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Why Information Technology Director Is The Most Hated Job In America (An Anecdotal Account)
CNBC ran a story on Friday about the 10 Most Hated Jobs In America. I was pleasantly surprised to see that…
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Unboxing the iCup Atari Drinking Glasses From The Target Clearance Sale : A Photo Essay
Today I purchased the iCup set of four classic Atari drinking glasses that were on clearance at Target. Instead of telling…
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Microsoft Hot On HTML5+Canvas For Windows 8, Freezes Out Flash
Apparently, Microsoft has decided that their “Metro” Presentation layer (included in Windows 8 for PC and designed for tablets and smart…
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A small case study in a Flash to iPad HTML5 Conversion
The Project A few weeks ago, John and I over here at Producto Studios were asked to create an interactive, single-page,…
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The 8-Bit Game: Digesting Archon
(By 8bit Jeff Fulton) The word “Archon” roughly translated from Greek means the ruler of a particular nation or state. The…
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Twisted Pixel’s Beard Secret: An Atari 800
Twisted Pixel, the guys who created Gunstringer, ‘Splosion Man and Ms. ‘Splosion Man for the XBox 360, have revealed their secret.…
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On to…Electrotank
8bitsteve here. So I’ve just finished a stint at the company “that shall not be named” after an experience that I…
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How Adobe Can Win The Flash War
We here at 8bitrocket.com love Flash. Sure we also have a fondness for the HTML5 Canvas, but we still love Flash…
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Developing The Alarm.com: 1995-2011
Introduction I was web master for http://www.thealarm.com for over 15 years. The Alarm were an 80’s band with hits like 68…
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Rest In Peace Bill Kunkel: Video Game Journalism Pioneer
By Jeff Fulton Bill Kunkel, part of the duo of Arnie Katz and Bill Kunkel who created Electronic Games the frst…
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Why I love The Flash Platform
The simple answer is that it is just as fun as using my Atari 800 or Atari ST. I assume the…
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Dear Large Game Development Company Engineering Job. It’s not you, it’s me. Thanks for the memories. We can still be linked in buddies if you want to.
Dear Large Game Company Engineering Job. It all seemed so great at the beginning (don’t they all?). Our courtship was a…
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8bitrocket Interweb Mash-Up For September 3, 2011
Iain Lobb On The Flash Community So we missed this a month ago, but Iain Lobb posted a really great piece…
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Book Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is the the best book about video games you will read this year. However, this…
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Mid-Core Update: Wikipedia, And A Mid-Core Life, 8bitrocket.com Update
WikiPedia Just when we thought we had put a cap on the whole Mid-Core thing, we’ve had two interesting developments in…
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We Use Xtra Normal To Make A Sub-Par Video About Flash Games And Intellectual Property
[iframe width=”560″ height=”345″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/SkCIMxqATwI” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen] Here is our first attempt at using xtranormal to make a video. This was obviously…
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Jamie Lendino Of PC Mag Admits To Loving The Atari 800
Today, in an article named Steve Jobs: End of an Era Jamie Lendino uses the editorial good will created by Steve Job’s…
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Taito is going after unlicensed Space Invaders re-makes
The news has been filled recently with game companies using legal means to go after trademark and copyright offenders who infringe…
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Update: Atari is *not necessarily* Targeting Hobbyists
Yesterday we posted a story about Atari targeting a German maker of 8-bit software, and the owner of atari2600.com. The atari2600.com…
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Legend Of Grimrock : Dungeon Master For The 21st Century
OK, here is a really promising upcoming RPG for the PC/Mac/iOs named Legend Of Grimrock. It’s by a set of four…
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Amazing! Learn The Basics Of Programming With Codeacademy!
I just saw this today. Codeacademy is fantastic! It’s an interactive learning tool for non-developers, kids or anyone else to learn…
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Atari Pulls Out The Lawyers And Threatens To Sue Hobbyists
It can be argued (pretty heavily I might add) that Atari fandom is the only thing that has kept the Atari…
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The 8bit Game: Digesting Bruce Lee By Datasoft Software (1984)
Bruce Lee is an 8-bit computer platformer / beat-em-up that is fondly remembered by owners of almost any 8-bit computer system…
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Video Fever: Classic News Report On Video Games
This video on youtube.com is from the local ABC affilate where we grew-up, in Los Angeles California. I used to think…
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The 8bit Game: Digesting Zeppelin By Synapse Software
Zeppelin was released for the Atari 400/800/XL computers in 1983 by Synapse Software. Synapse was a premier developer/publisher at the time…
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Do You Plan On Having Friends?
