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 covers a bunch of crazy content, we’re putting out the question, are collectors editions games going a bit too far? Also, a look back at UniRacers, before Rockstar North was known as Rockstar and history on the gameboy and its portable madness.
Hey guys, (Don’t I always put that?) My opinion on the question,”Have collectible games gone too far?” Is, no, they haven’t gone too far because with almost any CD, book, or movie you see today has a collectible version. And I think that they should keep making collectible versions of them because it shows either who can afford it, or who is loyal enough to the francise to give extra money for a product with more features/content.
P.S. – I love your show! You should make a video podcast sometime.
P.P.S. – Sorry to bug you, but I was just wondering, what is y’alls Xbox Live Gamertags (If you have 1) so I can send you guys a friend request and maybe play some games some time.
Thanks!