[Cymon's Games is a site run by Joe Larson and hosted by Retro Remakes with the aim of encouraging folks to dip their toes into coding by providing help, tutorials and type in games for people to learn from.]

I hope everyone had a good year. And as we prepare to bid this year farewell, fatted on the feasts of the season, and proceed to write up our resolutions for the next year, here’s a few games for you to fetter your time away with. You can even play these with some of those friends and family you’re no doubt hanging out with.

If you missed it, this week had two games for you. For Christmas wanted to do something special. So here’s Gravity Whip, the first “real” game I ever programmed. But since this game requires external datafiles it’s not techincally a Cymon’s Games game. Sothis weeks actual Cymon’s Games game is Life Multiplayer. I have a confession to make. Life Multiplyer is going to require some serious nerdy love to enjoy in it’s current state. The game is in badly need of an update, tho I’m not sure it would help a game this cerebral.  Unfortunately I have no time for an update because I’m knee deep in ASCIIPortal at the moment.

Starting with the new year I will be giving you a peek into the development process my next project, ASCIIPortal, as it progresses. I’ve already written up several parts so hopefully I can keep them coming until the final game goes live, but I don’t guarentee I’ll be able to keep up a weekly schedule.

To whet your appetite I’ve got a write up this week about rotation in alleytris. Related to this I’ve updated Alleytris. You probably won’t notice much difference in the .exe, but the code has been changed subtly. And just so you know, I plan make a new .exe with sound sometime soon.

How am I doing? Keeping the suspense up?

Happy Christmas everyone from all the staff at Retro Remakes! Hope everyone has a fun and safe Christmas and Santa brings everything your heart desires.

Cheers all.

[Cymon's Games is a site run by Joe Larson and hosted by Retro Remakes with the aim of encouraging folks to dip their toes into coding by providing help, tutorials and type in games for people to learn from.]

Had a bit of a run there with nibbles, then snake and now anaconda. Jakub wrote a heck of a program, there. I love the code for anaconda. It’s just beautiful. Plus it’ll put a little red and green up on the site for Christmas. I haven’t really got any other slithery games in my queue now. (Actually, that title gave me a good idea for a game where you are chasing a moving target. You could either play the snake or the mouse. Put that in my idea notebook.)

For Christmas I want to feature a game where you play a really small Santa flea who has to jump across rooftops, dive down the chimneys of good little boys and girls, deliver presents, and wall jump up the chimney to get to the next house. That’d be really cool. But unfortunately I don’t have a program like that. (Two for the idea notebook!) I really don’t have a Christmas themed program at all, this being Cymon’s first Christmas. I suppose there’s always the xmas.c example that comes with curses. (.exe) Be sure to put on your favorite holiday music when you press run.

And don’t let that stop you from giving a present (been a little while since I promoted that link).

Also, if you’re bored or need to get away from all the festivity, fire up your compiler and tell everyone you’re working on Cymon’s Most Wanted.

[Cymon's Games is a site run by Joe Larson and hosted by Retro Remakes with the aim of encouraging folks to dip their toes into coding by providing help, tutorials and type in games for people to learn from.]

When I was pointed to Taipan by a reader I popped it open and navigated it’s code fairly effectively, finding and modifying the bits that needed to be to make it 100% compatible with PDCurses. I somehow managed to not notice the size of the file until I formatted it for print and gawked at the 44 pages, all in a single file, more than dwarfing Star Merchant’s measly 28 pages. If I ever get the chutzpah to find a publisher for these programs this one may need to have some special accommodations. Wow. But it’s a really great game and I’m proud to have it on the site.

Wow, is it really coming up on Christmas already? I’m ready for it and all, I but it still seems to be coming up really fast.

I am starting to work on my next project and I’m going to do something different with this one. The postmortem I did was well received I thought, so I decided to take it to the next level. The next program I’m going to work on is a text version of Portal that I will be calling ASCIIPortal and I am going to make the design process an open book, sharing and documenting every step of the process here. Hopefully this will keep me on track and honest, and hopefully it will end up being something good for the site too.

