Michael Minutillo, one of the authors of the winning entry, described Turbulence in his blog as a game meant to be played in real life, which makes use of a WCF-based game server, Virtual Earth and ASP.NET.

Minutillo said that the game took nine days to complete.

Turbulence took out the overall prize as well as the secondary prize for best mobile application.

(Credit: Devsta Challenge 2008)

In the brief for the Devsta Challenge, entrants were told to make use of the theme "old school, new cool".

Taking out second place was Desktop Racer, which bought Micro Machines back to the future.

Produced in Silverlight, Desktop Racer replicates the style seen in Micro Machines racing games. The author designed a collision detection system for Silverlight which impressed the judges.

(Credit: Devsta Challenge 2008)

Continuing the blast from the past gaming trend was third placed Missile Command 2008.

In a twist from the original, the enemy was tanks instead of incoming missiles, which allowed the author to insert objects that the tanks had to drive around.

The techniques for which were detailed in the author's blog.

(Credit: Devsta Challenge 2008)

You can't go more "old school" than going back to the need for the original computers at Bletchley Park, Enigma.

ENIGMAIL replicates the functionality of the Nazi Enigma machines as a mail program.

Plain text is converted to a cipher, is able to be mailed and decrypted at the receiver's end.

(Credit: Devsta Challenge 2008)