[iframe width=”425″ height=”349″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/lGar7KC6Wiw” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen /]
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The One Thing That Saved Video Games
I was thinking about this today. The *one* thing that saved video games was *not* – better graphics *not* – faster…
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The New Star Soccer 5 Beta Is Killing My Productivity
In the history of all video / computer games that I have played, my list of “perfect 10” games is pretty…
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2010-2011 Prediction Results: Plus 2011-2012 Predictions
Usually we do this in September, but I feel like moving this up a bit, so we are doing it now.…
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8bitrocket teams up with Producto Studios
8bitrocket has teamed up with Producto Studios to create a single, super-charged, one-stop-shop for everything cool, interactive, and fun. When we…
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Yoyo Games Game Maker will have HTML5 version in Q4
I was just visiting theYoyo Games Game Maker site to look into using the software to teach my 6 year old…
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Does Anyone Want a Hardcore top-down, Scrolling Shooter On a Mobile Device?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately: Will anyone play (buy) a hardcore, top-down shooter on a mobile device? What…
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Help me pick a new smart Verizon mobile phone
I need to get a new Verizon phone but have absolutely no idea what to get. I am pretty sure I…
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8bitrocket Reunion 2011! The original lost 1/3 of 8bitrocket Returns For One Night Only
A couple weeks back Eric Barth (center), the original “lost” 1/3 of 8bitrocket, returned to his origins by visiting Jeff and…
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HTML5 Canvas Progressive Breakout Style Game Tutorial coming…
I just wanted to add a short update about the HTML5 progressive breakout game tutorial I promised a while back. I…
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Google Swiffy? Not Yet.
Google Labs released Swiffy last week, their attempt to allow people to easily convert .swfs to HTML5. However, instead of…
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Two more Good Reviews Of Our HTML5 Canvas Book
Here are couple more good reviews of out HTML5 Canvas book. From Wonderoile “…overall I can recommend this book to every…
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Video Game History Museum: Help Make It Happen
The guys behind Digital Press and the CGE have created Kickstarter.com project to help create permanent Video Game History museum in…
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Midcore Gamer Manifesto, 3.5 Years Later
Back in 2008, Jeff wrote a story named “I Am A Midcore Gamer” and I followed-it-up with a story named “The…
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Management Sucks 002: A Profile In Courage
When my boss at “Monolith” Corporation told me that he thought I lacked “courage”, I had to speak-up. I had already…
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8bitrocket’s Asynchronous News Round-Up : Mochi Achievements, Pepsi+Atari, Mindjolt News
Welcome to our “Asynchronous” news round-up. It’s the Daily Interweb Mash-Up, but not daily, and also not really a mash-up, and,…
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From Track Mod To Spin City To Fashion Frenzy: A Study In Game Design Evolution
This is one of the case-studies I wanted to talk about for a long time, but I could not because one…
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8bitrocket Diatribe: Fathers’ Day 2011: The Adventure Freak and his Little Atari Freaks
It has been a little over two weeks since our dad passed away. I have found it difficult to focus on…
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HTML5 Canvas C64 Yourself App Is Awesome!
Here is a really cool use of the HTML5 Canvas: C64 Yourself! The app converts a 6×4 image into a an…
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How My Dad’s Love Of Games Helped Foster My Game Development Career
Please excuse me, just one more time, so I can write some final thoughts about my dad, and how he helped…
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Quick Tip For Vizio Theater 3D TV Owners : Cheap 3D Glasses From The Movie Theater Work Just Fine
Vizio has a new line of 3D TVs that are cheap and powerful. They use a technology they have branded “Theater…
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Wii U? More Like P.U.
Through some great contacts we were able to jump the line and look at the Wii U up close and personal…
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Great HTML Canvas Book Review!
