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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Welcome to the TD Gaming Podcast! This week we discussed:
Hi, Well done on the podcast, I was sitting at my desk here (accross the pond from the US) and stumbled on your website. I like the idea that you have a girl who is a ‘proper gamer’ on the team.
I particuarly enjoyed the Atari article as I brought the Alone in the dark 360 game and feel completely scorched by my purchase (and now i know why I couldn’t find a review before I forked over 40 quid!).
Would like to see some more game reviews and opinions but you are doing a great job. Keep it up!.
Aly
London
Ouch, sorry to hear you purchased it without a review, honestly, I had thought the game was supposed to be great (considering Atari let go of so many franchises and kept that one).
Apparently they failed in execution 😐
Thanks for the comments and for taking the time to listen to the podcast! As a guy that recently visited London, I can tell you I cannot imagine spending 40 quid on anything as that’s 80 USD 🙂