Lode Runner is the quintessential classic action puzzler. Masked by superficial simplicity, further inspection will reveal that this game is actually an intricate, convoluted thinker's contest that will alternately have gamers screaming obscenities and beaming with joy.

Basically, you're a little stick figure who must scramble up and down ladders, run across platforms and traverse across horizontal ropes to collect barrels. Once you escape each level, go on to another, more difficult level, repeat process. Simple, right? Well, no, actually.

Your only defense/offense in the game is digging a hole for pursuers to fall into, or yourself to fall through and escape. After the first few levels, more enemies appear, the barrels are placed in more difficult positions, and players can be trapped by their own poor planning or misjudgment. For example, holes must sometimes be made deep enough and wide enough for the player to obtain the barrel and escape. If you get trapped in your own hole, you're dead once the hole repairs itself.

That's pretty much all there is to it. Interesting and creative level configurations like ladders which form Broderbund's logo are worth mentioning. Lode Runner has also stood the test of time, being re-released for the PC in the mid-90's and also in a 3-D N64 incarnation. But my favorite has always been (and probably always will be) the original Atari 800XL 5'1/4" floppy disk version.

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