• J2Games.com And The Return Of Bill Kunkel, The Game Doctor

    Bill Kunkel, the pioneering video game journalist who’s alter ego “The Game Doctor” appeared in the original Electronic Games magazine from the 80’s as well as the 90’s version, has finally returned for the 21st century as “The Game Doctor” with a regular column on the retro game site J2Games.com.…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up: June 9, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. This week we take a look at some new Mochiads additions; A look a free dev tools from GamePoetry; Emanuele Feronato’s latest (and best), and a fresh kill 3 selection of games from both Triqui, and Kongregate.…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe June 9, 2008

    Wii Fit Kicks My Ass! No Joke, I’ve been an avid runner and workout nut for years now, and I have never had a better workout than an hour of Wii Fit running, strength and yoga training! It’s fun, and the balance board trains you perfectly in core strength. I…

  • Site Down (Again)

    The site was completely down yesterday (yet again). The server had a blown raid drive and the hosting company, while working hard to fix it, has no contingency plan, so we were S.O.L. for about 20 hours. This seems to happen with large traffic increases to the site, but not…

  • Review: Commadork and The Hidden Collective Experience of 80’s Vintage Computing

    80’s Home Computers: The Hidden Collective Experience The world is awash with collective experiences into the 21st century. In fact, it’s very hard to find something that is experienced by an individual without the ability to somehow communicate that experience with others. Every hobby, comic strip, graphic novel, book series,…

  • Commadork and The Hidden Collective Experience of 80’s Vintage Computing

    80’s Home Computers: The Hidden Collective Experience The world is awash with collective experiences into the 21st century. In fact, it’s very hard to find something that is experienced by an individual without the ability to somehow communicate that experience with others. Every hobby, comic strip, graphic novel, book series,…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe: June 5, 2008

    Some New Game Development Steve and I have both started some new personal games. Mine is going to be a Galaga / Demon Attack / Spider Fighter tribute, while Steve is going a completely different route with an Arakanoid / Tetris / Ceiling Zero style game. I started my a…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up: June 2,2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. In Adopt Some Coding Conventions for Projects: Sloppy Code SUCKS!, Colby Williams tackles the thorny issue of using coding conventions and give you some examples of his application od standards. Also available are his Actionscript 3 Math…

  • GameStorm (2008) Retro-Casual Game Idea Generator

    Never Again Can You Say You Don’t Have An Idea For a Game! This is not that game, but a tool for developers and would-be game designers to help them come-up with new game ideas, organize them, and save them. The application is designed to spit-out one of 544,404,385,800,000,000 possible…

  • Our Latest Goes Live

    A new game of ours, sponsored by Addicting Games, has gone live this morning. It is called Bratney Escape the Madness. It is based on an AS3 tech-demo engine that I put together to demonstrate blitting, tile based movement, and message/sound management in an entity base framework. It turned into…

  • Scotty Dawg Flash Blog Launches

    One of the best Flash developers in the world,  Scott Delamater  has finally launched his own Flash related development blog, Le Maitre d’Something .  Scott is a Flash savant.  Anything he has to say on the subject should be read by anyone with even a remote interest in the topic. …

  • Flash Retro Game Showcase #4: May 29, 2008

    This week we cover 4 different retro-style Flash games in four completely different styles. All four styles happen to be some of my absolute favorites of the genre. We have a great bolt-on shooter, an arcade racer, an Breakout/Arkanoid contest, and finally, a platfomer in the style of classic games…

  • Ultimate Checkers Launches, Uses Our Free Fireworks Engine

    Ultimate Checkers, a free online, single and multi-player Checkers game with great A.I, leaderboards, bonuses,  etc. has launched using our Free Fireworks engine.  Free Fireworks  is an engine we created that allows a user to create interative fireworks shows that can be reskinned with music and graphics to fit whatever…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe May 28, 2008

    USA v. EnglandI watch all of these USA players every chance I get: in MLS, foreign league games, friendlies, etc and I am always sticking up for them when they get put down by soccer snobs for being no good. The fact is, we have some great players, and on…

  • Fresh Kill Five: May 26, 2008 An 8bitrocket Biased Selection of Fun New Flash Games

    This week we visit Agame.com, and Ugoplayer.com to find 5 new releases that we love to play: Alien Slayer 3D, Galaktoid, Go Go Plant, James The Pirate Zebra, and Boxes. First we visit Agame.com (a portal that has never accepted any of our games …humph) and find out exactly what…

  • Retro Gaming in Mac OS X 10.5 #1 : Atari Games

    I have recently switched from Windows XP to MAC OS X 10.5 and one of the things I feared upon switching was losing the capability to play all of my old Emulated games. I own a copy of EVERY retro game compilation for the PC and Playstation 2, and use…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : May. 26, 2008

    news.as3gaming.com is doing an excellent job of culling together blogs and resources on Flash gaming, AS3, etc every day. Add it to your book marks or your Bloglines, put it in your RSS reader, add it to your face book or Myspace page… or whatever the kids are using now.…

  • Tutorial: AS3 Basics – How to use library sounds in AS3

    Now this one sounds like a no-brainer, but for some reason almost every book written on AS3 and even the built-in help fail to give adequate information on how to effectively use sounds embedded in the library in AS3. I scoured the included help file and eventually found how to…

  • 8bitrocket Diatribe: May 21, 2008

    I am just now putting the finishing touches on a custom game for a portal. I’m very happy with the results. The AS3 engine that powers it is getting a little long in the tooth and I am excited to start the next batch of 8bitrocket games that will use…

  • Flash Retro Game Showcase #3: May 22, 2008

    This week we micro-review 5 more retro inspired games for your playing pleasure. We are starting to see some distinct genres emerge in these lists, and this week starts with one that we previewed with last week’s Asteroids’ Revenge: The “deconstructive, ironic, turn-the-table genre”. We follow that up with several modern…

  • Has the age of free, hosted, multi-player Flash game servers arrived?

