I recently remade two old Alien Shooter J2ME games by NET Lizard for PC — the 2D version and Alien Shooter 3D.

NET Lizard made quite a few Java mobile games back in the feature-phone era, especially shooters and 3D games. Alien Shooter was one of their more interesting releases, so I wanted to see how these games would feel if they were adapted to modern PC controls instead of being limited by old phone keypads.

For both remakes, I tried to keep the original gameplay and level design intact while modernizing the controls. The default framerate is also increased to 120 FPS.

Alien Shooter 3D

This one benefited the most from simply replacing the original phone controls.

It now uses a normal modern FPS control scheme, so movement and aiming are much smoother. This also makes the game considerably easier — a lot of the difficulty in the original honestly came from fighting the controls.

The game itself is surprisingly decent for a J2ME FPS. It has a bit of an old-school Doom-like feel, and considering the hardware it was designed for, I think it holds up pretty well.

There are also hidden areas inside some walls, although they're not particularly hard to discover since the doors are shown on the map.

Alien Shooter 2D

The 2D game is a different story.

Even after improving the controls, it's still pretty difficult, so I made a few additional quality-of-life changes:

• You can now crouch and shoot while using weapons other than the pistol.
• I added some fall protection. A few platforming sections are extremely high, and one bad fall in the original could basically force you to restart.
• I added a chgod cheat code. If you get stuck or just want to explore the game, you can use that.

My goal wasn't really to redesign either game, but to make them more comfortable to play today while keeping most of the original J2ME experience intact.

If anyone here played NET Lizard games back in the day, I'd also be curious which ones you remember.

2D remake:
https://github.com/Feiyang0102sso/alien-shooter-2d-remake

3D remake:
https://github.com/Feiyang0102sso/alien-shooter-3d-remake

Gameplay:

2D:
https://youtu.be/lYy9PWdaHpg

3D:
https://youtu.be/1BhsrRPXFbk

Recently, I wanted to back up and archive some older iOS apps linked to my Apple ID.

Why I wrote this:
If you are a legacy iOS archiver, you might have used tools to archive multiple historical versions of your purchased apps (e.g., trying to find and backup the last working versions for iOS 5, 6, or 7).

Dumping them one by one using Clutch is incredibly tedious: installing each IPA, SSHing to dump it, transferring it back to the PC, renaming it, and repeating.

So I wrote a simple automation tool: IPA Clutch Batch.

It processes an entire folder of IPAs alphabetically:

1. Installs the IPA to the iOS device.
2. Calls Clutch to dump the app.
3. Pulls the dumped IPA back to the PC and renames it.
4. Cleans up the dumped files on the device after verification, then proceeds to the next app version.

It automatically skips any errors (e.g., incompatible device or iOS version too low) and proceeds to the next one. You can just run it and let it do its thing. 🤓👍

It also includes a feature to auto-detect and install Clutch if it's missing (manual installation is also supported).

Prerequisites:

1. A jailbroken legacy iOS device (I only tested on IOS6, it should work for IOS <=10).
2. afc2, OpenSSH, and Core Utilities installed on the device.
3. A reliable USB cable and a folder of IPA files associated with your account.
4. The corresponding Apple ID signed in on the iOS device (since Clutch requires the id on the device to perform the dump).

Please Note:
This tool only automates the Clutch workflow. It does not provide or distribute IPA files. Use it only with apps you have obtained legitimately.

Links:

• Project Releases: https://github.com/Feiyang0102sso/IPA_Clutch_Batch/releases
• and a quick demo: https://youtu.be/4GHq4NhDNZE?si=8YEeJ0n-5W7LJv5-