The original game, released in 1983 for the Apple ][ by Broderbund, consisted of 150 levels and was one of the first games to include a Level Editor. A myriad of ports and remakes have been released ever since by companies such as Sierra, Bandai, and Hudson Soft (mostly due to the NES version being a resounding success in Japan). A true sequel, the aptly named Lode Runner 2, was released in 1998 for Windows and Mac. In 1999, Lode Runner 3-D was released for the Nintendo 64.
Tropes in the Lode Runner series:
- All There in the Manual: The story, as is typical in these early games. Turns out the Bungeling Empire stole the gold from peace loving people, so the Galactic Commando ("bounty hunter" in The Legend Returns) known as the Lode Runner is tasked with reclaiming it from the guards (later known as monks).
- Artificial Stupidity: Exploiting it in the guards is very useful, with some levels relying on it. For instance, you can position yourself on a ladder so they climb upwards when you're directly below them.
- Art Shift: Common in most versions, as the minimalist graphics were interpreted in different ways. Some even had an entirely different Excuse Plot to match, or replaced the characters and setting.
- Ascended Glitch:
- The enemies have an odd artificial intelligence. These quirks have to be exploited in Championship Lode Runner.
- There are a plethora of weird bugs and quirks in Lode Runner: The Legend Returns and its enhanced port The Mad Monk's Revenge. Some of them have been embraced by fans and used in unique ways for custom puzzles!
- Attract Mode: The original game showed gameplay from Stages 12, 31, and 11.
- Blackout Basement: The Legend Returns/Mad Monk's Revenge has a gimmick (also available in the Level Editor) that turns a level into a "night" variant, where the entire stage is pitch-black, save for an illuminated circle that surrounds the player character.note
- Booby Trap:
- The final world in Lode Runner 3-D, Emperor's Keep, features a lot of archaic and medieval hazards that can easily be triggered by buttons that Jake or the monks can step on. What makes these traps especially dastardly is that certain traps, like the boulder trap, can roll over and trigger its own trap button, causing an endless loop!
- Lode Runner 2's tutorial levels introduce laser triggers that remote detonate any bomb that's on screen. However they are seldom (or never) used in the main levels.
- Buried Alive: One of the ways for players or enemies to get killed is to get buried inside regenerating bricks. Later games such as The Legend Returns even have the character scream in agony while being crushed to death.
- The Cameo: Who serves as the guards in Hudson Soft's NES version? Why, no other than Bomberman, of course! You may also find the titular characters as enemies in random levels in Battle Lode Runner for the TurboGrafx-16 (also made by Hudson Soft) as well!
- Canon Name: Most manuals refer to the main Lode Runner character as Jake Peril. In The Legend Returns, there is a blue Lode Runner playable in the 2-Player mode who is referred to as Wes Reckless.
- Collision Damage: Touching enemies from the side or having them land on the player's head means instant death.
- Cranium Ride: It's possible to stand on the enemies, and in some levels it is necessary to access platforms that are otherwise unreachable (the enemy mooks move more slowly than the player, even when falling, so the player can stand on their heads and walk off as they pass a platform).
- Destructive Teleportation: Heavily implied in Lode Runner 3-D. In the Bio-Hazard world, there is an organic teleportation device called a Tele-cloner which, true to its name, seems to outright destroy the person who walks into it, then creates a perfect clone on the other side.
- Distaff Counterpart: Lode Runner 2 introduces the female Lode Runner, Jane, as a playable character. It's unknown what her relation is to Jake (the classic male one) besides the manual calling her his "companion," but if his jaw dropping in the opening FMV is any indication, she's supposed to be some Femme Fatale.
- Easter Egg:
- In The Legend Returns you'll find the Presage Software logo engraved into a triangular stone in some of the backdrops of the Lost City of Ur world.
- In the Mad Monk's Revenge re-release of the above mentioned, you can access a classic, Apple II themed tileset in the level editor if you click on a blank space in the world selection screen.
