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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EA Leaves SecuRom out of Sims 3
Actually, Jack Thompson DID attack The Sims – at least, The Sims 2.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/After-GTA-Attorney-Jack-Thompson-Targets-The-Sims-2-5308.shtml
Actually, Jack Thompson DID attack The Sims – at least, The Sims 2.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/After-GTA-Attorney-Jack-Thompson-Targets-The-Sims-2-5308.shtml
Regarding Infocom, they were and are awesome. Planetfall will still make you cry when Floyd died and you sung a sweet song to him. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was worked on by Douglas Adams himself alongside Steve Meretzky, and Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail of It is one of the most devious, puzzling wordplay games ever made.
Interactive fiction still has a community, and there’s software for anyone to make a text adventure – and you can make a good one if you put some elbow grease into it.
With the power and size of hard drives, I wonder how complex someone could make a text adventure now – after all, a game’s immersiveness isn’t judged by graphics.
Regarding Infocom, they were and are awesome. Planetfall will still make you cry when Floyd died and you sung a sweet song to him. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was worked on by Douglas Adams himself alongside Steve Meretzky, and Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail of It is one of the most devious, puzzling wordplay games ever made.
Interactive fiction still has a community, and there’s software for anyone to make a text adventure – and you can make a good one if you put some elbow grease into it.
With the power and size of hard drives, I wonder how complex someone could make a text adventure now – after all, a game’s immersiveness isn’t judged by graphics.
“Lost Vikings” is the game you were thinking of Don:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Vikings
I think it was a popular game back in the day. I know I loved it and must have rented it for the SNES like 5 times. Don’t think I’ve played the second game though.
These guys made an appearance in World of Warcraft too, in the Uldamann instance (of course they were dwarves in the game I think). The above wikipedia articles mentions it too.
+++++
OnLive. I think it’s a really interesting idea, basically the game is run on their servers/cloud and is only sending you the video feed of your session, and all you send them is your controller movements.
“Lost Vikings” is the game you were thinking of Don:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Vikings
I think it was a popular game back in the day. I know I loved it and must have rented it for the SNES like 5 times. Don’t think I’ve played the second game though.
These guys made an appearance in World of Warcraft too, in the Uldamann instance (of course they were dwarves in the game I think). The above wikipedia articles mentions it too.
+++++
OnLive. I think it’s a really interesting idea, basically the game is run on their servers/cloud and is only sending you the video feed of your session, and all you send them is your controller movements.
Regarding jonahfalcon’s comment about text adventures: I’m still waiting for someone* to make a truly intuitive (perhaps even a learning) text parser. Maybe combine the best of Infocom’s complex command setup with some of the “lifelike” AI chatbot routines they’ve got now.
(* – I tried making one myself, but I’m just one guy, with minimal programming expertise.)
Regarding jonahfalcon’s comment about text adventures: I’m still waiting for someone* to make a truly intuitive (perhaps even a learning) text parser. Maybe combine the best of Infocom’s complex command setup with some of the “lifelike” AI chatbot routines they’ve got now.
(* – I tried making one myself, but I’m just one guy, with minimal programming expertise.)