2019 is slowly coming to a close, and the guys start wondering about what awaits in 2020, as some truly exciting titles await.
This week’s news items include:
Let us know what you think.
This week’s episode has some bad audio thanks to a quick replacement mic being used to record the episode, causing a hiss. This is probably the reason the show is short-ish, coming in well under an hour.
This week’s episode includes the following news:
All this and Listener Feedback. This week’s Question of the Week: “What is or was your favorite handheld console game (not mobile)?”
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 week we discuss Bungie lawsuits, the Street Fighter 6 World Tour, a Stardew Valley clone featuring serial killers, and Fortnite as an Olypmic esport.
The news of the week includes:
Let us know what you think.
