92. Lode Runner (Hudson Soft, PC (Famicom) 1983)

Lode Runner is an action game with puzzle elements, developed by a single person (Douglas E. Smith) and originally released on PCs in 1983. It was ported to the Famicom in July 1984 by Hudson Soft, making it the second 3rd party game to be released on the system, only a couple weeks after Hudson's own port of yesterday's game #91 Nuts & Milk.

There are a significant number of similarities between the two games: they both offer 50 levels that can be selected from at will and generally have similar core gameplay of collecting all of a certain resource (here it's piles of gold) before being able to exit a level. Where Lode Runner differs from Nuts & Milk is mainly that it is less of an action experience and more of a puzzle game. Another big draw of the Lode Runner was its level editor, which is a cool feature (especially for 1984).

There is no jumping here, so enemies (who all look like Bomberman from Hudson's later Bomberman games) can't really be dodged. The solution then, is digging. The 2 controller buttons allow you to dig to the left or right, and if an enemy falls in a hole, they will either crawl out, or if the hole was dug long enough ago, it will close up and seal them in. When enemies are in a hole, they can also be walked over safely, so they can be used as a bridge as well. The downside of this is that you can also easily trap yourself in a hole with no way out.

Levels are one screen high but about 2 screens wide, so you can't always see every enemy on screen, and enemies constantly respawn as they are defeated. The game is a bit difficult in its original form, but since you can select any level, there is no huge pressure for losing your lives, which I appreciate. The action of the game, though, is just not terribly fun: everything is fairly slow, especially digging a hole, and you are basically just strategically running away from enemies most of the time, so while I can select any level I want, I'm not super inclined to explore more than a few.

3/5, a decent arcadey / puzzle time