![]() “By digging left or right, there was strategy, and you could plan ahead, digging spaces two squares wide, jumping into that hole and then digging again.”Īficionados will recognise this concept as Lode Runner, but at this point in 1980 the game was called Suicide, had an symbol for the hero, and juddered about on the Commodore PET. “Part of that was if you’re going to dig a hole, you can decide whether to jump into it or not, but if you could only dig directly below, you’d immediately fall into the hole and could only ever dig straight down,” recalls James. But rather than digging directly down, the hero could only dig left or right. But with this vague direction, he devised a game based on you “trying to collect things while monsters were chasing you.” To James, it was obvious to fashion levels from platforms and ladders, because “anti-gravity didn’t seem that big back then,” and it provided options to experiment with gravity and digging holes you could escape through or trap monsters in. So for certain elements, I completely misinterpreted it,” laughs James. “He didn’t explain it well, and I took creative liberties and assumed I understood what he meant. In Lode Runner it’s possible to fall to your doom.Ī friend had returned from an arcade, excited about a game. His surprisingly lenient maths teacher just let him get on with it, and James, having devoured a book on BASIC games, wanted to make something “a little more exotic.” It was all about the beauty of the algorithm.” James Bratsanos is recalling his early programming days, holed up in high school with a Commodore PET no-one else was using. I wasn’t a gamer, and nor am I today – that’s the irony of the thing. We were fortunate enough to speak to Douglas early last year about the creation of his groundbreaking game.įor me, it was really about the excitement of building an algorithm that could be thrown at any level, rather than pure gameplay. It spawned countless sequels and was notable for having an excellent level editor, that ensured you could play it endlessly. Lode Runner was a massive success in the early Eighties thanks to its tight arcade gameplay, engaging game mechanics and fast gameplay. Recently we were hit with the sad news that Lode Runner creator Douglas E. ![]()
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