Customer Reviews

Lode Runner

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"Lode Runner" as originally an 1983 PC game published by Broderbund. Along with Nintendo's own "Excite Bike", the game was one of the first ever to include a level editor, although "Lode Runner" was first. The game first appeared on the Apple II, and has since been ported to various other platforms.

"Lode Runner" is a puzzle game where you must avoid enemies and gain gold. There are 150 different puzzles, with each one succedingly getting more challenging. Alexey Pajitnov, the designer of the world famous "Tetris", long cited "Lode Runner" to be his favorite puzzle game.

"Lode Runner" is also famous for the debut of "Bomberman" as the enemies. Here is a quote from Wikipedia that gives more information:

"The end screen to Bomberman for the NES notes that the original White Bomberman has turned human and hints at his appearance in another game, with the Lode Runner behind him. In the Japanese version, the reference is more direct: "Congratulations - Bomber Man becomes Runner - See you again in Lode Runner.""

Although the NES version is good, my recommendation would be "Lode Runner: The Legend Returns," which is a 1994 Sierra remake with enhanced tools and graphics. Also, the 1995 title "Lode Runner Online: Mad Monks' Revenge", a sequel which supports online play, is also worth picking up.

The video game website IGN rated this title as the 857h greatest game on their top 100 NES games of all time.

(For those looking for great unknown NES/Famicom games, you simply MUST play "Moon Crystal", a criminally unknown Famicom exclusive. The graphics are astounding with cutscenes that even outdo "Ninja Gaiden", amazing music, in depth gameplay, and a fantastic storyline. Absolutely amazing! Had this been released in the US for the NES, I feel it would be as revered as the other heavy hitters in the NES canon)

As most people know, the original Lode Runner was for the Apple II, not the NES. However, there have been many remakes and ports onto other platforms, with this being one of them.

The graphics are phenomenal for a NES game, much better than the original Lode Runner graphics. The sound effects are also good, and the music that plays in the background is nice.

However, being on a TV screen and an NES, this version of Lode Runner has some restrictions that the original Lode Runner doesn't have. First of all, all the built-in levels are sized down from 28x16 blocks to 28x13 blocks. This is because with 16x16 sized graphics, the screen can only accommodate a size of 14x13 blocks. Since a 14x13 playing field isn't really enough for well-designed levels, this version of Lode Runner works around this problem by having a camera that scrolls left to right, allowing the normal 28 blocks wide, and slightly altering the levels to fit the 13 block height. Although the alternative (shrinking each block down to 8x8 pixels) is much worse, the left and right scrolling camera is bad too, mostly because you can't see where the enemies are, making it virtually impossible to plan ahead. To make matters worse, the camera only scrolls when you get dangerously close to the edge of the screen, which can cause you to run into an enemy that you didn't know was there if you're not on your toes. Another small restriction, which I'm guessing is due to the NES, is that only 3 enemies can exist in a level, although this is really no big deal.

The level editor is even more restricted than the built-in levels, only allowing a level taking up a single screen (so, 14x13 blocks, less than half the size of the original Lode Runner playing field). But this hardly makes a difference, because you can't save your levels in this version of Lode Runner. This is understandable; battery-backed RAM was unheard of at the time, and using a save password would be utterly useless, since so many characters would be needed that it would be easier just to draw out the level you created on a piece of paper. Unfortunately, though, the lack of a fully-functioning level editor makes the game almost completely worthless in terms of gameplay, since the level editor was always Lode Runner's strongest point.

Overall, while this is a good choice for Lode Runner fans and collectors, I don't recommend this game for anyone else. A much better choice for a Lode Runner game would be either Lode Runner: The Legend Returns (DOS/Windows), Lode Runner On-Line: The Mad Monks' Revenge (Windows 95), or KGoldrunner (Linux, UNIX, Windows, Mac), which are all excellent Lode Runner remakes and are available for free.