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Lode Runner
- markus_zhang 6y agoOh that was a name I fondly remember. I never had the patience and intelligence to move past a certain level, but it was very fun to play, and I believe by hitting ESC you got a lot of options like skipping levels.
- strenholme 6y agoWhat made Lode Runner the must-have game to have is that it was the first game with a built in level editor. Before Lode Runner, once one finished all of the levels in a game, it was time to move on to another game. To make custom levels, one needed to program their own game in Basic. With Lode Runner, one could open up the level editor, easily make a custom Lode level, then playtest and share it with friends.
- pmoriarty 6y agoLode Runner was incredibly addictive even without the level editor. I greatly enjoyed the game when it came out, but didn't even know it had a level editor until you mentioned it right now.
- wang_li 6y agoCtrl-g man.
- whoopdedo 6y agoYou might not have known that was there without reading the manual. And you might not have had a manual to read if, well, you know.
- wang_li 6y agoI will not confirm or deny trying every key and every ctrl sequence on the keyboard as a standard first step on every game that I “got”. Egads, though. It's CTRL-E, not CTRL-G. No idea what I was thinking hours ago.
- mrspeaker 6y agoI think what made it so addictive was the weird AI. They felt unpredictable and odd - sometimes they'd get stuck, sometimes they'd surprise you and go the "wrong" way and end up cutting you off... I never figured out the logic to those lil' characters!
- NelsonMinar 6y agoThat level editor was a thing of beauty. It inspired me to write my own level editors for other games. Ugly text based things that worked by editing the (cracked) game's data files. I learned so much doing that kind of thing.
- reaperducer 6y agothe first game with a built in level editor Pinball Construction Set pre-dates Lode Runner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Construction_Set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Construction_Set In the circles I traveled in, PCS was far more popular than Lode Runner.
- santoshalper 6y agoApparently PCS was very well received too, winning awards and having strong sales. Interesting that it has largely disappeared into the mists but Lode Runner is in the pantheon of great early video games. It reminds me a little of Wizardry vs. Ultima. They were the first two huge RPG franchises, but Wizardry has mostly vanished from the collective consciousness and Ultima had far more staying power.
- megameter 6y agoPCS disappearing when Lode Runner didn't can be explained simply: it played a bad pinball, and it was itself a kind of clone. The thing PCS did is just one step in a lineage of pinball simulation software, starting with the Atari "Video Pinball" games and progressing through to today's games from Zen(Pinball FX) and Farsight(Pinball Arcade), as well as open source solutions like Visual Pinball. The construction feature was really novel and I used it too as a kid, but it doesn't really exist as a "game design" - it's software first, kind of like flight simulators. Early flight sims aren't very well remembered, although they can have a retro aesthetic appeal. [0] Lode Runner, on the other hand, is still Lode Runner in all its forms. It isn't a simulation of anything - the game pieces have a concrete, Chess-like logic to them. It's hard to improve upon just by adding "stuff" as the 1994 version did. And the game is easy enough to clone that many people, myself included, played people's clones of it. [0] https://youtu.be/BEkDRa--YaY https://youtu.be/BEkDRa--YaY
- bitwize 6y ago> Early flight sims aren't very well remembered Are you kidding me? Everyone who was into computers back in the 80s remembers the chunky look of MFS/Sublogic Flight Simulator 1.0 through 4.0. When Chuck Yeager died, more than one Hackernews remarked of how they discovered him through Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer back in the day.
- bhauer 6y agoAgreed. If I recall correctly, around the same time, Electronic Arts was capturing some similar success by releasing several games with "Construction Set" in the name. Did Lode Runner inspire this? A lesser known Lode Runner clone that I particularly enjoyed was "Mr. Robot and his Robot Factory," [1] though the Wikipedia page claims the gameplay was more similar to Miner 2049er. I think the addition of a level builder made it less like Miner and more like Lode Runner. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Robot_and_His_Robot_Factory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Robot_and_His_Robot_Factor...
- JohnJamesRambo 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_Destruction_Set https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_Destruction_Set This game was one of our favorites.
- ericbarrett 6y agoI spent hours and hours designing tracks in Racing Destruction Set as a kid. Gave me a life-long love of cars and physics too. In some ways it was the great-great-great-grandparent of Kerbal Space Program.
- stefs 6y agohttps://spacequest.fandom.com/wiki/Checkerboard_Construction_Set https://spacequest.fandom.com/wiki/Checkerboard_Construction...
- jnwatson 6y agoI have fond memories of spending hours making and testing new levels, and exchanging them with my friends.
