• Play Halo 2600 Online Now!

    Ed Fries has created a new home brew Atari 2600 masterpiece, Halo 2600. You play Master Chief as you run around the multiple 64 screen levels blasting baddies, and collecting weapons and other goodies. Check out the Atari Age thread on the creation of the game. There are physical carts…

  • Vortix Games Reviews The Essential Guide To Flash Games

    Hey, I just noticed this review from Vortix Games for our book The Essential Guide To Flash Games.   It’s a very nice review, and I think it really captures what the book is all about.  Here is a quote: “It is not a book for coders or a book for…

  • If I Won The Lottery I’d Open An Atari Store

    If I won the lottery, I mean like $100,000,000 lottery, I would open an Atari Store. It would be in some kind of upscale mall or location  like Downtown Disney, Universal City Walk, The Beverly Center, The Grove, downtown San Francisco or Times Square The store would act just like…

  • Help – Trackback spam

    We are new to the WordPress world. While 99.99% of everything in this new land is awesome, there a a few annoyances. The biggest is the literal flood of Trackback link spam from “viral marketing” and “affiliate workers”. We get dozens of track-back link spam to mostly (99%) complete crap…

  • No More Corporate Teat – #4 – Feast or Famine

    It has been exactly one week since I stepped outside corporate America to have a go on my own as an independent developer. Those 16 years spend toiling under the thumb of increasingly Office Space and Dilbert-esque corporate environments cannot be completely discounted as a waste of my time though.…

  • Atari “Asteroids” Movie Director’s Quote

    In a recent interview with ComingSoon.net , the director of the upcoming Asteroids movie, Lorenzo di Bonaventura had this to say about the concept: “…we really went after a mythology on the level of “Star Wars.” We’ll see if we succeeded or not, but it’s not a simple like, the…

  • No More Corporate Teat – #3 – The First Day

    Today was the first real work-day of my non-corporate development life. Since I have an iPad contract that starts up soon (I am a little scared as the client is delaying a little on getting it initiated) I decided to re-acquaint myself with Xcode and the iPod/Pad development work-flow. First…

  • A TRON “Legacy”?

    There will be a new TRON movie out this year and no one could be happier than I. I loved the first TRON movie when it was released back in 1982. While it was not a great movie, it came out at the exact right moment for me, smack-dab in…

  • RSS Feedburner Feed Fixed

    One thing we forgot when we moved the site was to update the Feedburner to point to the new site. I just remembered to do it this morning. Here is the new Feedburner RSS link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/8bitrocketcomBlog …which also happens to be the OLD Feedburner RSS link…go figure 🙂

  • No More Corporate Teat – #2 – The Last Day

    Today was my last day as an employee of a major corporation. I am very sad to leave so many of my friends, but excited at what the future holds. I am in the midst of setting up the consulting arm of 8bitrocket Studios called Twin Engine Web Systems. There…

  • Tutorial Mess : Please Help

    In our recent move, there was simply no good way way to move over all of our tutorials.  We altered the format so many times in 3.5 years, that moving them to something structured like Word Press was a huge problem. We have fixed as many issues “automagically” as possible,…

  • Does The Windows 7 Phone Open-Up Silverlight Games Development?

    Microsoft recently released the beta of the Windows 7 development tools, and Silverlight is big part of that release.   Silverlight can used in conjunction with the XNA framework which gives Windows 7 Mobile apps access to Xbox Live, among other features.  As well, (and as it should be), Windows 7…

  • New 8bitrocket.com Site Opens

    If the DNS has propagated, you should be looking at the brand-spanking new 8bitrocket.com web site. It should look much like the old one, but a bit more generic as well. We are working on theming to get back a bit more of retro-on, but for now, this will work.…

  • No More Corporate Teat – #1 – I Quit!

