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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@To the Moon
Paul, you’re right about the story vs. gameplay. But a game with all gameplay and no story becomes slightly boring. People are goal driven, and the storyline provide these goals.
And yes, “Go bring me 50 rat tails” is a goal, but it is far less interesting than the ones provided by a good story.
@People don’t want PS Vita
He’s true, I don’t want the PS Vita 😀
Jordan, thing is, people do like to carry only one item in their pockets. True, a good game library goes a long way (see XBox) but there is a line where the extra games will indeed trump the discomfort of carrying an extra item.
Thing is, I don’t think Vita will go beyond that line.
@video games for London riots:
Lol! I play STALKER and a bunch of other violent games, but you don’t see me looting. Keep ignoring the 600 lb gorilla in the living room and blame it all on the games …
A friend of mine from UK kept telling me for years that the hands of the police kept being tied behind their backs with laws considering the human rights of delinquents. He for once was not surprised of what happened: when you know you won’t get punished, guess what happens.
@Epic may ban people who spoil Gears of War 3 online:
Actually, this serves Epic well. (1) They’re basically punish people for advertising the game, and this is dumb, and (2), Epic, choose your testers better. If you have a crappy PR, you get crappy people working for you. Do your homework. Have them sign NDAs.
@Intel hiring sci-fi writers to drive technology:
Jonah, you’re making a mistake. It’s not about where to go with the tech, but rather to discover what desires the people of the future will have.
In order to have a product that sells, you need to find out what will the next generations want in terms of using technology. For that you don’t need tech people, you need sociologists.
@QOTW: one problem here is that I rarely dream. The other one is that I don’t bother remembering my dreams, unless they are truly remarkable.
Paul: You asked for it, here it is; hate mail.
You mispronounced my name. My name is not Mark. How dare you sir. I hate you.
Jordan: The story you are thinking of regarding the “accidental” flushing of a GBA was actually from the cover story on the handheld by Electronic Gaming Monthly. They purposefully flushed the unit and it started working again three days later.
QOTW: I’ll be trite here and mention Guitar Hero. It’s true though, I did dream of the colors flying down the fretboard at me during the night.
My QotW answer is not a great deal away from Matt’s. It is THE classic game.
Tetris.
I invested so many hours in that game trying to get the stupid large rocket animation that all I could see when I closed my eyelids was tetrinos falling. Now I know where they got the idea for The Matrix code animations.