- Every 10,000 Points: Or every level in this case; completing a level nets the player an extra life.
- The Face of the Sun: Some of the Wacky World levels in Lode Runner 2 had a sun which would usually look sort of confused, and occasionally would laugh strangely for no apparent reason.
- Fake Platform: There are trap blocks that look like normal bricks, but can be fallen through (while remaining solid when approached from either side).
- Game-Breaking Bug: Lode Runner 3-D on the Nintendo 64 seems to have some kind of bizarre memory issue where (depending on how much data is on the save file) the game would completely crash when attempting to save the game after finishing a level set.
- Hard Mode Filler: In some ports of the original Lode Runner, the levels eventually begin repeating themselves (for example, the Commodore 64 cartridge version only has seventeen distinct level layouts), but with faster monks.
- Haunted House: Battle Lode Runner's 10th world is a very direct example of this trope, complete with chasing vampire enemies and spooky organ music.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Lode Runner 2 has the default name of "Digmo," although the manual itself provides different names for each gender.
- High-Voltage Death: One of the ways Jake can die in Lode Runner 3-D if he comes into contact with the Mad Monk Emperor's electrical shockwave attack.
- Hub Level: The World Hub in Lode Runner 2.
- Industrial World:
- The Legend Returns has Meltdown Metropolis, a run-down factory looking city that serves as the final world in the game (or the 10th of 12 worlds in the Mad Monk's Revenge re-release).
- Lode Runner 2 has a world literally called Industrial World. Gear World also counts.
- Jump Physics: Averted. The player cannot jump, only fall.
- Jungle Japes: Moss Caverns from The Legend Returns, and the literally named Jungle World from Lode Runner 2.
- King Mook: In Lode Runner 3-D, the main antagonist is shown as the Mad Monk Emperor.
- Lethal Lava Land: Inferno's Playground is the 7th world in The Legend Returns, and takes place directly in a volcanic crater. Lode Runner 3-D has The Furnace of Despair; a run-down volcanic planet with machinery that runs entirely on thermal and steam-based energy.
- Level Editor: It really wouldn't be Lode Runner without it, since the original game is well known for having one of the first custom level editors. Most ports retained this feature, although the worldwide NES port did not allow the player to save custom level data since the Data Recorder add-on
was not released outside Japan. - Logo Joke: Broderbund's "triple crown" logo provides the layout for Stage 4 of the original game.
- Man on Fire: The Furnace of Despair world in Lode Runner 3-D has a lot of heat based hazards, so naturally stepping on a platform that is literally glowing bright red from how hot it is will mean instant death. You even get a still image of Jake engulfed in flames while the level reloads. How pleasant...
- Meaningful Rename: Since some incarnations introduce the concept of more than one Lode Runner (namely Battle Lode Runner's five multiplayer men and Wes Reckless from The Legend Returns), the name of the main Lode Runner was later given as Jake Peril.
- Mission-Pack Sequel: Virtually all of the 2D games (although even Cubic Lode Runner resembles a simplified Lode Runner 2) — especially Championship Lode Runner, which is just a fan submitted level compilation pack.
-
Nintendo Hard: It's very easy to die in these games. Championship Lode Runner in particular is much more difficult since the player needs to be intimate with the enemy AI. - Nothing Is Scarier: In The Legend Returns (and Mad Monk's Revenge by extension) The Shadowlands world is a very direct example of this, combining limited vision with some rather unsettling ambient noise
to boot. - Oddball in the Series: Lode Runner's Rescue is an isometric Spin-Off similar to Crystal Castles, starring the Lode Runner's daughter Alexandra (who could jump and swim, but not dig).
- Piranha Problem: In a cutscene in Mad Monk's Revenge, we see two monks accidentally go for a swim in a pool infested with piranhas in the Reef World.note Needless to say, they get picked clean in a matter of seconds. This is subverted in the actual gameplay, however, as falling into a liquid tile just causes the player or a monk to simply drown.
- Power Pincers: Some of the cover art depicts the guards as robots whose only weapons are clamps for hands.
