Episode 541: E3 Reaction 2019

There are no news items in this podcast. Instead, it’s just post-E3 discussion. Everything is E3. What the crew liked, what the crew didn’t, and T.J.’s reports from doing the show floor. The episode is almost 2 hours long, so there was a lot to talk about.

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News includes:

  • Helldivers 2 developers blame HDDs for the PC version’s file size & delayed updates

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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 617: Steam DeckedEpisode 617: Steam Decked

The Steam Deck has been released, and TJ and Scott are just excited about it. They’re able to play indie games on a Switch-like device even though many of the same games on the Switch. Jonah already has Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and therefore already plays games with a controller on his cellphone.

This week’s news includes:

  • Some Steam Deck preorders won’t ship until September 2022
  • PES is dead, replaced by the F2P ‘football platform’ eFootball
  • Humankind dev pulls controversial Denuvo DRM from game before launch
  • Xbox Game Pass is about to have an unbelievably good month

Let us know what you think on our Facebook page.