- tempodox 6y agoI once had a VC20 or so and Lode Runner on loan for a holiday season and stumbled into that editor while trying out every key on the keyboard to see what it does. When I gave it back after the holidays my friend was flabbergasted he had a game with a level editor and didn't even know about it. That loan payed off in an unexpected way.
- tartoran 6y agoI loved this game. I first played a ported version of Lode Runner on a sinclair spectrum clone in the 80s, I was less than 10 years old. I love The digita antiquarian, he brings back sweet memories
- linknoid 6y agoI've been playing this version of it a lot recently: http://loderunnerwebgame.com/game/ http://loderunnerwebgame.com/game/ Even though I'm a lot better than when I was a kid, I've only made it up to level 14 so far.
- superkuh 6y agoAll of what you've said applies to me as well. I found this particularly implementation a year or so ago. The nostalgia is great but it's still a genuinely fun game. I've probably only made it to level 8.
- chiefgeek 6y agoThanks for that link! Please tell all my clients to stand by for the next month while I level up.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ur-whale 6y agoOh man, how much of my youth was spent in front of Lode Runner. Just reading the name triggered the SFX in my head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72k1ZYp83tc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72k1ZYp83tc
- js2 6y agoI will always be able to recall the digging sound. That video is 8 hours long!
- tomcam 6y ago8 hours and 57k views
- hcrisp 6y agoWow, that brings back a lot of memories! Waiting for the dilating camera aperature to open at the beginning of each level. The digging and falling sounds. The reflexes needed to move, drill, and trap the bad guys. This was definitely a classic.
- js2 6y agoLode Runner is my favorite game ever. I don't even bother playing games anymore because none will ever match my memory of Lode Runner.
- drivebycomment 6y agoLode Runner is definitely one of my favorites of all time. But the favorite, which I genuinely believe is the best game of all time and I've been playing games over a four decade at this point, is Hollow Knight.
- kibwen 6y agoHollow Knight is a masterpiece (perhaps the best Metroid-like ever made), but it scratches a very different itch than Lode Runner.
- drivebycomment 6y agoOh, no doubt. I just wanted the parent poster to know that there are creative masterpieces out there that deserve checking out. Lode Runner is good but not enough to not check other games out.
- xt00 6y agoPlayed Lode Runner on commodore 64 -- had lots of fun -- was a simpler time..
- agumonkey 6y agothe ratio of fun/resolution is hard to beat
- reaperducer 6y agohad lots of fun -- was a simpler time Times were simpler, but the old games are still fun. At the start of the pandemic, a friend gave me all of his old Atari 2600 carts. A couple of weeks ago I finally got around to trying Miniature Golf. The graphics are terrible by any post-1982 standard, and the hand-drawn screenshots in the paper catalogs of yesteryear made it look worse, so hardly anyone bought it. But it's actually a pretty good game. You can sit down with and play for several hours while relaxing, instead of gnashing your teeth and swearing at other players. Ditto for the regular Atari 2600 Golf. Looks terrible. But once you go a few rounds, it's a really nice game.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoThis reminds me of Doctor Who from the 70s and 80s. The effects, props, costumes, etc were absolutely awful. But the stories were, generally, great. Most people dismiss Atari 2600 because they cannot get past the visual “deficiencies “by today’s standards. But if you can suspend that and play a game like Adventure or Golf, you might find yourself hitting the reset button to play again for several hours...
- dgb23 6y agoI loved the sierra version of this. I spent countless hours with the level editor.
- cronix 6y agoLode Runner was huge in our house on the C64, but I think Jumpman[1] and Fort Apocalypse[2] were played a lot more. We even caught our parents having 2am marathon sessions with Jumpman, which was not normal. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrsZ1bDy4Dg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrsZ1bDy4Dg [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1A-BNafyDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1A-BNafyDk
- atombender 6y agoSame here. Two other huge games for me were H.E.R.O. [1] and Dropzone [2] (the latter a re-imagining of Defender), both of which have a lot in common with Fort Apocalypse. Both are still extremely playable. Dropzone in particular has some great graphics for its time. It was made by Archer Maclean, who's more known for International Karate/International Karate+, which I also played incessantly as a kid. Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, and Pitfall 2 also come to mind as examples of classic early platformers. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpzN0fagzi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpzN0fagzi8 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSJ5Iuv-0gU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSJ5Iuv-0gU > At the start of the pandemic, a friend gave me all of his old Atari 2600 carts. A couple of weeks ago I finally got around to trying Miniature Golf. The graphics are terrible by any post-1982 standard, and the hand-drawn screenshots in the paper catalogs of yesteryear made it look worse, so hardly anyone bought it. But it's actually a pretty good game. You can sit down with and play for several hours while relaxing, instead of gnashing your teeth and swearing at other players.
