New Podcasts Blog Entry : This week we clear out our backlog of podcasts with GameStorm Num. 13. (We say Num. 14 in the podcast but that is because we recorded the Atari Nerd Podcast Num. 1 before this one)This podcast includes a discussion about our web site and a ton of classic GameStorm! action. Check it out here:http://www.8bitrocket.com/podcasts/gamestorm13.mp3

New Atari Nerd Blog Entry : This week we unveil another new feature for 8bitrocket.com: The Atari Nerd Podcast! We have decided that Atari fanboys need a podcast all their own and Jeff and I are only too happy to oblige. This one has been in mothballs for a couple weeks. It's very rough, and we don't have a theme-song yet, but we decided to release it anyway.The podcast covers our love for Atari and what we believe the new section of 8bitrocket.com (also named Atari Nerd) will cover.Listen here: http://www.8bitrocket.com/podcasts/atarinerd1.mp3

New Required Reading Blog Entry : Flash Game Development Inter-web mash up: Dec 1, 2008The latest in Blog entries and articles that might interest Flash game developers. I took last week off, so there is a lot to cover: Efficient Multiple Object Collision Detection with groups; Using Game Entities for in game objects; Doom in Flash; Creating a good, usable API; Using Google Maps in AS3; Creating the perfect maze; A mobile game development contest; A New Multiplayer API; Mochi Leader board updates; Game Scene management and a Unified Development process; The current hottest games and more...

New Required Playing Blog Entry : New Star Soccer 4 Chronicles Num. 2: 8bitjeffseason 2 startNote:New Star Soccer 4(NSS4) is a brilliant independent game by Simon Read. It was releasedon Windows and Mac platforms in early November and I am spending someof my free time with it, grinding out a career as a professionalfootballer. The game includes a full 3d match engine where you can playout your career in semi-real time, as well as one of the most in depthpersonal career management systems ever put into a computer game. Theearly stages of the game are very much akin to a 'grind-it-out' roleplaying game. I am still in that stage right now. Everything describedbelowis a narrative version of actual in-game events.When we last left 8bitjeff he was warming the bench and getting limitedplaying time with the LA Galaxy of MLS. He had scored only one goalin real competition, had no assists, no tackles, and only a handful ofmeaningful passes completed...

New Atari Nerd Blog Entry : 'the difference between an atari CES party (and afterparty) and bob guccione's 'caligula' was that atari made bob look like a cheapskate with less attractive women...'-Michael Schrage, 2008Michael Schrage was one of pioneers of video game journalism. A few months prior to the first Issue of Electronic Games magazine, Schrage was hired by Rolling Stone magazine to write their technology column. Out of the gates he proceeded to write some of the very first stories about video games and video game culture for the mass market. The guys from Electronic Games had come from the ranks of sci-fi fanzines and comic books and made heir magazine into the first real video game publication for fan-boys. At the same time, Computer Gaming world was publishing directly at the wargaming grognard market. However, while most of the mainstream press (and by 1981 Rolling Stone was certainly mainstream) was busy completely ignoring video games, Schrage was writing regular features on the subject. In fact, his first story covered the 'military' version of Atari's Battlezone. Schrage covered Atari through 1982, and saw the company from the inside out. When Atari was on the verge of imploding, Schrage entered the bowels of the company for a watershed piece in June 1982 named 'Video Games Go Hollywood' which very well might have been the first real 'journalism' applied to the art, science and business of making video games. 8bitrocket.com was honored a few weeks back when Mr. Schrage agreed to an interview about his time with Rolling Stone and beyond.

New Required Playing Blog Entry : Outstanding shoot 'em up Polarity added to the 8bitrocket Retro ShowcaseWOW! And that's a pretty powerful WOW! Thomsampson (www.stimunationgames.com) and the GamingYourway (www.gamingyourway.com) team put this game out a while ago, and it has just hit Mochi. We couldn't be more happy that it did. Polarity is a reflection of what happens when incredibly talented game designers, artists, and programmers mix their craft with a study of the best that 16 bit games had to offer. If this had been put out on the Amiga in 1990, they would have been Bitmap Brothers level super stars. In the vertical flying, shooting, blasting, big boss kick-ass genre, this is the one Flash game that out shines all of the rest. There is no need to play any other. If you want to learn what it takes to make a simply great Flash retro game, here is the example. Don't miss it, and don't waste the opportunity to learn from the masters...

