This week is a hybrid of a “greatest hits” episode and a short news brief, we’ve got a couple stories, community comments and Don added a blooper “greatest hits” reel to the end of the episode, so enjoy! The news includes:
This week, we’re still busting a question of the week as well and it’s a thinker… if you had one novel to implement into a game (which has never been done), what novel would it be?
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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The crew gets excited about the announcement of The Wolf Among Us 2, although it won’t be out for a while, and bemoan the infestation of live service games everywhere these days in videogames.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think on Gaming Podcast’s Facebook page here.
As the episode title would imply, this week’s Gaming Flashback is Psychonauts, with Jonah revealing he’s a total fanboy and backed the sequel for over $800. He also has no idea what Oxenfree is, since he hadn’t played it yet. (He has, and realizes he was completely wrong about it being like Cabin in the Woods.)
The news:
Let us know what you think.
Well in turns out Valve did spend some Munny and got Left for dead 2 accepted by the board to be released in Australia, though it’s a modified version (gore removed). Their is now also a discussion that their is enough pressure from developers, investors & general interest to get an 18+ Rating in the near future. I believe the sides of argument is that having a 18+ rating will allow evil & disturbing games to be accessed to young people, & the other side is that it should be the responsibility of the parents to monitor and restrict what games they play and the rating is there to support parents in their decision. Another issue is not having an 18+ rating will allow games that should be 18+ to be sold to a younger audience.
Well that’s some gaming news from Aus
L8ers Ivan
Well in turns out Valve did spend some Munny and got Left for dead 2 accepted by the board to be released in Australia, though it’s a modified version (gore removed). Their is now also a discussion that their is enough pressure from developers, investors & general interest to get an 18+ Rating in the near future. I believe the sides of argument is that having a 18+ rating will allow evil & disturbing games to be accessed to young people, & the other side is that it should be the responsibility of the parents to monitor and restrict what games they play and the rating is there to support parents in their decision. Another issue is not having an 18+ rating will allow games that should be 18+ to be sold to a younger audience.
Well that’s some gaming news from Aus
L8ers Ivan
I wish i could answer the question of the week, but i generally dont read, and what i do read is purely informative and not fiction.
Maybe the reason why a novel hasn’t been made into a game is that gamers don’t read. Ha, well i’m not saying I hate reading and it’s a waste of time, but i rather sit down to a good game rather than a good book.
I wish i could answer the question of the week, but i generally dont read, and what i do read is purely informative and not fiction.
Maybe the reason why a novel hasn’t been made into a game is that gamers don’t read. Ha, well i’m not saying I hate reading and it’s a waste of time, but i rather sit down to a good game rather than a good book.