• 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, you’ll understand just how much Flash has grown in the past 10 years. Check out the video here.

  • 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 “collectible” object, I decided to try to create a game as close to Pac-Man as possible.  The result is below.   http://www.sploder.com/player.php?s=uq9zx991 Make Your Own Game   As you…

  • 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 a massive, intricate playfield, and some randomly placed obstacles and pick-ups.  You can play it below: http://www.sploder.com/player.php?s=6g9n55ng Make Your Own Game Making a game in Sploder is very easy. …

  • 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 .   Sploder is a site that allows users to create their own “games” and share them with people, embed them on other sites, etc.   It’s a really cool application that…

  • 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 days of development, a friend of Jeff and mine requested help to finish a project.  We spent nearly 7 days helping to build this game for the Bridezillas TV…

  • 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 written in response to this blog entry, the first one that I wrote when starting this site last December.   I mentioned then that while I liked his book, and…

  • 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 around, offering simple to semi-complex games designed to work well with the Wii opera browser. However, Wiicade.com is not the only site that has games targeted for the Wii…

  • 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 night” estimate is almost perfectly on target. The first night of programming all about trying to fix the obvious problems with the original “Fireworks Blast” demo. My first task…

  • 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 I was a bit disappointed in the Wii web broweser and wondered aloud how many people actually connect their Wii to the internet.   Well, I read a few days…

  • 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 band called The Punk Rock Group. Check out their music section for some Devo inspired retro-low-fi music hilarity in songs like Atari 800, Video Games and Toby Keith. Also,…

  • 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 not sound very hard, but these “days” actually equate to about 27 hours of programming time. Subtract all the time I take to write these blog entries, and time…

  • 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.   It went over with a resounding ‘thud’, and not only that, but I got a bunch of facts wrong.  I could go back and fix them, but I’ve decided not…

  • 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 free sound and sprite libraries to tutorials on almost every subject, the internet is a great place to start your search when you need a new idea, are stuck…

  • 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 the game and although it usually starts off to be a pretty simple select case statement running inside of an interval, once I get fully involved in a game,…

  • 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 for customers. .The machined weighed-in at an astronomical 950 pounds! It contained a combination of an impact line printer, a computer, and a closed-circuit TV. Advertised as Durastress’ 1975: January 31: Atari/Kee Games…

  • 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 like Pete Townsend,  “machine gunning” like Nigel Tufnel, or do you just feel like an idiot while playing?  Take the public poll here: http://www.8bitrocket.com/forums/Default.aspx?g=posts&m=30&#30 (no need to log-in to…

  • Space Eggs

    The Space Eggs are multiplying! Destroy them all before they return! A fast action Asteroids inspired shooter.

  • 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 realistic images of Ronaldo’s bald head? If you have any interest in Soccer, or role playing games, or sports game for that matter, New Star Soccer 3 might be…

  • 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 Games Externally Jobe Writes: From what I’ve heard this technique will not slow the Flash frame rate, but rather affects the return result of getTimer(). As you probably know,…

  • 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 had sold 8000-10000 machines, and would eventually sell upwards of 35,000.     In one year, Atari made a little over $3.2 million dollars.   However, there was a black side…

  • 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 Flash server has started a blog that ANYONE interested in Flash game programming or Flash programming in general should check out. Jobe is the real deal, and besides knowing…

  • The Atari History Timeline: 1971-1972

    1971: Spring : Bushnell Creates Computer Space  Nolan Bushnell created the first coin-op video game in his daughter’s bedroom in 1971 while working for Ampex.  Inspired by Steve Russell’s  Space War,  a game he played on the DEC PDP-1 at the University of Utah in the 60’s,  Bushnell worked on…

  • Advanced Flash 8 Game Programming : Using Actionscript to loop mp3 files. Plus free music for your games!

    While I am in the process of completing the next lesson for my Advanced Flash Game Programming set of tutorials, I have decided to take a little break and create some music loops for my games. Yesterday, via snail mail, I received a little gem I purchased called Magix Music…

  • Yet Another forum .NET: A Very Easy To Install And Use .NET Forum Application

    We just added new Forums to 8bitrocket.com and it took 3 hours. That’s 3 hours from downloading the source, to skinning and configuring it for us. We used the open source Yet Another Forum .NET and we are very pleased. I have been looking for a decent, easy to integrate…

  • Is Silverlight A Flash Killer? Hardly…Unless You Want Built-In 3D Support

    Microsoft recently announced the beta of Silverlight, their obvious stab at taking market-share from the Adobe Flash Platform. As a die hard Flash developer, I was very interested to see just what Silverlight could do, so I decided to download the beta and try out some of the examples on…

