24 ms·
Lode Runner (HTML5 Remake)
- memalign 3y agoSource code: https://github.com/SimonHung/LodeRunner_TotalRecall https://github.com/SimonHung/LodeRunner_TotalRecall
- jddj 3y agoI spent many hours as a child playing load runner (the legend returns) but I have no idea where we got it. I think our Compaq Presario at the time must have come packaged with a sierra disk.
- theandrewbailey 3y agoI remember having a Compaq computer in the 90s (some 486-based all-in-one with a CD drive), and had The Legend Returns. I kinda grew into liking it, but I'm not sure where the disc ended up. I found an ISO of Mad Monks Revenge (an expansion/re-release) on an abandonware site 15+ years ago. Works great on my retro PC.
- a1o 3y agoCompaq Presario did come with Loderunner - and also The Evermore Incredible Machine!
- intrasight 3y agoGreat memories. Was our favorite game on my Macintosh 128K. My nephew brought my Mac back to Italy with him just so he could continue playing. I don't think I've played it on any other computer since.
- todotask 3y agoIssue: stuck at name input field. I cannot run!
- Cerpicio 3y agoI remember spending a lot of time playing this game. Even my mom liked it, and she never played video games. I wonder if she'll want to play this version. Great to see it again!
- eddyfromtheblok 3y agoI played this as a kid on a Franklin PC, an Apple II clone. It was more interesting than Pac-Man at the time and IIRC you could design your own levels.
- buescher 3y agoLode Runner was the first game to impress me with its play mechanics and its level builder. It was really an elegant little game. I don’t think it would make my all time top 10 today but it would probably make a “top 10 to date of release”.
- didgeoridoo 3y agoThat Brøderbund triple crown never fails to bring me back to the half-underground computer software shop on the Main Street in my town some time in the early 1990s. I would read about upcoming games in PC Magazine, and visit almost daily when a new game came out to see if they had it in stock yet. Either that shop was pretty casual about staying on the cutting edge, or release dates were fuzzier back then, because it would often be months of agonized visits before the game showed up on shelves. By then, of course, I’d have gotten another PCMag, and my attention had leapt to a different — clearly far more advanced and interesting — game that was “only days” from launch. Anyway, during one of my Saturday morning visits to the musty-smelling and over-dehumidified shop, I ended up idly browsing through the Borland section and a Turbo C box caught my eye. My dad was incredibly pumped that I was showing an interest in something that could actually be productive and creative, so he bought it for me. Unfortunately, nine-year-old me did not turn out to be a natural prodigy. My dad’s coding experience stopped somewhere south of FORTRAN (he had juggled some accounting systems for ABC in the early 1980s) so he tried his best but couldn’t really make it click for me. So Turbo C went back on the shelf. Dark Forces was coming out next month, and I didn’t have time for twiddling with incomprehensible runes when there were stormtroopers to kill. What could have been.
- wenc 3y agoI tried Turbo C as an 8 year old and got as far as printf hello world and scanf. The pointer stuff seemed obtuse to me (coming from BASIC) and it was strange it didn’t have automatically sized string types (it was char[7] or something). In retrospect I should have gone the Turbo Pascal route as an 8 year old.
- codetrotter 3y agoWhen I was around 12 years old I convinced one of my parents to buy a little book about C++ for me. I read the first chapter with great interest and wrote variations of input and output things with pen and paper. Then I tried to follow the instructions on how to build and run a program on a computer. I managed to install the IDE they recommended; one called Bloodshed Dev-C++. I managed to type the code for hello world into the IDE, and I managed to compile the program. It produced an exe file that had a black terminal icon. I double clicked the exe and it opened and closed very quickly. It would only be several years later, when I started at the university, that this confusing interaction made sense to me. At the time I thought I had made some mistake and I didn’t understand what or why. But what happened of course was that the program started, printed its output and exited, and it all happened so fast that I just saw a window open and quickly close. Fortunately I did eventually get better introductions to programming. But that first experience was a bit unfortunate heh.
- oflannabhra 3y agoI remember going quite deep on lode runner’s level editor in school with friends. I think there were a variety of edge cases that (almost like exploits) that allowed our levels to be incredibly complex and harder than any of the pre built level. A great reminder that giving people tools is almost always a creative boon.
