As recently noted, Adventure is famous for having the first well-known Easter egg. But this classic game was groundbreaking for more than its hidden features. The gameplay itself established the precedent for the likes of The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy. It's also a fun game in its own right — especially for a program written in only four kilobytes of code and with only 128 bytes of memory available for it to use. (For comparison, a standard DVD holds about 4,928,307 kilobytes, and a computer with 2 GB of RAM has 2,147,483,648 bytes.)

Like many genre-defining titles, Adventure has lived well beyond its years, thanks to the dedication of fans. An unmodified port of the original was recently released for the iPhone (iTunes). When the Onion was playfully suggested that a sequel was in the works, it wasn't far from the truth. Adventure was published in 1979 was for the Atari 2600; 28 years later a homebrew sequel was released for the Atari 5200 console to generally positive reviews. A version of it was even included in the Atari Flashback 2 console.

However, these ports and sequels have either not advanced the game or have not been widely available. As of today, a new take on Adventure overcomes both these hurdles. First announced five months ago in the Penny Arcade forums, a remake of the original game is now available for download. Created from the ground up to feature 16-bit graphics, voice acting, time trials, and more. What's not being discussed is whether the game features any Easter eggs!

Adventure 2600, released today for Windows. Here, the hero has used the purple bridge to evade Grundle the green dragon, gaining access to the Black Castle.

I've often reminisced about exploring the catacombs of the white castle, laying the purple bridge, or getting caught in the belly of a dragon (or duck) while the bat spirited us off to parts unknown. With the release of this free Windows remake, a new generation of gamers can share in this foundational experience. (If you want to try the unadulterated original on your PC, see the links in my previous post.)

(Hat tip to Gamebits contributor Robert Boyd)

Today, April 22nd, is not only Earth Day; it's also the day that, after a year of waiting, Lode Runner arrives for the Xbox Live Arcade.

Lode Runner was originally released in 1983 for the Apple II computer, where its combination of frenetic activity and puzzling gameplay made it an instant classic. You can play the original online — it looks something like this:

Lode Runner has always been one of my favorite games and one that I return to in any year and medium. I drop quarters to play the coin-op at FunSpot every year, and courtesy the Wii's Virtual Console, I have the Nintendo version of Lode Runner — though that game's limited resolution requires the screen to pan to see everything, limiting its effectiveness. There's even an iPhone version called Gold Runner, reviewed in the March issue of Juiced.GS.

I've been waiting for the Xbox sequel for awhile, as evidenced by my blog post last August, when I counted it among my reasons to buy an Xbox 360. My desire formed well before that — a year ago this month — when Xbox Live's Major Nelson interviewed Ross Erickson, who detailed the lengthy legal path to finding out who owned the rights to Lode Runner. This week's podcast interviews Brett Ballow of Tozai Games, the company responsible for Lode Runner. (You can follow Tozai Games on Twitter — but only nine followers? Following zero people? That's not effective networking.)

Lode Runner costs 1200 Microsoft Points, which is the equivalent of $15, the high end of XBLA games. I hope it's worth it, as this gameplay video looks a bit mundane:

The lack of background music combined with the somewhat confusing graphics (I can't quite tell where the player can go and where he can't) might not represent the final product. I'm also hoping the Xbox version is somewhat frantic, as I'm used to playing Lode Runner at a slightly accelerated pace.

I'm delighted when Apple II games inspire today's greats, but I'm overjoyed when they are resurrected, heart and soul, in a form that any geezer can recognize.

In time for the holiday weekend, Computerworld has published a video gallery of ten Easter eggs in action.

The name "Easter egg" comes from the Easter tradition of hiding chocolate eggs for children to find. It has a similar meaning in software: an undocumented, hidden feature or message that users may stumble across.

The first software Easter egg is popularly thought to have occurred in 1979. In the early days of software development, programmer identities were jealously guarded. Software studios didn't want their staff to gain celebrity status, their names eclipsing those of the brands they'd created. Warren Robinett, then a programmer for Atari, didn't appreciate this lack of acknowledgement. He couldn't get his name in the manual for the Atari 2600 game Adventure — so he sneaked it into the game itself.

Read the rest of this entry at Computerworld.com »

Ah, April Fool's… a day of delicious pranks, falsified rumors, and opportunities for corporate entities to demonstrate a sense of humor. Last year, Microsoft got in on the fun with phony Xbox peripherals. In blogging about that joke, I neglected to spotlight an even more impressive one.

Video games are proving an increasingly popular source for Hollywood scripts, with adaptations coming from Hitman, Max Payne, Street Fighter, and Prince of Persia. But what about the games we actually want to see turned into films? Last year, production company Rainfall Films together with IGN created this mock trailer for a movie based on the Legend of Zelda series:

The production quality is so high that many people were fooled. Only a few clues tipped off suspicious viewers, such as Link's lack of dialogue (true to the source material, admittedly!) and Ganon's cheap costume. Except for those, this trailer suggests (at least to me) that a faithful and high-quality movie of this series is possible.

This mockup goes well with another trailer. It's expected that franchises will evolve over time; this teaser demonstrates the Zelda series so by taking a giant step forward… into the future:

What other games would do well as movies and/or in futuristic settings? Maybe… Tetris?

(more…)