About
Hey there, my name is John and this is my website! I am not quite sure what to call it... it is a portfolio website, but also my own personal space to do what I need to do. There's a community forum here, as well as my entire collection of work. So in a way, let's just say it's my own personal webspace. That sounds good.
jmtb02 Studios was founded by one guy, myself. I have made all the creations on this site, since '02-'03 when I first starting dabbling in Flash. I am mostly self-taught, but had some help along the way :).
I have compiled a longer history to go along with the short blurb above.
1992 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007
1992
I had the Mac OS 7.5, and we had 100 MB of space on our computer. Basically, our top of the line computer allowed me to work with simple graphics programs, such as KidPix. Here, I figured out that you could really do some cool stuff on the computer. For the next 10 years, I would play around with graphics programs just to see what they did. They were interesting, and playing with a mouse and different brushes was fun.
2002
Friends at my local high school got me sucked into Flash 5. It was a powerful tool, that allowed for simple animations at a small file size. I started getting into Flash, and got absolutely hooked. It was mostly just animations to start, but as I started to learn Actionscript, I started to dabble in game design. Teachers and other students encouraged me to continue work, and I carried on making simple minute-long animations.
2003
I started to make games more than animations, and realized I had a small knack for programming. I made a few games, including the first Ball demo and the Braden's Kitchen. These games were simple, but the kids at school seemed to like it. I decided that I really liked this sort of work, and applied to colleges looking for a degree in Digital Media. I ended up getting accepted to UC Davis, as a Technocultural Studies major.
2004
jmtb02 Studios started September 21, 2004 as a personal website for showcasing simple animations and games I had created. At that time, I had just a few games and animations at this point, but nothing much. Flash was merely a free time venture for an 18 year-old kid.
In December 2004, I started a traditional Frame-by-Frame animation for a Flash Contest by a non-profit called Citizens for Global Solutions. The animation I created was called Neglected Sky, and concerned global climate change. Nearly a month later, I had learned I won First Place out of 300 entries, and earned a $1,000 and distribution of my animation.
2005
Shortly afterwards, Flash became a serious venture for me. I realized I had some talent in it, and it was time to venture forward. I started producing a sequel to a game that I had created back in High School in my free time, called Ball Revamped. This new title would be called Ball Revamped II: Metaphysik. Little did I know that the game would take the web by storm.
 Ball Revamped Metaphysik, featured in Web User Magazine, UK |
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In about 2 days, I saw my game go from college Freshman's free time between classes to the #1 game on the web. On a single Friday on Febuary 3rd, 2005, the web took down my website. The website jumped to the top 3,000 websites on the web that day. My bandwidth charges jumped to nearly $100 an hour, something a college student couldn't cope with. The site was upgraded to a larger hosting plan and the fees were waved.
The game was a breakthrough for me. Games were fun to create, and I could also do animation at the same time. I found it a great oppotunity to jump into, so I switched my production from animation into games and animation. Jmtb02 Studios started rolling when it was featured in Web User Magazine and on the BBC World News show Click.
 BBC World News show "Click" featured Ball Revamped II on their show. |
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Games were really fun to make. I loved the idea of making people happy with my work, it was really a great feeling for me. Animation was great, but I found my true knack in programming. Of course, with no programming under my belt, I had to learn from scratch.
About a month later, I got word that I violated copyright on my previous animation, Neglected Sky. I had to pay up or take the music off the animation. Citizens for Global Solutions paid off the $800, and we were good to go, until...
Media that Matters Film Festival by Arts Engine got word of my animation, and sent me an email, asking if I wanted to enter Neglected Sky into the film festival. It was a long shot to get in, but I decided to enter anyway on a whim. Soon enough, the animation got in, and it was off to New York.
Before New York though, I had a game to finish. Ball Revamped III: Andromeda and Ball Revamped III: Gemini was a sequel to the previous game, in a two part, dual-release game.