- Red_Tarsius 3y agoI haven't played the original, but Lode Runner: The Legend Returns is one of my favorite games of all time. The later levels can be very challenging and I don't remember ever reaching the final stage but it was an addicting experience. You can download a faithful remake of Legend Returns here: https://mmr.quarkrobot.com/ https://mmr.quarkrobot.com/. Highly recommended!
- nlitened 3y agoOh God, I used to be obsessed with Lode Runner: The Legend Returns
- morkalork 3y agoI sank countless hours in the level editor.
- a1o 3y agoLode Runner: The Legend Returns is the best version of the game I think, the old one is too pixely (like the classic version on iPhone) and the later 3D ones lose the simplicity of the original.
- sillywalk 3y ago(Thanks for that link.) Agreed, one of my favourites. I also liked the background art, and the animated clips in between some of the different levels, and the CD's Redbook audio soundtrack. It kind of reminds me of the game Creaks. I also remember it was one of the games that used WinG[0], before DirectX game out. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinG
- thriftwy 3y agohttps://okgamer.ru/dendi-igry-onlayn/2356-lode-runner.html https://okgamer.ru/dendi-igry-onlayn/2356-lode-runner.html took five seconds to boot, whereas on this web site it took ten seconds to get to 25% after which I have up waiting. HN hug of love?
- dzek69 3y ago[flagged]
- rgrieselhuber 3y ago[flagged]
- ekianjo 3y agoit's a valid comment though. For a game like that, loading more than 10 seconds makes no sense on normal machines with fast connections.
- commandlinefan 3y agoIn fairness, that's at least how long it used to take to load on my Commodore 64, so maybe the author was going for authenticity?
- badsectoracula 3y agoConsidering every other comment is positive and about the game i don't see how this is "typical HN comment".
- stronglikedan 3y agoJust under 15 seconds for me. Methinks you need a better internet connection.
- Retr0id 3y agoSeems like the main factor here is going to be round-trip latency, not throughput - i.e. it's going to depend on your geographic location, more than it needs to. Looks like it's hosted in Arizona, US, so ymmv (quite literally)
- StayTrue 3y agoMany, many sites are slow when on the front page of HN. Anecdotally it loads in under 10s for me.
- rgrieselhuber 3y agoMan I used to love this game.
- wiredfool 3y agoDamn, got 30 levels in, 7 men left, and it reset when I went to the bathroom. I wasted so much time on this as a kid, and this is the most faithful to the //e version that I've ever seen.
- nsxwolf 3y agoIt resumed on my highest reached level when I revisted the page.
- the__alchemist 3y agoOh man! I played the sequel when I was a kid after it came included on my dad's work computer. Entertainment on several family trips!
- wg0 3y agoSeeing and playing this for the first time and... it's really very interesting game. Is there a value in a total remake (different graphics, art style) of this game? I'm sure many already exist.
- mmphosis 3y agoThe original loaded pretty much instantly. Software of that era didn't have minutes long "Loading ... Please Wait" screens for everything. Also, the original didn't <s>try to data collect</s> ask to enter a name. For some odd reason, it took a while to get past this annoying dialog box on this web game. On the original, the player would keep running whereas this new game is laborious in that you need to hold down keys to keep moving. The original keyboard layout is: UIO = dig up dig JKL = left down right
- flymasterv 3y ago"Software of that era didn't have minutes long "Loading ... Please Wait" screens for everything." Someone never played an Electronic Arts game on C64.
- ddingus 3y agoRight! The Apple ][ game loads are very fast. Those are the ones I remember.
- thwarted 3y ago> The original loaded pretty much instantly. Software of that era didn't have minutes long "Loading ... Please Wait" screens for everything Huh? Just about everything that didn't come on a cartridge took forever to load, especially on a C64. That's why there were "fast load" extensions. Most games would load once at the beginning, but sometimes you'd "need to insert disk 2" or "flip the disk over" to finish loading. What was truly impressive is that games like Times of Lore could entirely fit in 64k and only hit the disk when initially loading. > On the original, the player would keep running whereas this new game is laborious in that you need to hold down keys to keep moving. The original worked with a joystick, where you'd hold it in the direction to keep running. I'm not sure I ever played the original with the keyboard. You need to be able to stop in loadrunner in order to direct and avoid the movements of the enemies and dig holes in the right spots.
