LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Lode Runner
built 635 days ago
Championship Lode Runner is a must for Lode Runner veterans. All that's missing is the design mode—you'll have to use the original version for that. But if you've exhausted the possibilities of the original, Championship Lode Runner gives you 50 more "impossible" challenges. And this time, Brøderbund promises you won't find them so easy.
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The original prototype of what later became known as Lode Runner was a game developed by Douglas E. Smith of Renton, Washington, who at the time was an architecture student at the University of Washington (UW)[2]. The prototype game, called Kong, was written for a Prime Computer 550 minicomputer. It was limited to one building on the UW campus. Shortly there after, it was moved to VAX minicomputers, since there were more terminals available at more of the buildings on campus. The game used ASCII character "graphics" and was programmed in Fortran.
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During development of Lode Runner, Smith had around seven to ten levels. In March or April of 1983, as Brøderbund prepared marketing materials and packaging, he was asked how many levels would make the final version. Off the top of his head, Smith blurted 150. Toward the end of development, he was paying others to create levels in order to fulfill this stated goal.
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If Championship Lode Runner has you stumped and you're obsessed with victory, Brøderbund offers a hint book for $9.95. The book provides step-by-step hints and diagrams for solving each level, along with the placement of traps. Seasoned players will welcome these hints (not solutions). Even expert players will value seeing each screen in advance.
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Lode Runner 2 offers everything players liked about the original version, and demands the same timing, resourcefulness, and cunning. Now you'll be searching for gold and avoiding monsters in a three-dimensional world, using your wiliness to figure out how to outsmart each level, just like in the first one. The demo version gives you five levels from one world, which you play as the yellow male Lode Runner in single-player mode. If you register, you get five worlds with 75 levels, the ability to play as one of eight colored Lode Runners (male or female), multiplayer support for up to eight players over a LAN using TCP/IP, and many new objects, such as the Cloak of the Mad Monk and directional bombs. With the full version, you ... get a level editor for creating your own levels and worlds to trade or play yourself.
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The premise behind Lode Runner is simple. You play as a greedy worthless dude who can do nothing other than climb ladders, shivy poles and dig graves with a magic wand, so you run around levels stealing all the mounds of gold you can. The whole thing play out like an odd mixture of Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. Sometimes mounds of gold are just lying around the level. Sometimes the Bomberman-esque enemies carry the mounds of gold on them, so you have to dig a grave in front of someone's path. When they fall in the shallow pit, they drop their mounds. After you've finally got all the mounds of gold, a new ladder appears that takes you to the next level.
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Lode Runner