- atombender 6y agoUhh, not sure what the quoted part there is doing there.
- Osiris 6y agoThose videos brought back some memories. Wow. Thanks for sharing.
- chiefgeek 6y agoMan, I played me a LOT of Lode Runner back in the day! Apple II+ 48k ram, color monitor and the joy stick he describes.
- boringg 6y agoWay too much time spent on this game. I think it might have been the first video game I spent a considerable amount of time on. Monochromatic Apple II with a box joystick which was bent out of shape.... still great to play with though. Great game for the era.
- pmoriarty 6y ago"Still, none of this background would be remembered by anyone who actually played the game. Instead the supposed Bungeling guards would become popularly known as "mad monks," which their pudgy low-resolution shapes rather resembled. Doubtless plenty of imaginative young gamers made up new narratives of their own to fit the bizarre image of greedy monks chasing an intrepid adventurer up and down a maze of scaffolding dotted with gold." As a kid, I didn't think of arcade games in terms of words, so the elaborate backgrounds and characters that game authors made up for their arcade games didn't matter, and I was rarely even aware of them. I related to the games on an intuitive level, and just watching someone play without any words being exchanged or thought was enough for me to get it and play myself. RPG's were different. There the actual background and characters mattered.
- yodsanklai 6y agoLode Runner was one of my very first game on Commodore 64, although not my favorite. I was in primary school. A schoolmate gave me a tape with a few games on it, including "lode runner". Every week we would get new original games. There was a lot of creativity on these constrained 8-bit computers.
- hcrisp 6y agoA crazy memory I have with this game is related to its successor, Championship Lode Runner (mentioned in the article). The original allowed you to jump to any level through its title screen, so you could skip hard levels, or play them in any order you want. The Championship game, however, had 50 levels that you could only play through in order, and only after you had beaten the prior level. As my brother and I got stuck in one of of the lower levels, this was very frustrating since we had no way of enjoying the higher, more advanced levels. Somewhere along the line, we figured out that you could start the original game, go to the level-jumping screen, remove the 5 1/4" original floppy disc and replace it with the one for the Championship game, and then enter the level you wanted to play. The original gameplay would load the Championship level as if nothing was out of the ordinary! I only think this was possible because the two games shared so much code structure. It gave me an idea of how the memory vs disc model of the game was operating. But I don't think it would be easy to do today since switching the floppy discs was so instrumental to making it work. Maybe today you could do kernel dumps or swap the in-memory vs disk binaries, but we were just kids not advanced computer wizards. Hurray for analog hacks! By using the trick we were able to enjoy all 50 of the Championship levels at our leisure.
- Rodeoclash 6y agoYou reminded me of a similar bug we exploited for "Bards Tale 3" on the C64. Bards Tale had a character loader that would prompt you to insert your character disk to load characters from. It turns out that using other non Bards Tale disks (i.e. "Batman: The Movie") would yield corrupted characters, some with excess hit points or unusual items which could be given to your existing characters.
- TheRealDunkirk 6y agoI used a hex editor to hack my BT1 save disk to give my characters XP and gold. I miscalculated or mis-converted the XP, and my characters all wound up around level 900. I would leave a weight on the key to "interview" at the school to advance a level, and watch TV for 20 minutes while they all leveled up. I had a real story with hacking the Centauri Alliance save disk, which had a bit more obfuscation. I figure there's about 3 people who care, and they're all going to see this HN thread, so: https://davidkrider.com/hacking-centauri-aliance/ https://davidkrider.com/hacking-centauri-aliance/
- tartoran 6y agoSpace Panic looks quite similar to Lode Runner: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LIoOGTCJ3R8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LIoOGTCJ3R8
- ashleyreddy 6y agoMy favourite apple IIe game behind Wolfenstein ofcouse.
- xipho 6y agoTrue! But Ultima 1-3 (and 4 on the IIgs) was it for me.
- monkeybutton 6y agoWow, today I learned that the Lode Runner I played as a kid (the 1994 version) wasn't the original! I also spent many more hours in the level editor than the game.
- sroussey 6y agoWhen reading the article I saw the screenshot — and it wasn’t nostalgia per se, more like a kind of excitement I had long forgotten. Such a weird experience!
