Well...this tutorial is pretty old. The methods I use to make side-scrolling games work in this tutorial certainly aren't the most efficient, and I've gotten much much better at making games since I wrote this. But just as a reference for 100% n00bs to making Flash games, I'll leave this here.
This tutorial provides a good overview of how to program a side-scrolling, or platform games in Flash. It covers the basics of game programming, how to program gravity, walls, movable characters, scrolling backgrounds, and health bars.
This tutorial assumes you have a basic knowledge of Flash. If you don't, you probably won't understand this.
I hope this really helps a lot of people get started with making Flash platformers.