    This is the white (wipe) -board I have used weekly for 13 years to note to-do lists and other things necessary for my day job. I only have one more “to do” this upcoming week and that is to pack my belongings and not let the door hit me on…

  • The Polish Adobe Flex User Group Really Likes ‘The Essential Guide To Flash Games”

    We’ve reached Poland!  The Polish Adobe Flex User Group just reviewed The Essential Guide To Flash Games, and they seem to really like it! “In my opinion, it is the most valuable book about seriously flash games developing available on the market. The most important thing: authors does not avoid…

  • Undercooked: The Origins And Evolution Of 8bitrocket.com

    In The summer of 1996 we started a site named WheatMedia.com, dedicated to web design. This was our first domain name, and first real foray into tackling the World Wide Web.

  • Contest: Jay Is Games Casual Gameplay Design Contest #8

    Design a game that incorporates the theme Sandbox . It doesn’t have to be complex nor large in scope.  You may use any browser-based technology platform Due date: August 1, 2010 Contest Site: http://jayisgames.com/archives/2010/06/game_design_competition_8.php

  • Contest: Kongregate is going mobile

    Here’s your opportunity to contribute to the mobile world. Adobe and Kongregate are working together to bring you the Mobile Flash Game Contest with Adobe Flash, which we’re giving away nearly $30,000 in prizes! We are hoping to engage users with fun games as part of a rich Internet experience…

  • Contest : Flash Game License “Cell Your Flash Game”

    The rules are simple: submit a high-quality Flash game that can be played and enjoyed on Android 2.2 smart phones. You can enter a brand new game or port one of your existing games, and you can enter more than one game in this contest. By entering, you agree to…

  • Contest: Mochi Media – Mobile Gaming Contest with Adobe

    Mochi Media and Adobe are putting on a Flash game contest and extending through the fall. You may remember that Mochi was one of the first to develop a mobile site for Android with Adobe’s new Flash player. Well, this ‘Made for Mobile’ contest is for developers to create games…

  • The Essential Guide To Flash Games Conspiracy?

    Over at GamingYouWay.com, they might have found some sort of odd conspiracy from the pages of the Essential Guide To Flash Games Book, and all over the web. Here is a quote:

  • Reviews Section

    This is the new “reviews” section that collects all of our reviews together!

  • 8bitrocket Discovers WordPress! Move Will Occur Within The Next 2 Weeks

    We have decided to move 8bitrocket.com to Word Press.  We have experimented with it in the past couple days, and it appears that it will help us solve a lot of problems (and of course, add new ones).  We are moving all the content right now, creating 303 redirects, and…

  • Flash Not Even Close To Dead: 5 Reasons Why Flash Still Lives At The Top And May Never Be Defeated

    5 Good reasons why Flash is here to stay (and most involve Google). 1. YouTube.com : Even though youtube.com added some HTML 5 video support, it’s still Flash that makes youtube.com tick. Embedding, full-screen video, standard codecs, interactive elements, variable streams,  protected streams, HTTP streaming, web cam and microphone support,…

  • Flash/Adobe/HTML5/Apple Wars Bring Opportunity To Developers: 721% Rise In HTML5 Job Postings

    The Apple/Flash wars have had a nice side-affect for freelance job seekers: Opportunity. According to freelancer.com,  there was a 721% rise in HTML5 related job posting in Q2 2010.  This made HTML5 the #2 ranked technology in the “Freelancer.com Fast 50”. Here is a quote from Freelancer.com: “The Apple Effect:…

  • What Does A $49.99 Safe And Sane Firework Look Like?

    I bought a single firework this year for $49.99. Ever wonder what one of those looks like when fired? Here is your chance to *not* spend $49.99 next year. To be honest, this was far better than all the other fireworks we bought, combined (most lasted less than 10 seconds)…but…

  • The Day The Soccer Peaked: Landon Donovan Penatly Kick Goal Vs. Ghana 2010 World Cup

    This video I took at the Arcata Theater in Arcata CA, the home of Humbolt State. It’s a small town in Northern, CA. We were on vacation , and this theater was showing the USA vs. Ghana game. There were about 300 people there. Arcata is about 250 miles north…

  • Customizable Full-Screen Flash Fireworks Show

    Here is a link to our customizable, Flash Fireworks show.  This is a link to the .swf so you can view it in full-screen mode.  Enjoy!

