Lode Runner

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Lode Runner was Doug Smith’s game, published by Broderbund in 1983 for the Apple II before any other computer. A runner collects the gold of a level of bricks, ladders and ropes while guards chase him; he can’t jump or fight, only dig a hole in the bricks for a guard to fall into, and the hole fills again after a while. It came with 150 levels and an editor to make more, and it went on to most computers and consoles of the eighties.

This page starts Lode Runner from a copy of its original disk, watches the demonstration that plays itself, and plays the start of a game from the keyboard.

What you need

Lode Runner.woz, a copy of the original Lode Runner disk, from the woz-a-day collection of the Internet Archive: download Lode Runner (woz-a-day collection).zip and take it out of it. ./fetch-disks.sh in this repository downloads it into disks/.

A WOZ file records a diskette bit by bit, its copy protection included, so it is the disk Broderbund sold, as it was, and not a copy with the protection taken out.

Broderbund’s manual of Lode Runner is on the Internet Archive.

The machine

An Apple ][+ with one disk drive:

• the 6502 processor at 1 MHz, 48 KB of memory, and Applesoft BASIC in its ROM;
• the keyboard of the ][+, which types only capitals;
• a Disk II controller card in slot 6, with the Lode Runner disk in drive 1.

izapple2 -model none -board 2plus -cpu 6502 -screen color \
    -rom "<internal>/Apple2_Plus.rom" \
    -charrom "<internal>/Apple2rev7CharGen.rom" -forceCaps \
    -s6 'diskii,disk1=disks/Lode Runner.woz'

The model 2plus of izapple2 has this machine, with a Language Card and a Videx Videoterm 80 column card more:

izapple2 -model 2plus -screen color "disks/Lode Runner.woz"

Start it

1. Start izapple2 with the command above. After a few seconds of the drive, the title comes up.

   

The demonstration

1. Wait. The game shows its first level, opening from the middle, and plays it by itself: the runner in white, the guards in orange, the gold in the small boxes.

   

   The runner goes for the gold and away from the guards, and digs holes in front of them. When all the gold is taken, a ladder appears to the top of the screen, the way out to the next level.

Play

1. Press Space to play. The first level comes up, with five runners, MEN 005 at the bottom.

   

   Lode Runner is played with a joystick, or with the keyboard. Without a joystick connected, izapple2 makes the mouse of your computer the joystick of the Apple II.

2. Press Control-K to play with the keyboard, then L to run right, I, when he is at the ladder, to climb, and J to run left. One key sets the runner going, and he goes on until the next key or a wall.

   

   He takes the gold at his right, 250 points, climbs the ladder, and takes the next piece on the way left, but a guard is there, and catches him. The screen closes in a circle, and the level starts again, with one runner less, MEN 004, and the score kept. The guards are not fooled for long: the way past them is to dig a hole in the bricks they walk on, and go on while they climb out.

What next

A game in Applesoft is a game you write yourself, in BASIC, for the same machine.