• Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Thursday, Aug 06, 2009

    Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Thursday, Aug 06, 2009 I know you are going to play the world tiniest violin for me, but reviewing games is hard. No matter how much I try, I’ll never be able to grade every Mochi game, as there are a flood of new…

  • Possibly The Scariest/Best Flash Game Contest Ever

    I have finally found what might be the scariest/best Flash Game Contest ever created.  Fellow Flash Game Developers, I show you this: Do you recognize that logo in the bottom-right corner?  That’s right, it’s Yahtzee Crowshaw from Zero Punctuation at http://www.escapistmagazine.com, right now the best game reviewer on the planet.…

  • Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Wednesday, Aug 05, 2009

    Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Wednesday, Aug 05, 2009 Wow, what a great day full of wonderful Mochi games. Oh, we have a few mediocre games, but really, this is the most A grades I have given out. Maybe Wednesday will be the new golden day of gaming (like…

  • Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up:Tuesday, Aug 04, 2009

    Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Tuesday, Aug 04, 2009 Here’s the deal. Don’t piss me off. You know you have pissed me off when your game aggravates me more than the FIVE (count em up), FIVE dress up games. Let me repeat that, FIVE DRESS UP GAMES! FIVE! FIVE!…

  • Clayton Grey’s Blit Layer Erase Speed Test

    Clayton Grey’s Blit Layer Erase Speed Test A super diligent and incredibly intelligent (aren’t you all) 8bitrocket reader (and now contributor), Clayton Grey has been running some tests on blitting entire screen-sized portions of BitmapData to clear the screen and re-paint.   He doesn’t have a blog of his own,…

  • Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Monday, Aug 03, 2009

    Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Monday, Aug 03, 2009 There are some pretty good games on tap for today: I just did one of these last night, so I am surprised by the overall quality just a few hours later. One game didn’t work properly, but there were no…

  • Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Sunday, Aug 02, 2009

    Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Sunday, Aug 02, 2009 It’s late Sunday night, the kids are finally in bed, I completed putting Clayton Grey’s speed tests onto the site, and translated Steve’s game into Flex (for asset embeds). I now have just a few short minutes to reviews games…

  • Flash Game Distribution Game Report Sunday August 2, 2009

    This is the first episode of “Flash Game Distribution: Game Report”, in which we cover the newest games coming out of the Flash Game Distribution feed. I have never really sat down to look at the FGD games, but my first impression is that the games are of fairly high…

  • Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Saturday, Aug 01, 2009

    Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Saturday, Aug 01, 2009 Today begins our new attempt to review every Mochi New Release and Featured game as often as possible. This will be daily for as long as we can keep it up The games now have 4 review types. 1. 8bitrocket…

  • Race To The Bottom #1: The Worst Of Kongregate

    I’ve been inspired by Jeff’s reviews of the newest Mochi games to start looking around other “UGC” (“User Generated Content” in the biz lingo) sites to try find games that so terrible they can’t be missed. The first stop, Kongregate.com. Now, let me get this out of the way first.…

  • Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Friday, July 31, 2009

    Mochi First Impressions Game Review Mash-Up: Friday, July 31, 2009 I love games. Doing all of these reviews is starting to help bring back a little passion for games that I seem to have lost as this has become more of a job than a hobby. These reviews are certainly…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: Thursday, July 30, 2009

    Mochi Game Review Mash-Up: Thursday, July 30, 2009 I have decided to go back to the 9 new games (not featured) today because I like torture. Actually, my hope is to find some gems missed by the over-worked Mochi staff, and the provide some constructive criticism – unless I get…

  • Flash Game Interweb Mash-up : July 29. 2009

    Flash Game Interweb Mash-up : July 29. 2009 We delivered the first 3 chapters for our book on Flash Game Development this past weekend. Before I start my game and write up for the next chapter, I have been spending the week playing and many different games as possible and…

  • Mochi Game Review Interweb Mash-Up: Wednesday, July 29, 2009

    Mochi Game Review Interweb Mash-Up: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 7 Featured and the 2 best non-featured games on tap for today. It’s a very strong group of games today and almost everyone will find a game that they will like to play. Yesterday was NOT a great day for Mochi…