The ASCIIPortal design features will start to appear at the first of the year. If this turns out to be a good idea who knows where it will lead. I’m trying to talk this thing up because I’d hate to go through all this effort and have no one show up for the party.

The competition is well and truly over as of midnight last night. The entries have been logged, stored and linked up. We’ve got 50 of them in total for you to enjoy ranging from arcade classics to the outright bizarre. We’re sure that the wonderful hard work of all the entrants won’t be unappreciated this fine christmas season. Like all the entrants, I’m pretty knackered right now doing my own bit and making sure all the entries are prepared for this morning, so please excuse the brief note here - I’m about to hit the keyboard with my head. Enjoy the games!

So grab your snowman by the hand and head on over to our competition page.

If any of you fine chaps or chapettes are linking to the compo downloads then could you please link to the first page and not to the files, ta!

[Cymon's Games is a site run by Joe Larson and hosted by Retro Remakes with the aim of encouraging folks to dip their toes into coding by providing help, tutorials and type in games for people to learn from.]

If you didn’t enjoy nibbles you’re really going to hate snake. By the way, the difference between nibbles and snake, as near as I can find, is that snake is nibbles with random obstacles. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s better than having to come up with two different names for the same game. I wonder what I’m going to name the third version I have coming in a few weeks.

I’ve noticed a decline in the novelty of a certain syndicated puzzle and the traffic it’s brought to the site. I said I was getting it out of my system (post-mortem for the gamet that some may find interseting), that appears to be true on more than one front. That only means I’ve got to start bringing traffic to the site on its own merit finally.

Also, if you’re not subscribed to my comments feed or don’t pay attention to the side bar you may have missed my mention of an entire college programming course being given away on youtube.

Deck the halls with bows of Oli, tra la la la etc…

Yup, ladies and gentlefolk it’s that time again when we’re happy to announce that the latest issue of RG should have either winged its way through your letterbox or into those fine establishments that sell magazines.

As well as featuring a lovely homage to an old Crash cover, all done afresh especially for RG by Oli Frey, there’s lots of other stuff for you to be gawping at.

Hit the jump for the full info.

The Twelve Games of Christmas
We kick off the festive season with our very own 12 picks to play at Christmas

The Making of… Bounder
The developers of Gremlin’s cult classic reveal how it came to be.

Retroinspection - Atari ST
Why Atari’s ST was so much more than just a poor man’s Amiga.

The Classic Game - Turtles in Time
Why Konami’s Turtles in Time remains one of the company’s greatest scrolling fighters.

The History of Shining Force
The complete story behind Sega’s amazing strategy series.

The Twilight Game Zone
Bizarre games that you simply must play.

The Making of - SWIV
All that you’ll ever need to know about the hit blaster.

Why You Must Play - Bonanza Bros
Burgling fun with Sega’s sneaky duo.

The Making of - Panzer Dragoon Saga
We discover all the hidden truths behind Sega’s classic RPG.

Something Old, Something New - Metal Slug 7
SNK Playmore discusses the latest game in the Metal Slug series.

We get a fair few Pong variants passing through Retro Remakes Towers, happily batting along on their merry way. With thanks to Meriadoc, we’ve got another one fresh from the oven to tickle your fancy.

No longer are you confined to just bouncing your balls around some empty space, dear readers - oh no. With Assassin Pong you can shoot your opponent too. Not a very nice thing to do, but mildly entertaining none the less.

Should you fancy a bit of the old shooty shooty ball banging, traverse yourself in a YYG’ly direction.

Click clack I was taking a bath… no wait, that doesn’t work does it?

Round these here parts, we love Jayenkai - we’re not entirely sure how he manages to get so many game ideas out of his head and onto our screens so often but we’re certainly very glad he does. This time round, he’s had the idea (*groan*) to remake the C64/Amiga and DOS puzzler obscurity Gearworks.

Use some cogs to link some pegs. It’s that simple really. It’s also very nice with a couple of level packs bundled in for your pleasure.

Grab Gearworks here.