Saw this post on the newsgroups, and I got a kick out of both the story and the little game Aaron wrote.  Hopefully this post doesn't give him 'too much' publicity.. =)

(Oh, and Aaron, my feedback is 'nice job' in the short time you worked on it.. I got a kick out of it.. I'll add gamepad support to it because games like that are just too clunky on a keyboard. =)  I hope your girlfriend was proud. )

From his post:

Hey I just wanted to post a link to a 2D game I made using Managed
DirectX in C#. Its a side scroller like Super Mario brothers, comes
with the source and everything you need to run it minus of course
DirectX and the .NET framework.

I have to say it looks pretty sweet and runs very well on decent
graphics cards and computers. But I have seen problems on older cards
with some textures. Definitly its a bit of a hog since it was my first
attempt at Managed DirectX, and is probably a bit inefficent. So keep
in mind its not the best code. But it should get people started if
they are looking to do a 2D game.

I did this game for my girlfriends birthday so it isn't something I am
really actively maintaining or anything, but I am hoping to hear
feedback, positive, negative, or otherwise. And if people learn from
my code, I figure thats all the better.

Aaron

Blog entry on this:
http://theshellandcactus.blogspot.com/2005/09/texas-quest.html

Link to download the game and source:
http://www.savefile.com/files/5349900