New diatribe Blog Entry : If you are not from the USA, then you might not be aware that today we celebrate a holiday we know as Thanksgiving. You can read wikipedia to find out the details on what is basically a harvest celebration. It is all of those things, but to most of us it is a day to see family, eat too much, and hopefully not dredge up old ghosts from the past and turn them into family turf wars. We also are supposed to reflect on what we have in our lives that we should be thankful for...and then MAKE A HUGE list of all the STUFF WE WANT so when the stores open at 4:00 AM Friday for the BLACK FRIDAY sales we can push, shove, scratch claw and bite our way to happiness. Want want want buy buy buy! Isn't it wonderful all the stuff we can have?For today though, have a great day, no matter where you are.

New Required Playing Blog Entry : Fresh Kill : Spike Arcade EditionSpike.com, the web arm of Spike TV has launched an arcade filled withgames that they claim are just for men (women will get a kick out ofsome of t these too I am sure). The arcade currentlycontains 5 titles that will probably look familiar to you if you havespent any time on addictinggamescom. Whilecertainlynot 'Fresh',these titles do offer some great entertainment. We take alook at three of them below:

New Game Development Blog Entry : Flex Files: Sound Exploration - Loop an Mp3 with a ByteArray?After reading through all of the documentation on loading and embedding sounds in Flex Framework swf file, I have come to the conclusion that Adobe has been and continues to have its collective head in the sand when it comes to managing sound in actionscript. When I first started using CS3, I was appalled by the lack of information on using library embedded sounds. I finally uncovered the right docs after numerous fruitless searches and created this basic tutorial on controlling sounds embedded in the library. When searching the message boards on the subject I found numerous newbee response posts from people chastising others when they claimed to have problems looping an imported mp3 properly. Most people have absolutely no idea that the current mp3 spec was not created with looping in mind, so when you play a mp3 file loaded in or embedded in the library, you will ALWAYS hear a little silence at the end of the sound before it starts to play again. That doesn't happen with .wav file imported into the library and exported to compress with mp3 compression. This only happens when to try to loop a file saved as a mp3 and loaded in or embedded in the library. I had to shake my head after reading far too many 'know-it-all' posts from 12 year olds claiming 'DUDE, GET A BETTER MP3 ENCODER, Of COURSE THEY LOOP'...

New 56k Connection Blog Entry : The 56k Connection : PigRace Reviewhttp://www.picasogames.com/games/pigraceBy PicasoGamesToday we go to the farm - it,rsquo;s time to race and your pig isentered.PigRace is an easy, good-looking game that involves navigating yourpiggy through various obstacles to get to each level,rsquo;s finishline. Using the tried and true Frogger-ish motif the playeruses the up and down arrow keys to move the piggy in one of threelanes, and pressing the space bar causes the piggy to jump.There are objects to pick up such as acorns, carrots and apples andthere are things to avoid such cows, bales of hay, mud puddles, logs,pumpkins and small ponds...

New Game Development Blog Entry : Squize, over at Gamingyourway.com has posted a heart tugging piece on Cessation Time Distortion - the brain's way of dealing with addiction after you have stopping feeding it what it wants. Squize is currently fighting his addicting to nicotine, having quit smoking a week ago. We all have something that keeps up going late into the night that is probably not good for us. Mine is Diet Coke. It does not have the complete bad rep that smoking does, but it certainly is not a health food in an way.Check out Squize's story, and help encourage him to keep down his current path.

New Required Playing Blog Entry : 3d Space Shooter Star Force added to 8bitrocket Retro ShowcaseStarForce, a very wellmade 3d first person perspective space shooter has been added to the8bitrocket RetroShowcase. In the game, you pilot a space fighter against hordes of enemy pilots,asteroids and other baddies. It has the feel of the great Atari ST game,Star Glider...

