Lode Runner - Custom Autobot Level

Transformers and Lode Runner were two popular forms of entertainment born in the 80's. Transformers was of course a half-hour TV cartoon with a complete line toys available and still has a strong following today (not to mention the much anticipated upcoming film). Lode Runner was a early 80's video game, played by most on Apple II and Commodore 64 computers. One of many things I never got around to doing in the 80's was designing my own Transformers-style level in Lode Runner, so I recently did just that. I guess better late than never, right? Here's my custom Lode Runner Autobot Level design in action. Enjoy:

For purposes of demonstrating it, I removed some of the "gold" (those little boxes) so that I could get though the level quicker. The level is actually pretty challenging when all the gold is in there. Since those baddies like to pick up the gold themselves, it is necessary to trap them by digging a hole and retrieving their dropped gold after they fall in it. That isn't so easy in this level as there are not many places to dig trap holes. There are some hidden trap doors in there as well.

I played Lode Runner on my Apple //c computer back in the day. It was great fun and I loved the fact that it came with a built-in level editor. Although common place today, not many games offered this feature in 1983. I probably spent almost as much time authoring challenging custom levels to enjoy and share with friends as I did actually playing the game itself. This particular demonstration of my custom level design was accomplished on the Commodore 64 version via an emulator. It was a little easier to get a clean capture of the video this way. To add to the video's presentation I added a few extra sounds, threw in some ambient background music, and the glowing eye effect during postproduction.

Were you a Lode Runner fan? Do you even remember the game? Want to see more Transformers level designs? Have some to share yourself? Drop me a line or leave a comment below.