  • The Retro Roms Blog – An amazing source to find new games for old tech

    I stumbled across the Retro Roms blog today. This is a great site that focuses on new games for retro hardware. It also has some great general posts on the subject. Here are a couple of the ones that kept me around longer than I have time for: Dr. Mario…

  • Vacation Game Storm #2: Frog BBQ

    Note: I’ve always felt that the best time for me to come-up with new ideas for games is when I’m on vacation.  I recently went on vacation with my family.  These are some of the game design notes I took. We arrived at our cabin in Redwoods National Park late…

  • Flash v. HTML 5 For Video? The YouTube API Blog speaks out

    Flash v. HTML 5 For Video? YouTube API Blog speaks out I have spent the better part of the last month re-teaching myself Javascript (the OOP type this time around) and taking a dive into the HTML5 canvas. Steve and I are working on a book about the canvas so…

  • Atari 7800 Retro Inspection In Retro Gamer Magazine #78

    Atari 7800 Retro Inspection In Retro Gamer Magazine #78 My favorite Atari console of all time is the Atari 7800. It could play 99% of the Atari 2600 games and it had very nice versions of some of my favorite arcade games (Food Fight, Galaga, Pole Position 2, Joust, etc).…

  • Vacation Game Storm #1: Free Budget Breakfast Buffet

    Note: I’ve always felt that the best time for me to come-up with new ideas for games is when I’m on vacation.  I recently went on vacation with my family.  These are some of the game design notes I took. On our first night of the trip we stayed at…

  • 8bitrocket.com Declares Today As Landon Donovan Day!

    Let July 23rd, 2010 forever be known as Landon Donovan Day!

  • Strong Adobe CS5 Sales Show The Battle For Hearts And Minds Is Far From Over

    The Wall Street Journal is reporting Adobe sales at $905 million for the first part of this year.  Here is a nice quote: “…Apple’s stance does not yet appear to be deterring purchasers of CS5…“ What does this mean?  It means that the corporate buyers, the ones with deep pockets…

  • 8bitrocket.com: The End Is Nye? We Need Ideas On Where To Move.

    Today our hosting company emailed us to tell that our site uses too many resources.  They want to move us to a much more expensive plan.  One that simply does not justify the cost. We have collected almost 1000 stories and tutorials in the past 4 years, plus almost 100…

  • 8bitrocket.com @ E3 Report #1 : Lucha Libre Fight While The Game Industry Dies (updated)

    So we went to E3 today, and we saw few things worth mentioning (which we might cover later), however, our general impressions can be summed up with this story from Cracked.com: The Day the Gaming Industry Died: Impressions from E3 2010 by David Wong We saw one GREAT thing while…

  • 8bitrocket.com @ E3 2010

    We are attending E3 2010 this year.  We hope to bring you back all the “news” of stuff on display for Flash, Web, Viral, Retro, Mobile, Indie game developers. However, we assume, just like last year, the entire show will ignore this part of the game industry.  If we can…

  • Apparenty, 360 “Natal” is Named “Kinect”, And Apparenty Someone Jumped The Gun On Talking About It

    It’s now official (maybe) that the Xbox 360 “Motion Control” device, once named “Natal” will be named “Kinect”, and apparently we are not supposed to know this yet. The USA Today game “blog” (column, whatever) went with a story about it today, that now looks like this: Oops. Someone jumped…

  • USA v. England : A No Win Situation For 8bitrocket.com

    Today the USA plays against England in their first game of the FIFA 2010 World Cup.  Whenever the USA plays England, it becomes an uncomfortable situation for 8bitrocket.com.  We have many friends who live all over the world, and usually we get along famously.  However, when we play each other…