- cproctor 6y agoI grew up on Sierra's version of Lode Runner. As I read this series of game history, it's a reflective process of realizing that my own childhood experiences with computers were part of a cultural moment shaping several generations. As a CS education researcher, I sometimes have conversations trying to balance my sense that these simpler games offer rich learning opportunities to beginners with the recognition that my nostalgia for a time and place doesn't transfer to much value for the next generation. That said, has anyone seen modern re-implementations of Lode Runner or its kin, perhaps in Python, which would be suitable for analyzing program structure/hacking/teaching the basics of state-based AI?
- chrismorgan 6y agoI know of KGoldrunner. That looks to be around 10,000 lines of C++. I have no idea how approachable the code base is, but it’s definitely smaller than I expected, which is promising. (Its README at https://invent.kde.org/games/kgoldrunneror https://invent.kde.org/games/kgoldrunneror https://github.com/KDE/kgoldrunner https://github.com/KDE/kgoldrunner is over a decade out of date, but it looks like the actual code is still being maintained so it compiles, though it may not be getting new development.)
- xbar 6y agoMy freshman year in EECS was lost to Lode Runner on my roommate’s Mac. I didn’t even know I could have been playing it on my Apple IIc.
- nomoreusernames 6y agoi played this on my dads vic-20.
- teekert 6y agoI player this on an MSX.
- timbit42 6y agoThis was the first version I had. I was able to play all the levels through 3 times before it got to fast to beat one of the levels. To this day I can't enjoy the other versions as much as this one.
- nomoreusernames 6y agopress play on tape my friend... press play on tape
- kibwen 6y agoIf you like Lode Runner, then you owe it to yourself to try N, which I consider to be its spiritual successor. Think Lode Runner but with deliciously smooth platforming physics. It's freeware and was a originally a Flash game from 2005, but has since also been made available (still free) for Win/Mac/Linux, as well as for consoles. Highly recommended. http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n.html http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n.html
- tromp 6y agoThe Mac download results in Finder reporting: “Nv2-Mac” will damage your computer. You should move it to the Trash.
- bla3 6y agoThat probably means that the binary isn't signed. You can either remove the quarantine attr with xattr in terminal or open system preferences -> security and click "allow" for that app, and then try again. macOS has the stance that binaries off the internet are less safe when not signed.
- duskwuff 6y agoIn this case it actually means the executable has a signature that's been revoked. This can be bypassed by running: codesign --remove-signature Nv2-Mac.app/Contents/MacOS/Flash\ Player
- kibwen 6y agoSome searching suggests this is a problem that dates back to the original Mac release in 2013, some users were getting this error and the devs couldn't reproduce it on their Mac so they just disabled signatures altogether to fix it; presumably Macs have become more strict about requiring a signature since then.
- bitwize 6y agoAlso try xscavenger: https://www.linuxmotors.com/linux/scavenger/index.html https://www.linuxmotors.com/linux/scavenger/index.html This is an old-school clone, written using the old ways (direct calls to Xlib for display). An SDL port exists if that tickles your fancy more. (Note that game clones technically violate copyright, per Atari v. Philips and Tetris Holdings v. Xio, but the rightsholders to Lode Runner don't seem terribly interested in defending their IP against cloners.)
- Kim_Bruning 6y agoYou can still play it online today: http://loderunnerwebgame.com/game/ http://loderunnerwebgame.com/game/
- acomjean 6y agoNice, Will try when not on phone.. The game had arcade versions too (MAME roms). They’re quite fun and have aged much better than a lot of games. I found this on the quarter taking version. https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8441 https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8441
- pjettter 6y agoI'd be at school, creating levels on graph paper and playing them in my head. Then at home, with the level editor test them out. Some levels really took an hour to play. This was on a C64 with a digital joystick, which I found more playable than on an Apple II with an analog joystick.
- mypalmike 6y agoSimilar experience here but with Atari 8 bit. As an aside, those Apple 2 analog joysticks were truly awful.
- tarsinge 6y agoWhat a coincidence, currently replaying Lode Runner: The Legend Returns. I am too young to have played the original in its time and have nostalgia for it, so I kindly disagree with the author and find The Legend Returns far more enjoyable.
- rodneyzeng 6y agohttp://loderunnerwebgame.com/game/ http://loderunnerwebgame.com/game/ A taiwanese made web version of it, no one mentioned it?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- yitchelle 6y agoShamelessly promoting my twitter account. If you are into retro games or retro tech in general, I run a twitter account highlighting adverts from old tech magazines like Byte, Compute! and Antic. https://twitter.com/OldTechAdverts https://twitter.com/OldTechAdverts
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoWish this was a blog. I won’t use Twitter. Too much noise and crap.