- nsxwolf 3y ago> The original worked with a joystick, where you'd hold it in the direction to keep running. I'm not sure I ever played the original with the keyboard. You need to be able to stop in loadrunner in order to direct and avoid the movements of the enemies and dig holes in the right spots. I believe you would run endlessly on the Apple II version, because it had a non-centering joystick and it was more nimble of a game that way. You could stop the character with the space bar. The MS-DOS version had a nice control scheme with the numeric keypad. You character would run endlessly left or right, but the "5" key on the keypad (right in the center of the arrows) would make him stop.
- solardev 3y agoI'm curious, why does it take so long to load?
- MourYother 3y agoLoads for ages, prompts for player name. smh...
- foresto 3y ago> prompts for player name. smh... Also triggers Firefox canvas fingerprinting protection, but doesn't seem to need it to function. What's it doing there?
- inetknght 3y agoAhhh I remember many (well... maybe not so many compared to current games) hours playing Lode Runner on a Mac Plus when I was 3 years old. I remember editing the maps and my dad thinking I was editing a locked floppy disk... when really I just figured out how to unlock it and re-lock it afterward.
- RomanPushkin 3y agoWhat framework/libraries did you use while making the game?
- wiredfool 3y agoMy guess is that this is a 6502 emulator plus the original code in wasm. It’s too close to the //e version to be a reimplementation.
- xbar 3y agoCrap. If this ruins 2024 like it ruined 1987, I am in deep trouble.
- olvy0 3y agoThis brings back so much memories of playing the original on my Apple IIe. Glad to have found about Lode Runner: The Legend Returns, Lode Runner Online: The Mad Monks' Revenge, and its remakes from the comments here. There goes my weekend... Another very good and free remake (which doesn't even include ads!) for mobile platforms is/was Lode Runner 1 by Nexon. It appears it's no longer on Google Play, but it can be found on APKMirror. I still play it from time to time. Review: https://toucharcade.com/2017/05/19/lode-runner-1-is-a-well-made-adaptation-of-lode-runner-and-completely-free https://toucharcade.com/2017/05/19/lode-runner-1-is-a-well-m...
- thealienthing 3y agoIt goes without saying that I could easily Google this myself, but I’ll ask anyway for those who are also wondering: what is the significance of HTML5 for this implementation? I’m not a web guy have gotten by with simple html css js and occasional templating when needed. Is HTML5 supporting some native programming?
- rijoja 3y agoThe canvas element I suppose, and yeah maybe gamepad and joystick support as well.
- archsurface 3y agoWow. Memories. Loving it.
- nikolay 3y agoOne of my favorites in the past. This implementation is pretty good!
- ddingus 3y agoThis looks and plays great! My favorite version of this game runs on the Apple ][ and I am going to fire mine up and have a go this evening to hear the goofy 1 bit sounds. To play on Android, I had to connect a keyboard.
- dvirsky 3y agoThis is pretty great, I used to love this game as a kid. I played it on a PC in the late 80s. Besides being a fun game, it was probably the first game I've played where you could design your own levels, which was awesome, we used to challenge each other to custom levels in our school's computer lab.
- lovegrenoble 3y agoLove this game
- squarefoot 3y agoI don't remember playing Lode Runner back in the day, although it was quite famous. Back then my favorite games in the same league were Pharaohs Curse and Montezuma's Revenge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBSW6r9-lQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBSW6r9-lQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq7xwDrKwBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq7xwDrKwBs
- foresto 3y agoAnyone else find that pressing a key while another key is pressed causes the game to forget that the first key is still being pressed? I don't remember this being a problem in the original. Browser limitation, or bug?
- harha_ 3y agoIt shouldn't take this long to load. Honestly it should just launch into the game without a loading screen at all.
- bitwize 3y agoSee also xscavenger, old-school X11 Lode Runner clone: https://www.linuxmotors.com/linux/scavenger/index.html https://www.linuxmotors.com/linux/scavenger/index.html Enjoy it now, while X11 is still quasi-relevant and runnable on today's computers!
- nevster 3y agoAlways love seeing Apple II related stuff on HN. The first game I got with my Apple //c was Championship LodeRunner - http://www.oldcomputerstuff.com/championship-lode-runner-certificate/ http://www.oldcomputerstuff.com/championship-lode-runner-cer...
- ngcc_hk 3y agoAsk the name and wait and wait and wait … no keyboard up on my ipad. gave up.
- junkremoval22 3y ago[dead]
- Cristan 3y agoThere's a modern version on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/628660/Lode_Runner_Legacy/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/628660/Lode_Runner_Legacy...