Word has reached Fudzilla that Douglas E. Smith who created the original Load Runner on the Apple II has apparently passed away. Details on his death are still sketchy at this point.

Smith developed the original Load Runner which he called Kong at the time on the Apple II. He submitted the game to four publishers, all of which offered him a deal. Smith elected to go with Br0derbund because they offered him a $10,000 advance. The original version was released for the Apple II, Atari 8bit, Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64, and IBM PC. The game became quite successful.

Developer Tozai Games acquired a license to produce a new version of Load Runner for the Xbox 360 and Smith worked with the developers at Tozai on the new Xbox Live Arcade version. While Load Runner in a number of forms has been ported to a variety of platforms over the years, it enjoyed a resurgence with the new Xbox Live Arcade and Window Phone versions.

Here at Fudzilla we send our condolences and sympathy to the friends and family of Smith. This editor remembers spending a lot of time creating levels and playing the Atari 8bit port of Load Runner. I remember the game fondly as one of the games that really got me interesting creating which was one of the unique things about Load Runner which was the ability to build your own levels.