  • Mochi Game Review Interweb Mash-Up: Tuesday, July 28, 2009

    Mochi Game Review Interweb Mash-Up: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 Nine more games on tap for today. OUCH! Not much good going on today. Some fun to be had, but its a stretch. This is the worst day so far with only a couple average (C) games and one slightly above…

  • Wii Motion Plus/Wii Sports Resort : First Impressions

    I picked-up my reserved copy of Wii-Motion Plus/Wii Sports Resort yesterday at Target.  My first impression is this: No Need To Reserve It. There were many many copies, and not too many buyers.  I also noticed that Target was giving away a free game with every Wii sold.  Wow, what…

  • FIOS, DSL and Verizon. I want to laugh and I want to cry #1(Updated)

    FIOS, DSL and Verizon. I want to laugh and I want to cry #1 **** Update **** Last Thursday, as I was getting into my car to leave for work, someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was a Verizon technician. He took a look around and said, “Yep” conduit…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-up:’Monday July 27, 2009

    Mochi Game Review Mash-up:  Monday July 27, 2009 Mochi "First Look" game reviews. Every day brings a new crop from the Mochi gods, let’s hope yours is there and its not crap. I have now added my own designation to each game as a FLASH game or a Game Made…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-up: Sunday July 26, 2009

    Mochi Game Review Mash-up:  Sunday July 26, 2009 It’s Sunday, a day I normally leave for TV shows on the DVR and playing with my kids outside. But,  I’m trying to get a good handle on the quality of Mochi Games, so I am reviewing the latest 9 games on…

  • Expressing An Emotional State Of Mind In A Game

    There are games I’d like to create, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to approach them. Many of these games have to do with true emotions that are difficult to describe in game form, however, I still feel the need to make them. Games are…

  • Play the new free Atari STE Game rOx in Windows with a single mouse click!

    Play the new free Atari STE Game rOx in Windows with a single mouse click! The guys over are RGCD UK have out done themselves with a brand new, FREE Atari STE game that can be played in Windows with a single mouse click! rOx, is a modern scrolling “avoid-em-up”…

  • Mochi Game Review Mash-up: Saturday, July 25, 2009

    Mochi Game Review Mash-up: Saturday, July 25, 2009 Nine more Mochi Games Reviewed Based In Initial Impressions I need to pick up the slack a little bit. Here are my capsule reviews on the 9 games currently on the “Latest” game page in the Mochi Publishers section. if I can, I…

  • Flash Game Interweb Mash-Up July 24, 2009

    Flash Game Interweb Mash-Up July 24, 2009 I have been working on part one of a very large (Flash Game relegated) project over the last couple weeks. I just sent the first version of the first set of deliverables off for judgment. That, coupled with my spotty Internet connection has forced…

  • Random Game Design Notes From Chris Crawford

    A few years ago I hosted an all-day game design session with Chris Crawford. After the session, I took some notes and shared them with my colleagues. These notes were geared-towards “Kid’s” games, but many of them hold true for any kind of indie/Flash/Retro/etc. game that you might be building…

  • Great Free Online Book On Eary Computer Games: Let’s Tell a Story Together

    I’ve always wondered how long it would take to create a text adventure/graphical text adventure engine for Flash.   I *know* the marketability of text adventures is not great, and I know the audience is limited, but for someone like me who played the original Infocom and Scott Adams adventurs games…

  • They Used Our Kung Fu: GameNutz Podcast

    GameNutz is a video game “news” podcast that originates from Sherrill, NY. The podcast includes Rob “StickyNugget” Feddersen and Andrew “Boter” Hookway, who are employees at GameNutz store, also is Sherrill, NY, plus Justin “FearTheClaw” Clough. All three are very knowledgeable about current and classic games. Since the GameNutz store…

  • More Algorithms For Modern Managers

    I’ve been looking for these for a very long time, and I finally found them. We came up with these many years ago, and I think they still hold-true today.  The following are 21st Century “algorithms” that modern managers can use to figure out their daily evil. Figuring Out Who…

  • Flash Indie Game Interweb Mashup – Mochiads Games Edition July 10, 2009

    Flash Indie Game Interweb Mashup – Mochiads Games Edition July 10, 2009 Since I did a Mash-Up last week on blog entries, I thought it would be fun to take an entire mash-up to focus on my favorite subject – actual games! Since GameJacket’s demise has come to pass, there…