David Hayden has given our new book a very nice review. You can read it here. My favorite part of…
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OSX Lion Will Include Hardware Acceleration for the HTML5 Canvas
I was looking through the 250+ new features and improvements for Lion (available for $29.99 as an upgrade in July) and…
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AppMobi Cloud-Based HTML5 Game Development Looks Promising
I have heard a little about AppMobi over the past few months and have wanted to take a look at their…
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Windows 8 Will Make Heavy Use of HTML5
The All Things D web site has put up an exclusive look at Windows 8, an operating system that is at…
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R.I.P. Dad : My Last Conversation With My Father
I visited my dad last Sunday. He’s 85 years old, and he has onset dementia, so he can’t express himself clearly,…
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HTML5 Canvas Game Development Diary: Bug Off! No. 1
Steve and I have been getting our fill of commercial Flash Game development at our new day (and night and weekend)…
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HTML5 Canvas Book Notes
O’Reilly Forums For HTML5 Canvas We’ve been answering questions about the book over at the O’Reilly forums. Come on over…
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HTML5 Canvas Book Spotted in the Wild Plus Chart Positions (#1 in Game Programming)
Its always fun to discover the first sighting of something you have created, “In The Wild”. Just about every Friday night…
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Win Atari’s New Dungeons & Dragons Daggerdale From 8bitrocket.com
If you know us you know we love Atari. Besides the classic Atari franchises and properties now owned by the…
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Our HTML 5 Canvas book is the O’Reilly E-Book Deal Of The Day – 1/2 off
Today, you can purchase our latest book on game development, HTML5 Canvas, in digital form, for $15.99. This is 50% off…
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Retro Scan of the Week: Tengen’s Mostly Legal NES Games
The Tengen NES games two-page advertisement scan from Video Games & Computer Entertainment Magazine April 1989. I say “Mostly” Legal because…
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Daily Interweb Mash-up: 5/24/2011: Canvas Game Tutorials, iPad Naval Gazers, Apple Heroics
New HTML5 Canvas Game Tutorials Coming Jeff and I have each been working on an HTML5 Canvas game to talk about…
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Daily Interweb Mash-up: 5/21/2011: Graphic Adventures, Flash CS5.5, & Hype
Sorry, we missed a couple days there, but we had some special reports. Let’s get back to the news, shall we?…
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Something So Right: Flynn’s Arcade At Disney’s California Adventure
Flynn’s Arcade. Usually, I would not write a story about a seemingly throw-away, stop-gap style Disney attraction created to take-up space and…
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Gagaville goes gold (and silver, and sparkley, with a meat dress)
I was a small cog in the big Zynga machine that just launched a giant promotion with Lady Gaga today –…
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8bitrocket.com Daily Interweb Mash-Up: Monday May 16, 2011
Death Of Unicorn Death Is Pixelated Awesome Play the Mochi Game of the week, Death Of Unicorn Death. It’s an awesome…
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A Look at the Atari Facebook Retro-remakes
Atari has been finally been diving into its extensive back catalog to create console, PC, and even Facebook versions of games…
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HTML5 Canvas Book : Notes #1: Use Google Chrome
Here are some notes about our HTML5 Canvas Book. Actually one note: Use Google Chrome. Especially for the examples in Chapters…
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The 8bitrocket Daily Inter-Web Mash-Up – May 12, 2011
Atari releases the first update to Star Raiders in almost 20 years. The original Star Raiders was one of the best…
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Atari Nerd: Lynx Garage Excavation
Inspired by Jeff’s Atari excavation a couple weeks ago, I went into the garage this weekend trying to find the Atari…
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8bitrocket.com Interweb Mash-Up: Tuesday May 10, 2011
What is Obama’s favorite game system? Why did Jeff hate the Fringe Finale, where can you buy our new book, and…
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Our book, HTML5 Canvas is now available.
