I won't lie... this feels really odd to begin making a game in Actionscript 2.0 in 2022. The last time I worked in AS2 was in 2010... 12 years ago.

A little history - I started making games and movies using Macromedia Flash 5 and Actionscript 1.0. I went to college for animation and 3D modeling and didn't know anything about programming when I first found Newgrounds.

It was a struggle but I eventually got kinda comfortable with AS1 because I got really frustrated every time I would team up with a programmer and they would disappear on me. Most of my early stuff is hot garbage by my standards today, but the early feedback I got on Newgrounds.com kept me motivated to keep learning Flash and improving my skills. And the abundant number of internet trolls here helped me develop a thick skin and not take everything to heart when people talk about my work.

Time marched on and I worked up the nerve to transition to Adobe Flash CS5 and Actionscript 2.0.

I remember it being a pretty massive change from AS1, but my skills were improving every day and I made some of my most popular games in it.

I used the skills I developed at Newgrounds to build a career out of Flash development. And over time my employers switched to AS3, and holy hell I felt like a complete noob when I first sat down with AS3. I couldn't even make a button work. Absolutely lost for a while...

I learned and worked and coded in multiple languages. HTML, CSS, PHP, PYTHON, C#, LUA, Gamemaker Studio, and more.

So today I cracked open some of my old AS2 games and well... I obviously had absolutely no idea what I was doing back then. I love that I made these games so poorly, not because I'm proud of the quality of the work, but because I FINISHED the games and released them. It's amazing the amount of heart and optimism that I know my younger self put into making these games.

Over time it's easy for old farts like me to lose that spark. Paying a mortgage, getting married, adulting in general... It's easy to prioritize other things over passion. And when you become more skilled you know the "right way" to do stuff and often use that as an excuse to work slowly and not sprint excitedly toward the goal of releasing a game.

So hopefully with this little AS2 project I can make something I'm proud of, and revisit the good old days where I was just excited to make weird stuff and share it with people.