Tozai Games is reporting the sad news that Douglas E. Smith, creator of the iconic, groundbreaking game Lode Runner, has apparently died.  Details are still emerging and we’ll be sure to keep you updated as we learn more.

(HT: @yesterbits via Twitter.)

Lord British’s return to Britannia is old news – Richard Garriott’s Kickstarter to fund his new game, Shroud of the Avatar, is already up to more than 75% of its stated goal of $1 million – but did you know that pledging at the “Lord of the Manor” level, a $10,000 donation, would have secured for yourself a copy of Garriott’s original game, Akalabeth?

What differentiates this perk from the high-priced copies that occasionally show up on eBay, is that these have been assembled from Garriott’s private stash of left-over parts from when he was originally selling ziploc-bagged copies at his local software store.  Unfortunately, all 10 backer spots at that level have sold already (the Kickstarter launched just three days ago) so if you missed out, you’ll just have to dream about what might have been.

You can read all details at this Wired article.  Is a hand-assembled copy of the original Ultima game worth $10,000?  It was to a few eager fans.

A new contest has been announced over at the Eamon Adventurer’s Guild.

If you’ve read through the old NEUC and EAG newsletters, you’ve undoubtedly run across one of the contests held years ago. (This is why there are about a billion Eamons mentioning a “Life Orb.”) They tended to produce some pretty solid adventures. Of course, actually sitting down to write an Eamon is a pretty daunting task. While it’s certainly a lot of fun, to write an entire adventure requires some investment of time. So here’s the compromise:

Consider a large Eamon dungeon in the shape of a tower. The challenge is to write in approximately ten rooms a miniature dungeon making up one floor of the tower using either Apple II Eamon or Eamon Deluxe. You can add monsters, treasures, secret doors, and weapons… whatever your mind can generate, so be it. Frank and I will string them together into a (dis)continuous whole and judge on the basis of pure awesomeness.

The winner will receive a plaque on the glorious Wall of Fame (in Frank Black’s Waiting Room micro-adventure) to be memorialized for all eternity. (We’ll throw in a free subscription to the newsletter as well.)

Go here for all the details and contest rules.

Bill Budge has posted to github the source code to his seminal hit Pinball Construction Set, according to this Y-Combinator item.  Some sharp eyes in the comments thread noticed that although the code is for the Atari 800 version of the program, it was developed on an Apple II, a common practice in those days and made easy by the fact that both platforms use a 6502 processor.  According to one of Bill’s recent tweets: “The Atari 800 had a raster mode that was very similar to the Apple II Hi-res graphics. The code had minimal differences.”

Bill has also tweeted that he intends to go through and comment the code, which you can find here.

(HT: Sean Fahey, image source: The Digital Antiquarian)

In September, the Eamon Adventurer’s Guild Online blog took a look at Whit Crowley’s attempt to port Eamon to the Apple IIGS using HyperCard.  The project was ultimately abandoned, as was Darrel Raines’ non-HyperCard porting effort, for which he produced a “tech demo” of what he envisioned for the final product.  Today, the EAGO blog gives us a trip through that demo.

An announcement has been made over at the Eamon Adventurer’s Guild Online blog regarding Eamon Adventure #255: Tenement of the Damned:

I’m very happy to announce that Eamon #255 “Tenement of the Damned” has been completed.  Frank Black was able to recover the entirety of the French program and I, in turn, translated it into English using the 6.2 Dungeon Designer Diskette. (“Maudit” is Version 6 and I felt that the English version ought to approximate the French experience as much as possible.) Finally, a menu was put in giving players the option of playing the game in either French or in English.

An official disk image is being prepared and will be made available for download “soon” and a lengthy review is planned for an upcoming issue of the Eamon Deluxe Newsletter.  In the meantime, you can stop by the Guild blog and read all about it.

Frank Black today released Eamon Deluxe 5.0: 

Eamon Deluxe is an enhanced and expanded variation of the classic Eamon gaming system. With the release of version 5.0, Eamon Deluxe features cross-platform portability and an alternate accessibility mode for disabled or vision impaired users. The Eamon Deluxe adventure library includes a growing selection of original adventures as well as ongoing conversions of all known Eamon adventures.

Stop by the revamped website and download a copy for Windows, Mac or Linux, and be sure to check out Frank’s all-new Eamon adventures today.

Over at comp.sys.apple2, an extensive message detailing the disassembly of Richard Garriott’s Ultima 1 has been posted.  It’s a great read and definitely worth checking out if you’re at all interested in Ultima, game programming or just Apple II programming in general.  Check it out here.

Jordan Mechner announced on his blog today that after years of searching, the original Apple II source code for Prince of Persia has finally been located.  You can read the details of the discovery here.

A new edition of The Eamon Deluxe Newsletter has been published over at the Eamon Adventurer’s Guild Online blog.  Writes Frank:

I’m writing this blog to announce that an entirely original, 10-page Eamon newsletter was just added to the Guild website. While it is named "The Eamon Deluxe Newsletter", this publication is actually intended to be a place for content that relates to any platform or aspect of the Eamon community and is published in the spirit and fond memory of Tom Zuchowski’s former EAG newsletters.

Read the entire blog entry and download the newsletter in PDF or RTF format here.