Discriminating Ninjas Prefer Bellbottoms

April 10, 2004 12:14 PM

N [flash, download only] is a Lode Runner clone that features a fun physics engine and sharp control. [via MoFi]
posted by ulotrichous (19 comments total)

Hit ~ at the main menu to bring up a debug menu, including a rudimentary level editor. Documentation for the level editor is actually included in the download, as are some cheat codes. Enjoy.
posted by ulotrichous at 12:21 PM on April 10, 2004

original link is borked - kept going to Microsoft's webpage, try this:
http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/downloads.html
posted by rks404 at 12:26 PM on April 10, 2004

Oh. my. god.

*hangs head in shame*

Sorry.
posted by ulotrichous at 12:30 PM on April 10, 2004

Is that a Firefox thing by the way? That links with double http:// go to Microsoft? I don't recall IE doing this (oddly enough). (Perhaps related to the huge hit-spike for Hoovers Online since Firefox was released?)
posted by rafter at 12:54 PM on April 10, 2004

*ahem*

What happens is that Firefox/Mozilla doesn't recognize the URL, so it does a Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" search for "http" (why just "http", I don't know, but entering nonsense into the address bar by default does normally do an I'm Feeling Lucky search). It happens that the first result for "http" on Google is microsoft.com. Hence, the behavior, as I'm Feeling Lucky means Google will redirect you to the first result.

(This was evident to me because I'd changed the default searching to do a normal Google search instead.)
posted by thebabelfish at 1:07 PM on April 10, 2004

(Firefox doesn't see it as a valid URL, since it isn't. Therefore it looks for the website "http", and can't find that either. It then proceeds to Google search for the term "http", the first hit being the Microsoft website.)
posted by neckro23 at 1:09 PM on April 10, 2004

Well that's strange, because mozilla sent me to HTTP.com, but when I type HTTP into google.co.uk (my search default) or Google.com and hit "I'm feeling lucky" I get sent to Microsoft.
posted by Blue Stone at 1:15 PM on April 10, 2004

If you search for http at Google, I guess that's Google's top ten of the web.

But anyway, to get back to the point of this post, that game is neat. I love the way running and jumping works.
posted by reklaw at 1:27 PM on April 10, 2004

Well actually, I structured the post to also foment a discussion of browser error handling.
posted by ulotrichous at 1:45 PM on April 10, 2004

This game is pretty neat, but it only barely resembles Lode Runner. In LR, you couldn't jump; evading enemies and seeking out difficult-to-reach treasures was done by digging holes. N is more like Jumpman or Miner 2049er.
posted by CrunchyFrog at 1:58 PM on April 10, 2004

The controls seem laggy on this machine, making it pretty unplayable... maybe it's because I'm using Wine since they don't offer just the standard Flash file, but an executable.
posted by thebabelfish at 2:10 PM on April 10, 2004

Why am I a ninja?
posted by Nelson at 2:43 PM on April 10, 2004

Martin Hock (a non-member) emailed me in response to my last comment; I thought I should post what he wrote here for the benefit of anyone else who might be interested...

There is a program to extract a swf from an exe: exe2swf, found here: http://www.northcode.com/resources/utilities/exe.html

The program appears to work correctly under Wine. However, it appears that the swf is for Flash 7. (You see this if you run the exe under wine.) And there is not quite yet a Flash 7 player for Linux. I think when there is one, this blog will contain an announcement: http://www.markme.com/mesh/

posted by thebabelfish at 4:44 PM on April 10, 2004

Now that I've downloaded the game,

[this is great.]

Like, really great.

I love ninjas.
posted by rafter at 5:02 PM on April 10, 2004

great game! but I don't see it anything like load runner.
posted by tomplus2 at 7:48 PM on April 10, 2004

fun game, but now my keyboard is shot.
posted by NationalKato at 7:58 AM on April 11, 2004

Copy/paste.

Let's see yours.
posted by rafter at 12:12 AM on April 12, 2004

Damn, rafter. That is vicious!
posted by ulotrichous at 10:58 AM on April 13, 2004

Another.

(Alright, I'll stop bumping the thread now.)
posted by rafter at 10:58 PM on April 14, 2004