- Press X to Die: Nearly all of the games literally have a suicide button (necessary, since there are certain situations that can render a level not only unwinnable, but with the player in a position that they can neither escape from or get to a guard to kill them).
- Respawning Enemies: Enemies respawn after getting killed. In some levels, this must be exploited by causing the enemies to respawn near gold piles that are otherwise unreachable by the player.
- Revenge of the Sequel: Lode Runner: The Bungeling Strikes Back for the arcades.
- Ruins for Ruins' Sake: Ancient ruins are a common theme throughout the series.
- Special mention goes to the iconic Lost City of Ur from The Legend Returns.
- The mystical Mona World from Lode Runner 2 is another noteworthy location.
- Shared Universe: The Bungeling Empire are actually stock villains in several Broderbund games that were first seen in Choplifter! and later in Raid on Bungeling Bay.
- Hudson Soft developed a video game in 1985 that serves as a direct prequel, showing the origin of the Lode Runner as a humble little robot named Bomber Man. You may have heard of it.
- Shout-Out: The bricks and ladders in many levels are arranged to spell messages. Some are obvious (for example, gaps in the ladders on Level 44 spell out "LODE RUNNER"), while others are subtle. For example, Level 56 has bricks that form the letters "UW," a reference to Douglas E. Smith's alma mater, the University of Washington.
- Later releases such as The Legend Returns and Lode Runner 2 started incorporating bombs as legitimate gameplay elements, likely in reference to the aforementioned Hudson developed tie-in.
- The Legend Returns has a level in Skeleton's Keep that uses the blocks to spell out C++, which is the programming language the game was made with.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Legend Returns gives us Winter's Dungeon, while Lode Runner 3-D has Frozen Doom. This trope is somewhat subverted, as you do not have any slippery ice physics to worry about.
- Smoldering Shoes:
- In a cutscene from The Legend Returns, the mad monks chasing Jake get blown up by a bomb that's rolled at them, leaving their black boots behind.
- If you get killed by a bomb in Lode Runner 3-D, it cuts to a still image of Jake's shoes still giving off smoke while the level restarts.
- Surrealism
- Lode Runner 2 gives us its most stand-out world in the game, aptly named "Wacky World." This bizarre dimension comes with neon colored ground, orange slices as bridges, dancing plant life, amorphous jelly-like blobs, lava lamps, giant smiley faces, you name it. And of course, the afformentioned smiling sun with the creepy laugh.
- In Lode Runner 3-D the 4th world is called the "Bio-Hazard." This is an unsettlingly organic world where all of the transportation devices and breakable blocks are made out of strange, alien-like biomatter.
- Temporary Platform:
- Mad Monk's Revenge introduces what is called a phaze block, which is undiggable turf that fades in and out on a set timer. It's the main gimmick of the 11th world, the Astral World.
- Lode Runner 2 has a specific example via Wacky World's final level "Unstable Islands," where every single turf tile permanently vanishes when it's stepped on once.
- Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction: Large gold piles in this series are very common.
- Under the Sea: Mad Monk's Revenge introduces a new world called the Reef World, which takes place in a cavern deep beneath the sea. Thankfully there's no swimming controls you have to fiddle with, but it does introduce liquid tiles which will instantly kill you if Jake falls into it. It is worth noting that liquid tiles can be filled with the pickaxe item, which then turns it into a regular turf tile.
- Updated Re-release: Lode Runner On-Line: The Mad Monks' Revenge is this to The Legend Returns, featuring new items, new level themes, and online multiplayer.
- Useless Item: In Lode Runner 2, there are these donut-shaped artifacts you can find in very specific levels of each world that are placed in visible, but very hard to reach places. Unfortunately nothing really happens when you collect them, but it's speculated that collecting them all would have unlocked secret worlds in the hub (see Trivia tab for more info on that).
- World Tour: Battle Lode Runner, instead of the traditional "world biomes," has you visiting different parts of the world, and at different points in time as well.
