Lode Runner, a game many of us logged hundreds of hours upon. Lode Runner has a great deal of replay value thanks to its great map editor. The game was first published by Broderbund in 1983, but was first prototyped by Douglas Smith, an architecture student at the University of Washington.
The Lode Runner prototype was called Kong and was originally written for a Prime Computer 550 minicomputer on campus, but shortly after it was ported to the VAX minicomputer. Originally programmed in FORTRAN and utilized only ASCII character graphics (the most basic of characters).
In September of 1982 Smith was able to port it to the Apple II+ (in assembly language) and renamed it to Miner. In October of that same year he submitted a rough copy to Broderbund and he’s said to have received a one-line rejection letter, “Sorry, your game doesn’t fit into our product line; please feel free to submit future products.”
The original title had no joystick support and was developed in full black and white…not exactly exciting. So, Smith then borrowed money to purchase a color monitor and joystick and continued to improve the game. Around Christmas of 1982, he submitted the game, now renamed Lode Runner, to four publishers and quickly received offers from all four: Sierra, Sirius, Synergistic, and Brøderbund.
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Hi guys great episode!
I found Infamous to be a pretty easy game, if they make the third even more so just seems sad. Not a lot of games seem to be as difficult as the old 8-bit games. I do like the paper trail feature Jordan talked about and I know Rockstar has a similar thing though not quite as cool as unlocking more missions through using the website, you can still track your progress of various games on the site.
Hearing Paul spending 200 on in game purchases on a FB game just makes me sad. I know it’s his choice on how to spend his money but a lot of FB games really seem to encourage you to spend real money to get fake in game money just to speed things up and make the game enjoyable. The Foxtrot comic Jonah brought up is a good example of why I don’t like those games. I feel like it’s lazy game making and undeserving of my money. I know they got to make money to pay their bills but I don’t like what they are selling. I guess though if there is a demand for these type of games who am I to judge? I’ll stop beating the dead horse now.
@Occulus bought by FB: When I first heard the news I was like “Why?” I wasn’t the only one scratching my head at this. I really didn’t want to think of Virtual Farmville. I do like the idea though of remote classroom, though I know we already have video chat for that sort of thing. Is anyone going to really want to wear this thing on their head? It’s like a fancier virtual boy.
QOTW: I subscribe to Gameinformer, which can be read online now. It does seem like it’s less and less necessary now though given how easy it is to hear about gaming news.