Game:

Lode Runner (1983)

Duration: 0:00

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Lode Runner (c) Broderbund Software 1983 for the Atari 8 bit line of computers

By some weird happenstance, I never had this game and neither did any of my classmates (who had Atari computers). More strangely, not even my childhood best friends had it (for their C64 and ZX Spectrum, respectively). Really weird - and a huge pity, as this game is just excellent.

A few years ago, I caught a glimpse of the gameplay, thanks to one YT video, but until very recently I wasn't really thinking about playing it. But thanks to trusty atarimania.com, I downlaoded the image a few days ago, and thus could finally give this game a try. A very special thanks go to ‪@davidbinkowski4825‬ who brought this to my attention quite recently, which made me realize I completely missed out on this one.

And FMR was playing it a good and fun experience. The game is hard as nails, but immersive enough to keep on playing. It is really frustrating at times, but challenging just enough so that there's the inner urge to beat one more level. And most importantly, it's well done, with good controls and mostly decent AI. This "mostly decent" - ocassionally, it causes the level to get into a situation, where the player can't finish it. However - at least from my very humble experience of practicing majority of the first 50 levels once or twice only prior to playing them - I've ran into such situations only a handful of times. Adjusting the strategy a/o moving the player character differently, affecting the CPU characters, did the job for me. Yeah, a few levels required me to practice them a few more times, but I could probably count these on one hand.

All in all, I think this one's another addition to the vault of games, that are easy to pick up but are difficult to master.

Now.. The image that I downloaded relies on artifacting (for some as-if colour effects), unlike the "COLOR VERSION BY RALF BERTENBURG" (which is also available), where the colours are hard-coded. However, I could not find a downloadable version of it swiftly enough, so being the impatient old man, I decided to try the emulator's artifacting capabilities instead - I went through no artifacting, blue/brown 1, blue/brown 2, CTIA and GTIA modes. Each had its charm, for me at least, even the 'no artifacting' one - it had that typical early Atari games "esoteric" quality to it. In terms of being the most suitable for gameplay, I'm not sure which one was the best.. Probably the blue&brown 2 and GTIA modes. I think I'm going to stick to the latter, as the colours & contrast there was the most pleasant for my eyes.

LbnL this game has 150 levels (uff!), which is a commendable feat by itself, but after the first 30 I already felt like I've had enough, at least for the day. Only thanks to SAVESTATES I could pick up where I left off and get to finish one third of the game. Of course, I used SAVESTATEs to practice each level prior to playing them for the video. As I could see the difficulty rising steadily, I began to doubt I could actually get to level 50, but somehow I managed with very few re-tries. However, I expect further levels to require a bit more practice than that which I had so far.

Candidly speaking, I think I'll finish this game in the days (or weeks) ahead, just our of curiosity if I can do that.

Using the Atari800Win PLus emulator (http://www.a800win.atari-area.prv.pl/) with standard Atari 800XL settings (XL/XE / 64kB RAM / PAL mode).

00:00 Title screen & CPU demo
05:23 Levels 001 to 010 (no artifacting)
29:01 Levels 011 to 020 (no artifacting)
01:15:10 Levels 021 to 030 (no artifacting)
01:52:08 Levels 031 to 035 (blue & brown 1)
02:04:07 Levels 036 to 040 (blue & brown 2)
02:18:46 Levels 041 to 045 (CTIA)
02:32:54 Levels 046 to 050 (GTIA)
02:46:43 Artifacting modes comparison