For some reason, this episode was never uploaded, though it was recorded two weeks ago. The Gaming Flashback is Mass Effect, and the news includes:
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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There’s a Silksong in the air, with lots of SIlksong. But despite the Silksong, we have other non-Silksong stuff, including Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. World Stage closed beta kicking off on September 11.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
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Due to scheduling conflicts, there is no podcast. The next podcast will be recorded at its regularly scheduled time.
