This podcast was also delayed in publication due to real-life issues, but there’s a lot of banter involved, including a discussion of Bethesda’s missteps and the upcoming The Elder Scrolls VI, whatever it is.
Let us know what you think.
Last week’s episode was torpedoed by audio issues (who knows, maybe they’ll come back in a outtakes episode), so this week returns with half old news and half new news. The Gaming Flashback returns with a vengeance with the classic Popcap game Peggle — which came out while Gaming Podcast debuted!
This week’s new/old news includes:
Also, there’s a Question of the Week — listen in and let us know what you think.
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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This weeks gaming podcast flashes back to Drakkhan, touches on the history of Infocom and battles some gaming news in a time when gaming news is light. We’re reading some community comments and tackling these difficult headlines:
This week’s question of the week, what occurred in 2009 that “wowed” you, made you happy, built your excitement or just generally rocked your face off?
