Doug Smith’s Lode Runner did not look like much, even in 1983. Its hero is a stick figure, and its screens are bricks, ladders and hand-over-hand bars. Computer Gaming World’s reviewer listed the climbing games that had got there first, Apple Panic, Crisis Mountain, Beer Run and Canyon Climber, and asked whether there was “really room for another game that has scaffolding and ladders”. He then admitted he had been “devilishly proud” to finish level 123.
The game had two things its rivals lacked: 150 screens, and a way to make more. Broderbund sold it for the Apple II at $34.95, and its advertisements called the second half of the package a “Game Generator”. Anyone could build a new screen from the same parts as the originals, with no programming at all, and challenge friends to beat it.
Fast facts
- Designer: Doug Smith.
- Publisher: Broderbund, 1983, first on the Apple II.
- Price: $34.95 on disk.
- Screens: 150, plus a built-in editor for making your own.
- Sequel: Championship Lode Runner (1984), 50 harder screens.
How it plays
You are the Lode Runner, sent into the treasury of the Bungeling Empire, the villains of Broderbund’s Choplifter, to take back the gold it has stolen. Every screen hides a few ingots among the brickwork. Collect them all and a ladder appears, leading off the top of the screen to the next level.
Guards chase you, and one touch kills. You cannot fight them, but you can dig. A button fires a laser drill that burns a hole in the brick floor to your left or right. A guard who runs into it falls in and, Electronic Games explained, drops any gold he is carrying. You can then walk across his head. After a few seconds the guard climbs out, and soon afterwards the brick grows back. If you are still in the hole when it does, you are sealed in. CRASH called this being “concretised”.
The rules are small, but they produce a lot of puzzles. You can dig only through brick, not solid rock, and only beside you, so reaching gold buried several layers down means clearing a wide enough shaft first. A fall of any height is safe, for you and the guards alike. Two holes side by side make a gap you can drop through. Analog Computing’s reviewer listed what you can do (“run, jump down, climb, drill holes and die”) and noted that the guards can do all of it “except drill and die”. “Strategy and tactics are all-important,” he wrote. Electronic Games called it “the thinking gamer’s climbing contest”.
The game generator
The editor is what reviewers kept coming back to. Computer Gaming World called it “perhaps the easiest game creator I have ever seen”. You move a flashing cursor with the I, J, K and M keys and press 0 to 9 to place ladders, bars, diggable and solid floor, trap doors, gold, the hero and the guards. You then save the screen and play it straight away.
Screens went to a separate, initialised disk, with “room for 150 more”. That disk would not boot on its own, so it was no use as a gift unless the friend already owned Lode Runner. The same editor let you jump to any of the built-in levels, which is how the Computer Gaming World reviewer reached level 123 without finishing the 122 before it.
Retro Gamer’s history of the series reports that friends and neighbours of Smith designed many of the original 150 screens with an early version of the editor, and that Smith made only about 30 himself. It also traces the game to Kong, a text-graphics climbing game Smith wrote on a university mainframe, and Miner, an unpublished Apple II version.
Championship Lode Runner
In 1984 Broderbund answered the players who had cleared all 150 screens. Championship Lode Runner had 50, and a sticker on the box warned “For Lode Runner Experts only!”. Electronic Games found the first screen, “Hello and Welcome”, no easier than the hardest in the original, “but from there the difficulty shoots upward”. It had no editor, as Electronic Games noted a few months later. Players who finished all 50 could claim a certificate from Broderbund. According to Ahoy!, the screens came from Smith, “other members of the Broderbund family, and creative fans”.
Conversions
Lode Runner was converted to most home machines of the mid-1980s:
- Atari 8-bit. Analog Computing reviewed the Atari disk, also $34.95, in March 1984. The reviewer called its graphics “only marginal” and did not mind: “Lode Runner is game play, with graphics and sound to support it.”
- Commodore 64. Mail-order dealers advertising in the Commodore magazine RUN were selling it by October 1984.
- ZX Spectrum. Software Projects published the Spectrum version at £5.95, with all 150 screens split 75 to each side of the tape and an editor that saved to cassette. CRASH scored it 81% in January 1985. “Lode Runner is evidence that you don’t need mega graphics to make a great game, just a good idea,” one reviewer wrote.
- Famicom and NES. Hudson Soft made the Famicom version, released in Japan in 1984. Retro Gamer notes that it added a scrolling, zoomed-in view and restyled the cast as characters from Hudson’s Bomberman.
- Arcade. Irem turned it into a coin-op in 1984, with brighter graphics, music and new scoring bonuses, and followed it with Lode Runner: The Bungeling Strikes Back the same year. Public sources disagree on how many levels the first coin-op had.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World, Vol. 3 No. 5 (September 1983), pp. 19–20: John Besnard’s review of the Apple II version (author, price, 150 levels, laser pistol, the editor and its save disk).
- Videogaming Illustrated, October 1983, p. 55: E.C. Meade’s review (screens saved “only on your own initialized disk, not the master”); and Broderbund’s advertisement in the same issue (the “Game Generator”).
- Electronic Fun with Computers & Games, November 1983: Michael Blanchet’s review (the nine basic shapes of the playfield generator).
- Electronic Games, December 1983, pp. 74–75: Rick Teverbaugh’s review (the Bungeling guards, dropped gold, falling, the game creator).
- Analog Computing, issue 17 (March 1984), p. 54: Lee Pappas’s review of the Atari version.
- RUN, October 1984: mail-order advertisements listing the Commodore 64 version.
- Electronic Games, October 1984, p. 38, January 1985, p. 36, and March 1985: Championship Lode Runner (50 screens, the “Experts only” sticker, the certificate, no playfield generator).
- Ahoy!, issue 28 (April 1986): Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz on action-strategy games, including who designed the Championship screens.
- CRASH, issue 12 (January 1985), p. 38: review of the Spectrum version (price, 75 screens per tape side, the editor). Issue 48 (January 1988): review index (81%).
- Retro Gamer, issue 30 (2006), pp. 56–57: history of the series (Kong and Miner, the level designers, the Hudson Soft and Irem versions).
- Tozai Games, Lode Runner timeline (web, secondary): 1984 dates for Hudson Soft’s Famicom version and Irem’s coin-ops.