  • Advanced Flash 8 Game Programming : Pixel level collision detection Part III (or let’s start a real game)

    In Part 1 – Advanced Flash 8 Game Programming : Pixel level collision detection I discussed the very basics of doing Pixel level hit detection with the bitmapData object. In Advanced Flash 8 Game Programming : Pixel level collision detection Part II (or let’s add Bitmap animation caching) I added…

  • Advanced Flash 8 Game Programming : Pixel level collision detection Part II (or let’s add Bitmap animation caching)

    In Part 1 – Advanced Flash 8 Game Programming : Pixel level collision detection I discussed the very basics of doing Pixel level hit detection with the bitmapData object. In this second part, I am going to add one more small feature that hopefully will improve the performance of your…

  • Wii Opera Browser: A Storm In A Tea Cup?

    I’ve been creating a few demos of Flash games designed for the Nintendo Wii Opera browser, and writing a few blog entries about the process for the past few months. I even convinced the people at my Day Job to create a section highlighting all the games we currently offer…

  • Advanced Flash 8 Game Programming : Pixel level collision detection

    I had to take a little break after finishing Retroblaster to unwind before I started making games again. I plan to re-write my game loop and much of my game code in this public forum for a couple reasons. One is the selfish need of a cathartic outlet, and the…

  • Final Wii Browser: Thoughts Redux

    Last week I complained that the final version of the Wii Opera Browser did not support anything greater than Flash 7.0    Now it, it turns out, that this was neither Nintendo or Opera’s fault.  This information was brought to my attention earlier this week by fellow deveoper Chris Cutler (the…

  • Final Wii Browser: Thoughts

    The “final” Opera browser was released for the Wii yesterday, and after using it I have mixed feelings. They added and fixed a few things that must be noted: better interface more responsive button clicks better performance However, one glaring omission is support for Flash 8.   With tons of Flash…

  • PC Games are Dead!

    That seems a little sensational doesn’t it? Well it is exactly how I feel right now. Even if you don’t take into account the abject failure of Vista or the re-emergence of Nintendo, there are reasons why I feel the PC games are dead. I am even one of those…

  • Dear John (err, I mean Final Fantasy)

    Dear Final Fantasy , Final Fantasy , do you believe in love?  I hope you do, because I think then you can understand just what I have found. I have found true love and its’ name is Paper Mario. It is the perfect game. We’ve had some good times Final…

  • Ode To An Unreleased Game: Atari 5200 Asteroids

    Ode To An Unreleased Game: Atari 5200 Asteroids Prototype lifestyleSitting on a shelf somewhereWaiting to have life They programmed me toLaunch the 5200Into hearts and minds My graphics are greatAs if you were in the arcadeBut with no vectors I am unwieldlyI cannot be controlled I’m a maverick I am…

  • Retro Blaster High Score King, Contra, Super Mario, and Burnout 3, etc

    A very cool dude named Jason has submitted the current high score (other than mine) for Retro Blaster. It stands at 99,734,135. Send me your scores as a PNG,/JPG/ BMP/GIF screen cap and I’ll post them too. I have been searching the local stores for a copy of Konami Arcade…

  • Web Round-Up. Cool Retro Gaming stuff on the web.

    If you are new to emulation, or just want to replace some old roms or emulators you have lost, Digital Press has a nice selection of older emulators and roms. This is one of the few places on the web where you can still find a section of roms for…

  • Retro Blaster Update, Buffalo Love machine, Pixel War II

    I have Have been busy fixing bugs and tweaking settings in retro Blaster. The most significant change I have made was suggested by my old pal, Ian Legler. He suggested that I add a user selectable setting to adjust the quality of the graphics. I have added this option now…

  • Home Computer Wars Alpha Mission

    Description The first in a series of classic style shooter games in which you attempt to change history to make the Atari 800 the dominate computer system of the 80’s…by force.

  • Retro Blaster High Scores

    I have finally had a chance to play my own game all the way through and beat IRATA without cheating. My top score is 973,441,870. I have also found that even though I have put optimization upon optimization into the animation sprite map caching, it still cannot compensate for the…

  • Retro Blaster RC1 is complete!

    Retro Blaster  release candidate 1.0 is ready to play. All of my changes in the last few hours have had to do with speed and playability. The game still slows a little (a lot on some older machines) on the levels with the most objects moving, but it’s a HUGE improvement…