![]() ![]() The NES version was released by Hudson Soft in 1984 (North American release 1986) and became one of the earliest third-party games made for that system. Most versions of Lode Runner were on disk, but the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 also got a "lite" cartridge version with only 32 levels and no editor for users without disk drives. Versions include those for the Atari ST, Sinclair Spectrum 48K/128K, NES, Windows 3.1, Macintosh, and the original Game Boy. A port for the original 128k Macintosh followed in 1984. This was then released for the Sega Mark I console with only minor changes. The original microcomputer versions included the Apple II series, the Atari 8-bit family, the VIC-20, the Commodore 64, the IBM PC, and a Konami version licensed for the MSX computer named " King's Valley". For the latter, he reputedly paid neighborhood children to design levels with the editor he'd coded. According to this article, Smith was given a $10,000 advance by Brøderbund to develop the inter-square animation, and to provide 150 levels of play. It was too primitive for an acceptable commercial product as Brøderbund wanted detailed pixel-level movement. Miner, like its text-based Kong predecessors, had only very simple animation where characters move across the screen in block increments. 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. Smith then borrowed money to purchase a color monitor and joystick and continued to improve the game. He submitted a rough version to Brøderbund around October 1982 and received a one-line rejection letter in response to the effect of "Sorry, your game doesn't fit into our product line please feel free to submit future products." Through the end of the year, he refined that version, which was black-and-white with no joystick support. Over one weekend in 1982, Smith was able to build a crude, playable version in 6502 assembly language on an Apple II+ and renamed the game Miner. When Kong was ported to the VAX, some Pascal sections were mixed into the original Fortran code. The game was programmed in Fortran and used ASCII character graphics. Shortly thereafter, Kong was ported to VAX minicomputers, as there were more terminals available on campus. This prototype, called Kong, was written for a Prime Computer 550 minicomputer limited to one building on the UW campus. Smith of Renton, Washington, who at the time was an architecture student at the University of Washington. The prototype of what later became Lode Runner was a game developed by Douglas E. ![]()
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