    There are two services on the horizon for Flash game developers that could be complete game-changers for the viral Flash game industry.  Both Come2Play and Nonoba will soon open up their multi-player game APIs to developers so they can create and host multiplayer games for free.  This is great news for anyone…

  • ‘Game Over’ For All-Encompassing Video Game History Books?

    A few years back, when Steven L. Kent published the bible of video game related history books, The First Quarter, bedroom video game historians and classic game fans like myself were in heaven. Kent’s book spurred a much heftier second volume, The Ultimate History Of Video Games , plus the…

  • Flash Player Beta 10…looks like it will kick some ASTRO!

    I’ve been digging through the release notes and other various sources on the new Flash Player 10 Beta (code name Astro), and here are some of my initial thoughts. 1. Using the Adobe Pixel Blender to create custom filters has some great possibilities. 2. 3D effects and transitions sound very…

  • Bob Cringely Discovers The Major Flaw Of I.T. In the 21st Century

    I like Bob Cringely, but in recent years he has rarely written about anything that I can relate to.  However, his new series of I.T. related columns has really hit the mark  This week’s column has, probably, the single best quote I have read about the state of I.T. in…

  • Fresh Kill Five: May 18, 2008 8bitrocket’s Biased Pick of New Flash Games

    This week we visit Addicting Games, and find 5 new releases that we love to play. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel on AddictingGames.com. They choose great games and you can see why they are one of the most popular portals on the planet. Here are five new, addictive,…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : May. 17, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. Game Poetry comes through yet again with an awe inspiring take on creating an Entity Framework for games. news.as3gaming.com is a brand new blog that looks promising. It is built around a wiki and there is a…

  • Bill Kunkel (Electronic Games) Interview

    Electronic Games Magazine truly was revolutionary. It was the first of it’s kind: a monthly publication dedicated to video games and the video game phenomena. The Magazine started as a series of ‘Arcade Alley’ columns in Video Magazine in the 1980 written by Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz and championed…

  • Bratney Escape the Madness

    You are Bratney, a spoiled party-girl ex-star, with 2 babies, an annoying ex-husband, and a gang of paparazzi chasing you down at every corner. You are tasked with keeping Bratney’s bank account full by collecting the hearts of her fans and any cash left laying around. You are chased by…

  • Flash Retro Game Showcase #2: May 15, 2008

    Here are our Flash retro game finds for the week. We have settled down to five games per episode, and that is what we are going with for the time being. I think we have picked some great games for you retro fans this time! Azul Baronis Andrew Martin has…

  • 8bitrocket diatribe 5/13/2008

    There haven’t been any tutorials, retro articles, mash-ups or the like for a fews days because we are busy working on some projects. We have some cool stuff in the wings. Steve is working on a very long retro gaming history article for a popular site and I am working…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : May. 10, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. I missed this one a couple weeks ago, but for all of us BitmapData heads, Colby from CheezeWorld.com has created a BitmapClip class that he is giving away for free. Here is his list of features: Import…

  • Retro Flash Game Highlights: May 9th 2008

    Retro Flash Game Highlights: May 9th 2008 Here are 8bitrocket.com we have decided to start posting a weekly set of the best Retro and Retro inspired Flash games the world of viral gaming has to offer. This week we will start with 8 games that caught our interest from 100’s…

  • So you are looking for a game idea are you? Try Atariage.com.

    There are millions of games out there (there is even a site with that name), but original game ideas are few and far between. You don’t have to be completely original to make a good game, but being different from the crowd certainly can get you noticed. Instead of cloning…

  • Site Updates: Free Music and Retro Games!

    We have been working over the past few weeks to figure out what the future-state will be for http://www.8bitrocket.com.  We have tried out several different blogs, dabbled in Mid-Core Gaming and other features, but everything seems to lead back to the same place:  Flash Game Development and Retro Games. For this…

  • Fresh Kill Five: May 2, 2008. An 8bitrocket Biased Selection of Fun New Flash Games

    This week we visit Kongregate, and find 5 new releases that we love to play. I don’t just look at the ratings that users give, but there are so many games, I do take them into account. If a game looks retro or fun, but has a bad rating, I…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : May 2, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. Panyoti at Game Poetry comes through with a very insightful entry on where and when it is best to comment your code in Commenting Your Code is a Waste of Time. Mochiland also comes also comes out…

  • Chris Crawford Re-Making Balance Of Power For Storytron

    The Chris Crawford spearheaded “Interactive Storytelling” authoring/publishing/playing toolset, Storytron is nearing completion. The new Storytron.com web site launched a few days ago, and the new blog contained a tantalizing bit of information. Chris Crawford is re-making his classic PC/Mac geo-political pot-boiler, Balance Of Power using the toolset. Here is a…

  • Did Atari Make A Version Of “Missile Command” For The Military?

    I’ve been furiously working on the follow-up to my History Of Atari :Part 1 for Gamasutra (it’s been so long since the first one that they’ve probably given-up on it), and I dug up a couple quotes for something that struck me as quite interesting.  It seems that Atari might…

  • Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up : April. 24, 2008

    The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. This week we cover game loops, a cool new retro game (by Squize), a dictionary object framework for game objects, Andre Michelle’s new project, lessons in promoting your game, an AS3 CS3 (not Flex) pre-loader, brainstorming games,…

  • Something Missing In Wisconsin (Update)

    OK, so I actually found a place that has “Health Guards” (Protectos, ass gaskets) in Wisconsin.  However, I’m pretty sure they are new to the region. There was a was a sign above the toilet that read. “Please keep our bathroom clean, use seat protectors“ Now, this might not seem odd at…