Firstly, apologies for not doing this last week when it was due. I had an exam on Monday and obviously had to do last-minute panic revision. This one is quite short, due to the combined effects of laziness and the exam season, although this week I haven’t actually got one tomorrow.

I got offered joint authorship of this feature on the basis that “I haven’t bought a new game in ages” and “most of the games I play are pretty old”. Not old enough in some cases, it seems. I’ve found myself having to look up when certain games were released to see if they fitted in our rough 10-years-or-older guideline. And a few of my favourite games have turned out to be only 7 or 8 years old. Thankfully, though, there are many great games which cause no problems of this kind, and it is one of these true classics I’ve been looking at this week.

Lode Runner is a platform game, perhaps the platform game, originally published in 1983 by Brøderbund for the Apple II. Certainly it’s the original and best as far as I’m concerned. You control a stick figure. You can move left and right, you can dig into the platforms left and right. You can climb ladders, swing on ropes and fall. That’s it. Crucially, there is no jumping action. This makes the game extremely difficult at times when the enemies trap you. The whole level is shown at once; there is no screen scrolling involved.

The enemies are stick figures like you, but a different colour. They will chase you around the screen. If you touch one, you lose a life. They are trying to stop you taking boxes. I’m not sure what they are, or if there’s actually a story behind the game. A simple arcade game like this doesn’t need reasons for doing things. Once you’ve collected all the boxes you must reach the top of the screen to complete the level. You can trap the enemies by digging holes where they are running. Unlike you, they will get stuck in holes rather than falling through to the next platform down. They will either climb out after a bit or respawn at the top of the screen when the hole fills in. Of course, there are some parts where you can’t dig holes. You can tell which bits, as they are shaded solid, rather than having the brickwork pattern of the majority of the map. There’s also the occasional trap, which is a bit of land that looks normal, but you actually fall into it.

This simple premise provides endless challenges. That is why a simple level editor was what made the original game a huge success.

Playing the game. Here I am in fact playing a level I created myself.

And really, that’s about it. There’s not much you can write about many of the greatest games. You just need to play them. And I’m sure you’re bored of me droning on, so I urge you to find a copy if you don’t already have one, and play it.

The version I have can be obtained from this website. For some reason it’s not a download, you have to send an e-mail requesting it, but it is free.

Enjoy.

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