The game also was the first to recieve sponsorship. Dan from a game website, called Games of Gondor, requested to sponsor the games so that I could earn revenue from the games. I accepted, and he let me continue to do the game as I pleased without compromising the game. It was a great deal, everyone benefitted from the Sponsorship. The game made another huge hit on the web, not as large as the first, but was warmly recieved. Millions of hits on the game were being recieved.
As the Ball Revamped 3 release started to wear off, I was gearing up to make my way to New York for the Media that Matters Film Festival. I was going to win some kind of award, but I was unsure yet as to what it would be. I hopped on a plane and made my way to the Big Apple.
I ended up at HBO Studios, and won the Environmental Award. I was given an award, $1000, and the distribution of my animation on DVD for screenings around the world. It was one of the best experiences of my life, and I loved every minute of it.
Besides, I got to take a picture with Al Franken and Tim Robbins. For the win.
By that time, Freshman year of College was over, but it was still just August. It was already the awesome year ever, but it was just getting better.
I soon learned that college was expensive and that it was going to be really hard for me to afford it. I had to pull out of Flash and start working a full time job at a Protein Lab where I used to live. I realized that Flash was going to be hard to get to.
But Dan from Games of Gondor thought otherwise. He offered to start paying me part time for Flash work, and continued to let me do whatever I wanted to. Suddenly, things started looking up again. In honor of his generosity, I made a game called Hobbit Rampage.
Hobbit Rampage was a sidescrolling fighting game. Themed to his site, he was excited to have it, and it was exciting to work on it. It did extremely well, making front page on several websites. 80 hours a week was difficulty to pull off with Flash and working at a lab. But it was done. That summer, I earned enough for my whole year in college.
The rest of the year was dedicated to the next release of Ball Revamped 4, which was taking forever to produce due to extreme amounts of new code.
Animation found a time and place finally again in December, as I worked on another Climate Change animation called Punt-a-Penguin. The animation won many honors, and was sponsored by Citizens for Global Solutions.
2006
2006 was the year to end all years for my Flash development. It was the first year I could really sink my teeth into learning and creating quality Flashes, without worrying about work. I managed to get enough pay to start supporting myself financially through Flash. It was an amazing turnaround for me.
The year kicked off with a bang, with the new Ball Revamped 4 game. This game was the long awaited sequel to Ball Revamped 3, and featured 20 new power ups and 100 new levels. There was even two bosses!
The game was incredibly successful, and won me my first user-voted "Game of the Month" award from Newgrounds.
Also launched was a small environmental game, called, Water Dash!, which concerned global water issues. It was sponsored by Citizens for Global Solutions again.
I took a small Flash sabbatical for a month, to focus on school work. Now a Sophomore in college, I had a lot on my plate with upper division courses. When I got back, I was full of ideas, and one of them was Four Second Fury.
 Four Second Frenzy, featured in five different Canadian magazines |
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Four Second Fury was HUGE. The game immediately spread across the web, gaining momentum. A lot of people gave it grief for its resemblence to Wario Ware, a popular Nintendo game which functions on the same mechanic. Nonetheless, it was warmly recieved, and I decided to make another.
Before I started, I took a trip to E3 2006! I went with Dan, my boss from Armor Games and a really nice guy. We spent those three days wandering the floor, hanging out with the booth babes, and overall just having a great time.
It was also the first year that jmtb02 Studios became a legal business!
On the Newgrounds.com forums, I decided to let a lot of developers help me out on the next one. Four Second Fury was a lot of work, and I thought it would be much more rewarding if everyone could get in on the action. Within about a week, we had over 50 microgames from 26 different developers, and we decided to cut it off there.
Four Second Frenzy was born, and was even more popular than Four Second Fury. Instead of carrying on with this madness for a trilogy, I decided to give it a break and focus on another angle of gaming.
Summer saw the release of Dark Cut, a medieval surgery game not for the weak stomached. The game has you encounter three different surgeries, ranging from curing the bubonic plague to creatively killing a vampire. My first truly gory blood-fest, the game had very mixed reactions. Some people felt that it was too much for a game, and others felt like it was the best game they ever played. In the end, it would come to be the most popular jmtb02 game around. Pretty strange how that works.
