2d game programming

Seems like every Dx9 tutorial out there deal exclusively in 3d ... except for the occasional thing about textured quads ...

Is there like, a magical super place somewhere on the intarweb with 2d game programming resources? ... I'm trying to hack together a shmup ...

Well, you only need to write a nifty 2d-in-3d framework once, and you can write your game based on that to get all the nifty effects like alpha blending, color blending and sprite stretching/rotation for "free".

Oh and shader effects if you're into that sort of stuff.