The eighties were the wonderful time of innovative game concepts, and this is what we at ZX Games really love and are passionate about. We’re not really sure what it was all that time, but somehow a single person could come up with a brilliant idea and turn it into a game that sells millions of copies.
Developing a game today is something else entirely. We really don’t appreciate the idea of having a great team of developers, writers, animators, etc. to create a complex game that will need some time to grow and yet it will not be original. Simplicity and minimalism is what distinguishes a good game; Ingenious thinking is what makes a brilliant mind.
Today’s featured game is Lode Runner. Released in 1983, it is surprising that the game still sells and people buy it every day. Can you imagine this? Not a day goes by without at least one person interested in buying Lode Runner …
- Game Inventor: Douglas E. Smith
- Occupation at the time of the invention: student, specialty in Physics
- Location at time of invention: University of Washington, Seattle
Douglas Smith lived in Renton, Washington before going to Seattle to enter the Computer Science Department at the University. However, as irony wants it, the future inventor of Lode Runner failed to qualify twice for Computer Science and had to decide on the specialization in Physics. Ultimately, Douglas dropped out of college in the wake of the success of Lode Runner and became a millionaire.
The first version of Lode Runner was written in Fortran on VAX 1 at the University. He was called Kong due to his similarities to Donkey Kong. Since video game development was not an authorized use of University resources, the game was known as graphic until completion. Running the graph on the University machine required the user to enter a secret password. This password became common knowledge among students, and it was soon reported that around 80% of users were running graphics instead of practicing computer science.
Kong’s sole co-author was James Bratsanos. It contributed approximately 15% of the total man-hours to the development of the Fortran version and 0% to the later versions.
Kong worked on ASCII terminals. The bricks were solid block characters, the player was a dollar sign, and the enemies were paragraph symbols.
A paragraph symbol is basically an upside down capital P with a double vertical line. Everyone thought they looked like cobras and referred to them as snakes. The player bounced quickly and was difficult to control. The user had to press the space bar to make the player stop moving.
The next version was called Miner. It was developed in Douglas’s bedroom in 6502 assembly language on an Apple II + machine. Douglas originally wanted to keep enemies snaking, sliding across the screen, but later changed his mind as he had to add more animation to the game. (And you can’t animate the paragraph symbol, can you?) The player was still moving by leaps and bounds around the screen. It looked like he was ice skating.
Douglas sent Miner to four video game marketing companies: Brøderbund, Electronic Arts, Sirius Software, and Epyx. Brøderbund offered him a $ 10,000 advance and a 23% royalty on gross sales. One of the others offered him a $ 100,000 flat. You made the right choice and chose Brøderbund. Later, Douglas blamed Sirius for leaking a copy of Miner, which was widely distributed in Southern California.
Brøderbund gave him the advance without any commitment other than that he could not market it elsewhere. To get the royalties, Douglas would have to complete the game with four main points:
- Animation
- Sound effects
- New title page
- 150 levels
With a new incentive, Douglas worked around the clock, dropping his classes during the term (Spring, 1983). At the time he only had about 30 levels and is said to have been not creative enough to think of another 120. So he let the neighborhood kids come up and design new levels with Douglas’s screen editor. He paid the kids per level for each one that ended up in the final release.
Brøderbund had a former Walt Disney animator working internally. For one part of the proceeds, I would design a nice cover. Douglas accepted their offer.
The snakes in the game were tuned into running stick figures, because Douglas couldn’t create the proper animation and simply borrowed the four-frame running man sequence from Broderbund’s Choplifter game (hence the name Bungelings).
The game was ready in the summer of 1983 under the title of Lode Runner.
Douglas offered James Bratsanos a fixed payment for his role in the development of the Fortran version. James was surprised to receive something and accepted.
Douglas royalties started pouring in. He broke Choplifter’s record on Brøderbund of $ 77,000 in one-month royalties. Rumors are circulating that Douglas raised $ 2 million in total royalties. Although he had to pay a substantial portion of the revenue as taxes to the government, with the net proceeds he was able to purchase a Porche 911 Carrera, a Bayliner speedboat, and a home in Issaquah, Washington.
However, soon, when the money quickly ran out, Douglas realized that he did not have enough to retire. He started his own company called QAD. The name means Quick and dirty. Unfortunately, we do not know what the company was about. What we do know is that Douglas didn’t have much luck with that. So he soon started a new company called Ralph. Ralph would become a new video game for the Apple II microcomputer. However, the project was quickly delayed and ultimately failed. Douglas decided to go back to doing what he did best, and that is making new and improved versions of Lode Runner.
If you have any idea where Douglas E. Smith is right now and what he’s up to these days, please share this information with us. As a reward, we will give you any of our games …