I want to present here 2D game engine Vortex2D which is based on .NET platform and Direct3D 9c.

Engine provides intuitive object oriented consistent API which is pretty much easy for beginners but powerful enough for professionals. There are some ideas taken from XNA but much more simplified and developer friendly. Also it is could be easily plugged into Windows.Forms applications.

Key features:
- very fast (implements smart caching of primitives)
- flexible sprite framework
- fast and easy to use transformation stack
- sprite fonts
- render target, z-clipping, overlays support
- vertex and pixel shader support (model 2.0)
- multitexturing (up to 8 textures)
- scene graph (base version)
and many more...

Download and check everything yourself. I'm totally sure you'll like it.

Home site:http://vortex2d.codeplex.com
Blog: http://vortex2d.net

Runtime requirements: .NET framework 2.0, DirectX 9.0c (any), videocard with shader model 2.0

Sounds cool . . . if I had more time to program, it might be something I'd be interested in.