Springer Lives
From the TRS-80 to the iPhone

The November issue of CLOAD came in the mail containing a cassette tape with Springer for the world to enjoy.  And the world did enjoy it as Scott received several hand written letters from different countries thanking him for a fun game.

Fast forward 25 years and Springer had become a distant memory. That is until his younger brother Todd decided to search the Internet for a TRS-80 emulator and an image of the cassette tape that contained the code for Springer. It took a couple days but he was able to get an emulator playing the original BASIC code that Scott originally submitted to CLOAD. Todd gave this as a Christmas present 25 years later to Scott who was now 40 years old. Scott’s eyes opened wide along with his father when they read the label on the CDROM—“Springer Lives”

The excitement in the room could only be described as a long lost treasure being returned to their rightful owner. Springer was immediately loaded onto the PC. Scott typed “LIST” to display the program’s source code and at the end followed a few comments showing Scott being the creator of Springer along with his childhood home address. Running the program, they were treated to the game of Springer, which was a bouncing letter 'X' that would jump from ledge to ledge, trying to get to the final ledge in order to get to the next round.


The Original Springer created for the TRS-80 over 25 years ago. This level appears as an Easter Egg in the iPhone version of Springer.  (See below for a hint)

The story could have ended there but the following year, Todd started to pursue writing applications and games for the iPhone and iPod touch. Todd mentioned to Scott one day what a great idea it would be to take the game of Springer from 25 years ago and port it to the iPhone. They discussed keeping it true to the original game and they had the original source code which they could convert from BASIC to Objective-C. Ultimately, they decided to recreate Springer from scratch using the much more powerful processor of the iPhone. They wanted to keep some of the classic video game elements of a 2D world but at the same time they wanted to make Springer consist of flexible springs which meant integration of a real physics engine.

After a couple months of development, Springer was reborn with graphics, sounds, more levels, and a real physics engine for fluid game play. There is even an easter egg that sends Springer back in time to play the first level on the original TRS-80 version.

After 5 days of being on the App Store, Springer received enough paid downloads to earn Scott another $175.

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