New Music with No Talent Blog Entry : 6 newmusic clips added to the 8bitrocket royalty free music libraryI spent the only fee time I had this Saturday creating 6 new musicclips for our royalty free music library.The 11KHZ mono versions of these are free to use in commercial gamesand applicationsif attribution is provided. 44khz stereoversions are available for unlimited and single use (no attributionneeded) for a small fee ($9.99 single use, $19.99 unlimiteduse). No reselling of the music clips directly is allowedunder any circumstances. We have had quite a few games make use of theour music clips over the last few months, so we are happy to providemore for anyone who needs them. All of the clips can loop repeatedly,or be used as one-off's. The looping on this page is done with DHTMLwith doesn't provide a seamless looping capability. Add them to a flashproject and you will be able to loop with out a break at the end. (theycan all tested below)...

New Required Reading Blog Entry : FlashGame DevelopmentInter-web mash up: Nov 20, 2008The latest in Blog entries andarticles that might interest Flash game developers. This time we cover The CasualCollective; Playing Flash games at Maximum Size; A fantastic Atari STRemake; Smart Game Interface Choices; Kongregate's Kred system; Box2dTutorials; The 25 Line Actionscript Contest; Getting Started with FlexGame Development; A Papervision tutorial; Making Money With Web Games;A Silverlight Shootorial and more...

New diatribe Blog Entry : I've been getting into 60's punk lately and I 'found' this gem from the L.A. 60's punk/garage band Love fronted by Authur Lee. If you thought the MC5 and Iggy Pop were the only precursors to 70's punk, think again ('Seven And Seven is' from 'De Capo', Electra 1967):

New Atari Nerd Blog Entry : OK, so Iback-slid to Phantasy Star I last weekend after trying in vain to enjoy Phantasy Star II and Phantasy Star III. The later games have not aged-well, but, even though I can't stand some of the 'puzzles' (too much repetition involved) of the first Phantasy Star title, the game itself is not so bad.There is something very charming about the way the story in Phantasy Star unfolds, andI can see why so many people think it is a great game. I do not think it is 'great', but it is 'good', and itsomething worth playing, even in this modern age of games like Fallout 3.

New Podcasts Blog Entry : In this week's GameStorm! podcast we talk about a bunch of stuff I can't totally recall because we recorded it two weeks ago. Have fun.You can download the podcast here: http://www.8bitrocket.com/podcasts/gamestorm12.mp3

New World Famous Flash Retro Showcase Blog Entry : Unique shooter, Split 'em Up, added to the 8bitrocket retro showcaseCreated by Mochi user, mattS,Split'em Up is a top notch retroshooter. From the eye pleasing gradient arcade font to the retro musicselection, this one is pure retro class. It's a very fun,unique shooter with some great game-play innovations. mattS's description: Retro shooter with a modern twist. Split your gunsto create maximum firepower! ...

New Game Development Blog Entry : The Flash Maximizer 1.06 has been released on the Firefox Ad-On page.Here is the description from the site:-This small extension for Firefox allow you to 'maximize' Flash games(and other Flash content) by clicking a button in the toolbar. TheFlash content will be reloaded in the full browser window, causing itto resize along with the window. In this way you can play Flash games,or view other Flash content, in any size you like. This even includesthe Firefox 'full-screen mode', making your favourite Flash games feelmuch like 'real' games. For the latter, I recommend the 'Autohide'extension (search Google, don't think it is available here), which canremove the remaining GUI elements (scrollbar, toolbar etc.) from thefull-screen mode.It is currently an experimental ad-on that you will need to log in to download and test.

New Atari Nerd Blog Entry : Atari Nerd Inter-Web Mashup- Nov 19, 2008What's new (and old) in the world of Atari - Press releases, blogs, messages boards sites and more... This week we have new game announcements from the current Atari; a revenue announcement from them too; The Legacy Engineering Atari 2600 USB Stick; some great retrospectives and review of 2600, ST, 800, and 5200 games; A video game documentary on Showtime; Some 1991 Atari ST coding practices; Atari ST 16 color art; 2600 Adventure on the iPhone; Portal on the 2600; Atari computer finds in the wild and much more...