- keithnz 6y agoloderunner is a game my mother really loves, however, while playing this game, it is the only time I've heard my mother swear...a lot! as well as jump up and down in frustration and rage quit. But she always went back and played it. this web game is a pretty good recreation of the game http://loderunnerwebgame.com/game/ http://loderunnerwebgame.com/game/
- tempodox 6y agoThere's even a GitHub repo for that implementation: https://github.com/SimonHung/LodeRunner_TotalRecall https://github.com/SimonHung/LodeRunner_TotalRecall
- Terretta 6y agoAs many here did back then, loved Lode Runner. So much so that the first 6502 arcade game I wrote was a Lode Runner derivative called “The Heist”. Levels consisted of floors and stair steps, and there were different types of art on the walls you could steal, including an easy one and a hard one (based on the location puzzle) of low and high value. You could cut through floors and use ropes to rappel up or down. Some walkways were blocked by storage boxes you could push, including push into a hole in the floor which jammed and filled the hole. Guards patrolled on beats. If close enough to you, they could shoot you. You could pick up a bucket of water from janitors, and slosh it on the floor to make the guard slide one way or another, or fall into a hole you’d cut. You could “turn out the lights” at a light switch. The effect would be you could only see within a certain radius. Gaurds couldn’t see you any more, but also, you couldn’t see them unless close enough. Most logic was AppleSoft Basic, while the drawing routines were 6502 so falling and sliding and throwing the water would be smooth. Lode Runner got me into coaxing machines to do what I imagined, instead of just using what others did.
- bokchoi 6y agoCool! I remember playig this as a kid! Thanks for all the fun back in the day!
- fireattack 6y agoNever played the OG, but the co-op mode of "Lode Runner: The Legend Returns" is one of my favorite game ever. I played countless hours of that with my friends and parents. Good times.
- erickhill 6y agoMy brother and I were raised by a single mom. Getting our first computer (my first computer, as my brother wasn't interested) - a Commodore 64 - was a watershed moment. I couldn't believe it the day my mom got it and brought it home. This was when it's prices were getting slashed to prices should could kind of afford (approximately 1984-85). I pulled it out of the box after nearly breaking her neck with hugs and put it all together, hooking it up with to a massive, very pale and low contrast wooden cabinet color TV. And then it dawned on me. I had no way to play any games! I actually needed a disk drive (something that nearly cost as much as the compute itself!). For the first couple of weeks, I entered lines of BASIC I either read in the manual or from the back of magazines. When we finally got the drive, I could feel the surge of power! This would have been 9th grade - my last year of middle school where I went to school. I remember grousing about it during math class that I finally had all this gear and no money to buy the games for it. A guy ahead of me turned around and said he could bring me a stack of disks tomorrow. We became solid best friends. That dude had a modem and was able to pull down "free" games from his telephone line all night long. It was the darkest, most seductive black magic I'd ever heard of. I remember getting a copy of Top Gun before it was even available for retail. Crap game, but I thought it was something magical at the time. The floppy disk was a life changer. --- For what it's worth, Lode Runner was one of my favorite games as a kid. And it was one of the few my brother really liked, too. In fact, he was better at solving the puzzles than I was. I have multiple versions of the game for C64 to this very day, including a boxed cart. I love Lode Runner. Great article - thanks for posting it.
- smilbandit 6y agoGreat game. The version I had on the Atari 400/800 was super fun. It had a level editor and during one summer I pretty much spent my day building a level for my Dad to play when he got home.
- Pxtl 6y agoIt's funny that it's an American game because afaik one of the last good and most important implementations of it - the 5-player deathmatch version Battle Lode Runner on the TG-16 - was a Japanese exclusive
- bane 6y agoIt was wildly popular in Japan, there's a number of versions for Japanese computers, consoles, and arcades...focusing on very hard puzzles.
- Razengan 6y agoLode Runner 3D was pretty cool, with some imaginative and surreal art.
- doonesbury 6y agoI worked at Broderbund testing this. Hired out of an arcade by a Broderbund guy in San Rafael.
- MikeWazowski 6y agoI remember playing Lode Runner The Legend Returns as a kid. My parents had a Mac Performa 6200 sitting around gathering dust, so I would mess around with it when I wasn't playing NES. The thing is still sitting around, but doesn't boot. Even took the time to replace the PRAM battery with the custom part that takes AAA batteries :(
- pjettter 6y agoI wish this was available on PlayStation!
- aaroninsf 6y agoOMG the first game I ever experienced modding in!
- type0 6y agoIt's such a good thriller of a game, there a very few other games that have the experience it could create.