Four Second Firestorm struck shortly after. Firestorm boasted over 56 developers from 25 different countries, contributing over 175 microgames. The file inflated over and over again to nearly 14 mb just for the download, it was quite a journey.
Summer also featured a minigame hit, Scribble!. Scribble is a fast-paced drawing game, where a crayon is quickly rubbed across the screen in dot-to-dot racing. The game is really fast-paced and silly, but nontheless was popular. Another small game release was Squeezed!, which was a dodging game where you tried to survive as long as possible.
That Summer was an amazing year for me. By the end of the year, Newgrounds.com gave me the honor of indoctrinating me to forum moderator, which is a position of honor in the forums. I found out while I was on vacation in Hawaii, sitting with my laptop on the lanai.
Fall was a month of moving into the particle games. ( Ellipsis ) launched with a literal bang, bringing a new level to my pixel gaming. The game had tons of particles erupting on the screen, it was quite a visual treat!
In November, I went to Adobe headquarters in San Jose, CA, to talk to teachers and educators about the Adobe Youth Voices program, a program that supports education and the creation of Youth Media. Going to Adobe was really neat, and was a really great opportunity!
By Christmas, Spin Doctor followed with a mouse-breaking clickfest. The game wasn't as popular as Ellipsis, but was still quite popular.
 Luminara, featured in several major blogs |
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That Christmas season also saw the release of the first real flop of jmtb02 Studios. Console Wars: Second Shipment was a game mocking the launch date release of the Playstation and Nintendo Consoles. The game scored poorly on critic websites, and had issues with lag that were terrible. The game was not popular, and it showed.
2007
2007 marked the three year anniversary of the site, but also brought a new year to the Flash world. The release of Flash 9 made Flash gaming more powerful, even introducing 3d gaming!
Two games started the 2007 season. Knights of Rock combined traditional animation and DDR-style fighting, while 5 'til took a 10 minigames on a quest to defuse a bomb. Each of the games were popular, and showed the variety of programming styles that I was capable of. While not the most popular games, they were definitely a good impact on the site.
Scribble! 2 also launched, and was incredibly popular on several sites. The game also won the "Game of the Month" on Newgrounds.
As an April Fools joke, the site went to blue as a joke that the site was being bought by long-time tester and forum member Dicko, who bought the site for millions! Also noted was the non-release of Ball Revamped 5, which would not be continued and would be skipped for Ball Revamped 6. Just a joke though!
In leu of too much school work and a bit of joking around, the game Extreme Missle Defense X-treme 3d was released. A joke game, of course, I got several angry emails that I lost my touch.
 Luminara, featured in several major blogs |
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Luminara, a sequel to Spin Doctor and ( Ellipsis ), was a major hit in May. The game rose to popularity much faster than any of my other launch titles, and in almost a week, because the most popular jmtb02 Studios game ever released!
That summer, school tried to kill me. I had two writing classes and a workshop in Advanced Flash, and Flash was taking forever to complete. Ball Revamped 5 was in production, and taking forever. Money was running low, and tensions were running high.
However, Ball Revamped 5 launched to a huge reception. Using a new style of gameplay, the game actually pushes you through different levels based on your skill. The level editor by Tastylamp provided thousands of extra user-made levels to enjoy!
After school ended, I left UC Davis and moved down to Irvine, CA to become Senior Game Programmer at Armor Games. The awesome part of this job is that I still got to make the games i wanted to make, just getting a full-time job in an office doing it! The move was crazy, since I had to move 400 miles.
From my first few games, it looked like it was going to work out. Particle games Argent Burst and TBA were both made in 4 days each! It was amazing to see good quality games being released so fast, and that was what Armor Games was providing.
Dark Cut 2 was my biggest game release ever. Using advanced Photoshop techniques, I managed to make four surgeries from the Civil War era in real photo-quality procedures.
And history is still being written, check back for updates!