New Game Development Blog Entry : Today on the Google Analytics blog they announced a full suite of new features that can help track viral Flash content. These features go far beyond their previous offering, which was simply a JavaScript pass-through. You can check out the new features for yourself over here:http://analytics.blogspot.com/2008/11/want-to-track-adobe-flash-now-you-can.html

New Game Development Blog Entry : Just when I thought I was going the right way by ditching windows for the Max OSX, a story like this appears on wired today:Why Apple Won't Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone

New 56k Connection Blog Entry : Fisher Boy, http://www.box10.com/fisher-boy.htmlCalifornia wildfires have caused more than 60,000 people to beevacuated from their homes and we,rsquo;ve had 3 days of constanttelevision coverage of the devastation. AlthoughI,rsquo;m not inany imminent danger, soot and ash is flying through the air coveringeverything with a layer whitish gray flakes, the sky is glowingyellowy-orange and the news reports are telling us to try not to,ldquo;breathe,rdquo; too much.So I,rsquo;m going deep-sea fishing.At the start of Fisher Boy the player is given a harpoon:whichis classified as ,ldquo;Basic Weapon: TurtleClass,rdquo;.As play progresses the player is able to go to the Weapon Shop and buyupgrades and better weapons. The playerpicks a nameand it is listed at the top of the screen with the blunt title of,ldquo;Fish Killer,rdquo; underneath. This was myfirstindication that persons to whom English is not their first language mayhave created this game. I love funky translations.As the player starts the adventure, a map of ocean and islands rollsout, by clicking on the red dot (,ldquo;select spot togo,rdquo;)you,rsquo;re ready. I also know this because the screentold me,,ldquo;YOO. BURN YOUR SPIRIT!,rdquo; ,ndash; Which Iinterpreted tomean, ,ldquo;It,rsquo;s time to start your adventure, go have ajolly,lsquo;ol time,rdquo;...

New Game Development Blog Entry : Free Flash Game Development Tool KitMy latest quest has been to create both a Windows and Mac Free Flash Game development tool kit. I have heard some rumors and horror stories about some of the popular free tools available, so I decided to take a look for myself and see if I could move from Adobe tools to similar free versions. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I encourage anyone with competing or better alternatives to point them out.SWF Platform Game DevelopmentThere are many decent alternatives to using the Flash IDE for game development. I have found that that Flex SDK and Flash Develop work best for me. If you are interested in trying this out, check out my HelloWorld Flash Develop and Flex. If you are using a Mac, the choices are not as pretty, but I have heard a combination of Eclipse, Flex SDK, and an Eclipse AS3 plug-in will do the trick. I had a little trouble getting this to work on my Mac, so I am currently using the FlashDevelop/Flex system in Parallels (Win Xp)...

New Required Playing Blog Entry : New Star Soccer 4 Chronicles Num. 1: 8bitjeff mid season 1 reportNote: New Star Soccer 4 has been released by Simon Read and his team atNewstargames.com. Being a supporter of both the world footiegame and independent computer games, especially Read's Masterpiece, New Star Soccer3, I have been spending an inordinate amount of my time playing the newversion. To prove to all readers the depth and brilliance of the game, I willperiodically give updates based on real game happenings. 8bitjeff started his professional soccer career as an 18 year old with theLA Galaxy on training contract. Finances were very tight with on just a fewhundred dollars a week, and the early season constant training put a hugestrain on both his personal and professional life. He had two disastrous dateswith local girls who were disgusted to see that his tiny apartment was filledwith only the cheapest gym equipment he could afford and nothing else. Havingno car and no time to spend with family and friends, all he could talk to histwo dates about was the training ground, and it was obvious that neither girlwas interested enough to last passed a couple minutes with poor 8bitjeff.