Last week, one of my quickly cobbled together test tunes for JMTrackr was the old Manic Miner ingame music. If you download JMtrackr, you'll find it in the Retro folder. I created it quickly, made a little mp3 of it in random mode, and plopped it up on Socoder. People seemed to fall in love with the idea of me making a Manic Miner clone, and over the course of the past few days, that's escalated somewhat.. People really seem to want me to make a Manic Miner type thing.

Alrighty, time to buckle down and get a new collection started. It's actually been quite a while since I last did something like this, but 2010's Advent Collection kinda counts. The idea is simple. I write tiny versions of bigger games, keep them as short and sweet (and playable!) as possible, and cram them all together into a nice little bundle.

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_256.png" style="float:right;">As we continue through our adventures of old crappy games, we'll occasionally trip over the odd one or two that wasn't even part of AGameAWeek. In fact, today's game-from-the-archive outdates AGameAWeek by a good few years. Good grief, this game's actually nine years old! *tests the game* And it still works!

Before anyone complains, no, this is not a game! This week's release is a "Utility!" ooooh! Don't worry, I won't be making a habit out of this. To be honest, I was kinda expecting to be able to half-ass a game, this week, but I've spent so much time on this, that I just didn't get around to it. No matter, this is a silly little plaything, and if you're even slightly musically capable you'll probably get a kick out of it.

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_256.png" style="float:right;">Before I'd decided on the "Blockman Gets" mechanic, I tried many a different thing with him. First, there was the Platform engine, where he had to run around and gather up the tiny blocklets. That worked nicely! After that I tried a "Pengo" approach, but he didn't seem happy pushing things around, so that never actually got uploaded anywhere. After that, I decided to go old-skool, and made a bog standard Pacman clone, but with a ...

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_256.png" style="float:right;">Whoops! A little late, today. Sorry about that, folks! Yesterday, SpikeDislike2 was FREE in the AppStore. I might've actually forgotten to post about that, here. um.. sorry!! If any of my regulars missed it, lemmie know. Anyway, with all the SD2 stuff, I've spent quite a lot of time this morning analyzing stats, and graphs, and reviews, and everything else. I was so busy, in fact, that I forgot about AGameAWeek Gold! Whoop...

If you've been following me on Twitter (and if not, why not?!) you may have noticed that I'm not currently writing a game. Instead, I'm currently focusing my attention on that good old favourite "The JNK Pseudo Random Music Engine"!.. Oh, goody!! As it stands, I've yet to begin coding anything for next week's AGameAWeek, but this time (for a change!) I'm actually building my Music Engine up using a proper half-usable Tracker style program thingy. Since the program is kinda fun to play around with, I...

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_128.png" style="float:right;"> Today, we take a trip to something eerily similar to something I recently did! Five years ago I had my first J2ME compatible mobile phone. A Samsung U600 is actually a remarkably nice phone. Five years later, the phone is still in a lovely condition, and is in regular use by my Mum, who now only accidentally hits the incredibly sensitive call button once every week or so! It's a great little phone, and it's nice and neat and...

As we continue our trip down memory lane, I'm starting to head off into odd new directions. This week, I'm remaking a game that I made for DS, but never got around to doing a proper fully fledged Windows edition of. Obviously, though, a game full of Sprite-Rips isn't going to cut it in Apple's AppStore. .. Actually, given how fucking often those things somehow manage to get approved, I probably could, but let's not chance it! Instead of ripping old sprites from Arcade Classics, I'...

AppStore is a wonderful place. For the first time, I've actually made some money out of my games!! Well done, Apple, on creating a wonderful ecosystem for indie devs. ... But there are niggling issues.. The number one issue is that I can't reply when I really REALLY want to. What follows is a reply..

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_256.png" style="float:right;">Oooooh!!! When I went to add an AGameAWeek Gold function to my Archive's Admin page, I purposely decided not to add any sort of "Look Ahead" function. I knew it'd be as much fun for me, as it is for you, to find out what today's AGameAWeek Gold is! Just a week in, and I'm finding myself waking up in the morning just to click to my admin page, to see if we've got a good game today!! Today's is awesome! Today's was worth wak...

Last night I was asked how I got Monkey to do all the things that I managed to make it do. I tried to describe it as best as I could, but was already wrapped up in bed, trying to remember it all, whilst only holding an iPad! Not an easy job. I suggested to (URL "https://twitter.com/retrorusty">@RetroRusty) that he waits until the morning, when I can better write a nice big (BIG) waffling (WAFFLING!) blog-post about it all. .. This be that!

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_256.png" style="float:right">Perhaps I should add a separate subsection here, for games that are old, and weren't even good when I made them...?? AGameAWeek Crap springs to mind.. Maybe another day. I have a big proper blog post to write, too, and no time to waste!! For today, we'll continue to pretend that AGAW Gold isn't just a daily trip through the archives to pad out the blog, and is instead, the cream of the crop!! Today, in 2009, I made a stinke...

Apple says we're not supposed to reveal actual sales figures, so you won't find any of those inside. You will find a nice graph, though!

<img src="https://socoder.net/AGAWGold_256.png" style="float:right"> Aaah, March 2010. The month of MAR10! I decided to dedicate the entire month to Mario, and spent the whole month remaking classic AGameAWeek games, but with Mario costumes on all the characters! I remember it like it was yesterday. Except it wasn't yesterday. ... It was three entire smegging years ago!! ARGH!!!!

The Amiga was nearing the end of its life cycle and my local Game store was slowly getting rid of its Amiga stuff. It was sad to find all your favourite games crammed into that little corner of the store where only the geekiest kids would huddle. Then one day, I spotted a bright blue stripy box. "Blitz 2.0!??? Oooh! I'd been using AMOS ever since I got it free on an Amiga Format coverdisk, but this was finally a chance to buy a fully fledged programming language. I whipped it up. .. I say that. ...