Episode 528: Back From Disaster

Jonah’s desktop PC finally died completely from irretrievable hardware failure, and this episode was recorded clumsily on his cellphone. Meanwhile, TJ has been enjoying Apex Legends enormously, and gives it a rave review.

Otherwise, this week’s news includes:

  • Activision-Blizzard lays off 800 employees
  • World War Z gets an April release date
  • Dragon Quest Builders 2 comes to Switch, PS4 this summer
  • Chucklefish boss says Sony is responsible for lack of PS4 crossplay

The Question of the Week is “Which game would you love to see remade?”

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Episode 413: Baldur’s Gaming PodcastEpisode 413: Baldur’s Gaming Podcast

Jonah survived the cold snap, and everything is okay – we think. There’s not much to this podcast except for the extensive discussions on completely unrelated topics.

The news this week includes:

  • The Chinese Room gearing up to announce a new game
  • “Who wouldn’t want to take on” Baldur’s Gate 3, says former Bioware writer
  • New rumor has Forza Motorsport 6 and Forza Horizon 3 coming to Windows 10
  • id Software: DOOM reboot single player campaign around 13 hours

Question of the Week: “What is your favorite FPS?”

Gaming Flashback: Lode RunnerGaming Flashback: Lode Runner

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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Episode 716: Xbox Partner PreviewEpisode 716: Xbox Partner Preview

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This week the gang covers the Xbox Partner Preview, while also discussing the closing of Rooster Teeth.

The news includes:

  • Apple kills Epic’s iOS developer account
  • Xbox Partner Preview announcements
  • Rogue-like poker hit Balatro sells half a million copies in ten days

Let us know what you think.

The post Episode 716: Xbox Partner Preview first appeared on Gaming Podcast.