ive found quite a few good sites with plenty of info creating games and such, one particualarly good one even gives you the sourse code
GameDev.net - How To Build a Game In A Week From Scratch With No Budget
the only drawback is it is written in python, not java, but if you have some brains you can guess what he's coded up and use java syntax instead, my game will only be pure text and only deal in health and damage, no armor, magic or anything fancy....yet. gotta crawl before i can walk heh heh.
just thought if anyone was keen on writing something similar that the website above may be helpful