Our book, HTML5 Canvas from O’Reilly is now available. Only a few copies are left at Amazon, but you can get…
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8bitrocket Daily Interweb Mash-up : Saturday May 7, 2011
Atari 810 MicroSD Drive! This is amazing!! A MicroSD card reader in the shape of an Atari 810 disk drive that…
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Our HTML5 Canvas Book Now Available for Amazon Kindle
Apparently Our HTML5 Book is now available for Kindle. Our faithful reader Hayes reports that our new O’Reilly book, HTML5 Canvas, is…
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Need A Death Panel? HMOs Already Got You Covered
So my dad is very sick, lying in hospital bed at his house, unable to walk, speak, eat or use the…
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8bitrocket Daily Inter-Web Mash-Up – Friday, May 6, 2011
Flash Games We Like – Wing Defender – Fun top-down shooter with cartoon-style graphics and a retro feel to the game-play.…
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8bitrocket Daily Inter-Web Mash-Up for Thursday, May 5, 2011
Attack Of The Mutant Sheep! Robert Podgorski, the winner of our 16K Game contest has released a new iPhone/Ipad game named…
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Atari Nerd: This Week In Atari History : First Week Of May
1979 May: Atari announces Baseball and Basketball coin-op arcade games • Both use Trak-Ball controller • Baseball is in a cabinet…
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8bitrocket Daily Inter-Web Mash-Up – Star Wars Day – May the 4th, 2011
First off, I had no idea that May the 4th was Stars Wars day because of a bad lisp pun, but…
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8bitrocket Daily Inter-Web Mash-Up – Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Tech Interview Question Tip – AS3 – Compute Factorial Iterative and Recursive package { import flash.display.Sprite; /** * … *…
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8bitrocket Daily Interweb Mash-Up – Monday, May 2, 2011
Hulu + WTF? I eagerly subscribed to Hulu Plus on Saturday because I had missed Friday’s penultimate episode of Fringe while…
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The Literal DOS Box – Classic DOS game gold vein
I have been going through old boxes of retro gaming gear over the last few weeks and today I came across…
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Atari Nerd : This Day In Atari History For May 1st
1981 May 1: Threshold published By Sierra On-Line for Atari 8-bit 1983 May 1 : Atarisoft releases Pac-Man for the Intellivision…
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Atari Nerd : This Day In Atari History For April 30th
1981 April 30: DataSoft first publicizes Micro Painter for Atari 8-bit computers 1984 April 30: Parker Brothers finalizes prototype of Atari…
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8bitrocket InterWeb Mash-Up For Friday April 29th, 2011
A Note From 8bitrocket Hi everyone, I hope you are enjoying our new focus and format as much as we are…
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8bitrocket Daily Inter-Web Mash-Up – Thursday, April 28, 2011
MochiGames.com Game for Today: RobotSockets RoboSockets is a new take (to us anyway) on the classic falling item/connect/clear game play pattern. …
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8bitrocket Daily Inter-Web Mash-up – Wednesday, April 27, 2011
The Daily Briefing has been re-named back to the Inter-Web Mash-Up of old. Steve and I have both made it through…
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8bitrocket Daily Briefing – Tuesday, April 26, 2011
New Game Picks From Mochi Games Cactus McCoy : A Western-themed platformer with nice music and neat graphics. Homerun In Bezerkland…
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8bitrocket Daily Briefing : Monday April 25th, 2011
Top Of Mind Jolt Here some neat new games from MindJolt.com : Green Archer : Aim and shoot arrows are various…
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2010 Easter Games Revisited
Here are links to the 2010 Easter Games we posted last year. All are simple games with graphics designed by my…
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The 8bitrocket Daily Briefing – Sunday, April 24, 2011
First off, Happy Easter to all those who celebrate it. Try out these new Flash Game Distribution games. We liked them…
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8bits in the Attic – Atari (and Intellivision) Treasure Trove
About 12 years ago I realized that I wanted to play my original 1986 Atari 7800, but had no idea where…
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Our First “Game” Hack, Circa 1981
Last week I pulled out I found an old Choose Your Own Adventure book to read to my girls. This…
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The HTML 5 Canvas (O’Reilly) Table Of Contents
Our book on HTML5 Canvas programming is nearing completion. The Amazon.com info page has not been updated yet with the latest…
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Ode To A Game That Nobody Played
This is an ode to a game that nobody played For the classes and functions and code that I made For…
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Retro Scan Of The Week: Romox Games (1983)
This week’s scan is a Romox microcomputer games advertisement from Analog magazine’s Sept/Oct 1983 issue. The two games featured in the…
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Two Great New Video Game Books You Should Check Out
It appears that we are in a “gaming book” renaissance the likes of which we have not seen since the since the early…
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Atari Greatest Hits Vol. 2 DS: Atari 400 Emulator In Action
I discovered today that the new DS title Atari Greatest Hits Vol .2 for the Nintendo DS includes an Atari 400…
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This week’s retro scan and discussion: Killer Rigs – CGW March 2001
Computer Gaming World is now defunct, but during the golden age of PC gaming it was my favorite gaming publication. I…
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Get 100 Atari Classics for the iPhone / iPad for $14.99 USD
The incredibly generous Atari’s Greatest Hits for iOS was released yesterday to the iTunes store. You can have 100 Atari classics…
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Silverlight Not Dead: Silverlight 5 On The Way
Last year while working at “Monolith” I had a short email argument with some upper management folks about the future of…
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The Essential Guide To Flash Games Made a Profit! (really)
Essentially because of many of you, our book, the “Essential Guide to Flash Games, Building Interactive Entertainment in As3”, actually paid…
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Watch the New Star Soccer 5 Trailer
It is no secret that I love the football/soccer games from the 80’s and early 90’s. I was a HUGE Kick…
