Remember the Atari 2600? Brace yourself because it’s marrying HTML5!

Atari and Microsoft, in conjunction with renowned web developer Grant Skinner are driving great standards-based web experiences through the classic games that were staples on the Atari 2600 console. This partnership is also producing resource for you as a web developer (or aspiring web developer) to learn HTML5 in a fun way by making it easy for you to build casual games on the web. Finally, we are introducing events here in Canada meant to help you get up to speed in building great games (and web solutions in general) with HTML5 and the associated standards.

REMINISCE AND THEN FIND 1.21 GIGAWATTS TO PROPEL YOU TO THE FUTURE*

Do you remember those heady days as a kid playing the great arcade-style classics like Asteroids, Centipede, Lunar Lander and (naturally) Pong?  Well, today Microsoft is announcing a partnership with Atari around bringing these classics to the modern browser using the family of HTML5 web standards and touch-first experiences.  They can be found at the Atari Arcade!  Even better, it is Canada’s own Grant Skinner, a renowned web developer (and author of the Pirates Love Daisies web and Windows 8 game, also built with HTML5 standards) that brought these classics “to the future”.

So why is this important to you as a business-oriented IT professional?  Well, we didn’t just port the games over but we also provided a great deal of content on how Grant built these games in HTML5.  Given that many (even most?) LOB apps are web/intranet based with browser-hosted front ends, it’s likely of interest to you to get up to speed on the newest web standards.  Building your own game in HTML5 is a fun way to learn these standards.

(*:  Comment if you got the 1.21 Gigawatt reference…  Smile  )

BUILD

What Atari, Microsoft and Grant Skinner are providing to you as a web developer:

  • A “Behind the Scenes” Resource repository with details of how Grant built the games in HTML5 as well as an SDK you can use.  It also provides tutorials for building HTML5-based games
  • A GitHub repository with all the code
  • Updated versions of game-related JavaScript libraries such as CreateJS, EaselJS and SoundJS which make it much easier to implement all of the HTML5 goodness in dynamic, standards-based web experiences

 

LEARN

Interested?  Well, we are excited, too and would love to help you harness your HTML5 creativity here in Canada by hosting some great CreateJS Hackathons for you.  If you’ve always wanted to get some hands-on, guided experience with HTML5, this is a great opportunity for you.  All the details including registration instructions can be found on a post on W00t Studio, authored by my HTML5-ified colleague Thomas Lewis.

Looking for more HTML5 resources?  Here’s a few to get you started building amazing standards-based web experiences:

 

Enjoy!