  • Silverlight 3 Released And Ready For You To Make Some Awesome Games – Maybe

    Microsoft has finally released their new version of Silverlight, Silverlight 3.  All the dev tools are now available here:  http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/ . However, if you want to develop on a Mac, you  will need to use something like Eclipse4SL, which, when we tested it a few months back, was stil la…

  • Atari 2600 Game Quiz: Name The Games From The Manual Excerpts

    Atari 2600 Game Quiz: Name The Games From The Manual Excerpt Many Atari 2600 games had manuals that were nothing short of…bizarre.  Some of the descriptions and back-stories created, even for some of the most well-known games of the time, were astonishingly, wonderfully odd.  Below are clues to 10 different…

  • RESULTS! Quiz: Can You Name These Classic Computer Games From Their Old-School Reviews (#1)

    A Couple weeks ago I posted the following quiz.  It takes parts of old-school game reviews and challenges you to name the game.  I thought this one was EASY.  However, it was not, it was really hard and I have learned my lesson.  Here is the quiz again, with the…

  • Top-10 Alternative Ideas for The Universal “Asteroids” Movie

    Last week, Universal announced that they had won a “bidding war” for the rights to turn Atari’s Asteroids coin-op into a feature film. Almost immediately, game pundits  and art critics alike pounced on the news, and scoffed at the idea of a Hollywood version of Atari’s classic game. Many of…

  • Absolutely Brilliant Lost Garden Article On Flash Game Monetization

    Absolutely Brilliant Lost Garden Article On Flash Game Monetization If you have even a passing interest in making games full time, you have to read Flash Love Letter Part One by Danc on the Lost Garden blog. He ever so eloquently describes in detail the current revenue streams for Flash…

  • Flash indie game interweb-mash-up : July 3, 2009

    Flash indie game interweb-mash-up : July 3, 2009 I was sick this past week (it’s still lingering on), and today (actually July 4)  is a USA holiday – a couple hundred years ago some dudes in funky white wigs decided they didn’t want to pay taxes to an island, I…

  • New Retrogaming Times Monthly article on ST game developer Michtron

    New Retrogaming Times Monthly (free online magazine) features my first Atari Playfield article on ST game developer Michtron . Richard Davey (www.atari.st and www.photonstorm.com) was invaluable help on this article. I have been reading this splendid on-line magazine every month for a long time, but over the last year, Atari…

  • Hackers and the Beautiful System

    Hackers and the Beautiful System On the heels of Steve’s wonderful post on the joys of being a creative programmer, we get an idiotic Infoworld post on why American programmers are so bad…because they are hackers? I like to think that the Hacker Ethic (creative, open exploring of systems and…

  • Time Warner Interactive , Midway: The Soul Of Atari Might Still Be Alive…

    I just read this news story that Time Warner Interactive is planning to buy Midway Games. This would stand as just another boring game industry story for me, if it was not for the “Atari” connection. You see Atari was bought by Warner Communications in 1976.  When Warner “sold” Atari in…

  • R.I.P. Michael Jackson: Remember His Video Game

    I suppose you could call this “gallows humor”.  I actually liked much of Michael Jackson’s early 80’s output, so I’m fairly sad to see that he could not turn himself around.  Anyway, this “Moonwalker” Game came out at just about the time Jackson took his final turn into “Neverland”.  Commercial For…

  • Favorite Video / Computer Soccer (Football) game of all time

    Favorite Video / Computer Soccer (Football) game of all time In support of the USA’s remarkable 2-0 win over the vaunted powerful Spanish side in today’s Confederation Cup semifinal, I wanted to up the quiz anti with a poll of sorts.   I have played a number of Soccer (Association Football)…

  • Quiz: Can You Name These Classic Computer Games From Their Old-School Reviews (#1)

    Quiz: Can You Name These Classic Computer Games From Their Old-School Reviews (#1) In this quiz we will give you a few lines of a review from a classic computer and/or video game. Your job: Name The Game.  Leave a comment with your answers below.  The first person to get…