maze-chase Pacman variant that I am working on…
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Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: Numerical Types Rules Of Use
(Note: I’m converting my Flash game “Spin City” from AS2 to AS3 so it can be re-skinned for another project. I’ve…
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Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: Static vs. Const
(Note: I’m converting my Flash game “Spin City” from AS2 to AS3 so it can be reskinned for another project. I’ve…
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Moving From Flash AS2 To Flash AS3: Packages
(Note: I’m converting my Flash game “Spin City” from AS2 to AS3 so it can be reskinned for another project. I’ve…
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The Role Of A “Story”: My Time In The Wilderness Of Japanese-style RPGs
A few years back I was aching for new RPG to play, but I wanted something would remind me of the…
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To Coin A Phrase?
It looks like Jeff’s blog yesterday about being a “Mid-Core” gamer has struck a chord with a few people. We had…
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Am I a MID-CORE gamer?
I hear the term GAMER all the time. Usually it is used with disgust as someone asks if I am one.…
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Good Game Code v. Optimized Game Code
I have to admit it, I like good code. By good code, I mean event models, design patterns, Hungarian Notation and…
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Merry Christmas From 8bitrocket.com!
Merry Christmas from 8bitrocket.com! We hope you get (and give) all the great games that you and everyone you know wants…
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Flash AS3 Speed Tests: Rendering and Update Models
About a week ago I jumped into a discussion on Flashkit about AS3 sprite sheets, rendering, etc. There were a lot…
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8bitrocket.com One Year Anniversary
Our one year anniversary has come and gone, and I just wanted to mark the occasion with a list of the…
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Pollypocket.com Soccer Kid
When you make marketing based web games it is very tough to know if people like them or not. There is…
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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…
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Another Person’s Game: Vector Runner
Vector Runner is a fast paced classic wire frame vector game in the style of the Tempest and Battle Zone. I…
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10 Lines Of Silence For Evel Knievel
… … … … … … … … … … The legend of my childhood, Evel Knievel died today at the…
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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…
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JoytoKey: A Joy to Use With Flash Games
We here at 8bitrocket.com try to give our support to anything that makes the Flash Game experience better: From optimized bitmap…
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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…
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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…
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8bitrocket.com Finally Gets An Alexa.com Ranking!
I know that Alexa.com is not the best source for traffic rankings (hey, neither is Neilson, so there!), but I just…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Spooky Jack-o-Lantern Designer (2007)
Design and print “spooky” jack-o-lanterns in this easy and fun activity for kids.
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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,…
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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…
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“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…
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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…
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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…
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Review: “Carnival Games” For The Nintendo Wii (7.5 out of 10)
“Carnival Games” from Global Star software for the Nintendo Wii is the best game ever made about, umm, Carnival Games. This…
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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…
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“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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Required Reading: Classic Computer Magazine Archive
The Classic Computer Magazine Archive (http://www.atarimagazines.com) boasts several complete or nearly complete magazine archives, mostly from the 1980’s. The archive concentrates…
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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…
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Required Reading: “On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise And Fall Of Commodore” by Brian Bagnall
I have to admit, when I avoided reading On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise And Fall Of Commodore by Brian Bagnall…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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Midnight Flash Game Design #5: Perfect Coding Can’t Fix A Bad Game Design
Well, I completely blew my quest to finish Fireworks Blast Challenege in one month. Part if it was time, but of…
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Retro Blaster
Blast through 35 levels of pixelated, retroblasting goodness! Keep shooting, buy extra weapons, and prepare to fight the ultimate evil. Game…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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 . …
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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…
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Commodork vs. Atari Nerds : Common Ground?
A few days ago we received a nice message from Rob O’Hara, the author of the the book Commodork. Rob had…
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Commercial Gaming Sites Start Adding Wii Browser Game Support
Most internet savvy Wii owners know that the instant start-up, Wiicade.com has been around as long as the Wii has been…
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Midnight Flash Game Design #3: Calculating Distance And Handling Keyboard Input
As I continue this project of creating a game in 27 days (hours), I have realized that my “one hour a…
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Opera Guide To The Wii Web Browser: Highlights
The Opera Web Site has posted an in-depth article on formatting web sites to work with the Wii. A few months back…
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The Punk Rock Group’s Retro Madness
In a bloglines.com search for Atari 800 (yes, I have THAT much free time tonight), I came across this very interesting…
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Midnight Flash Game Design #2: Public Domain Music For Flash, And A Challenge
To continue from my last entry , I am trying to finish a Flash game in 27 days. This probably does…
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Midnight Flash Game Design #1: Taking Stock And Narrowing Scope
So I just finished my latest installment of of a ridiculously long history of Atari, and it ended with predictable results. …
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Flash Game Programming: Game Programming Blogs
One of the best things about game development is the plethora of great resources on the web at your disposal. From…
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Advanced Flash 8 Game Programming: A Finite State Machine Game Loop.
One of the most unorganized things in my games are the actual game loops. The game loop is the meat of…
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Atari Timeline: 1975
1975: Atari releases Compugraph Foto Machine Atari, Inc. introduces the COMPUGRAPH FOTO, a coin-operated machine that printed life-sized pictures on computer paper…
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Guitar Hero : Air Guitar Stance Poll
I’m very curious. How do you others play “Guitar Hero”? Do you playing sitting down like Keith Richards, standing up swinging your arm…
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Space Eggs
The Space Eggs are multiplying! Destroy them all before they return! A fast action Asteroids inspired shooter.
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Indie Game Showcase: New Star Soccer 3 – the best $20 I’ve spent in a LONG TIME!
Do all the fancy controls of the Fifa series confuse, frustrate or annoy you? Do you value playability over fancy rendered…
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Flash: Fixing getTimer() To Stop (Some) Game Cheaters
The one and only Flash Guru Jobe Maker posted this story on his blog today: Cheating – Controlling the Speed of…
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The Atari History Timeline: 1973
1973 March: Pong Is A hit! By March of 1973, Pong was deemed a bona fide phenomenon for Atari Inc.. They…
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Jobe Makar’s Blog
Jobe Makar, one of the premier authorities on Flash game programming, and one of the geniuses behind the Electro-server multi player…
