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Company Hudson ESRB Rating E for Everyone Release Date US - April 23, 2007 Controllers Wii Remote Classic Controller Gamecube Controller Wii Points 600 Review by: Corbie Dillard ©2008 Virtual-Turbo

The release of Battle Lode Runner on the TurboGrafx-16 section of the Virtual Console marks a major milestone in that it's the first PC Engine-only title to see a release here in the US. Hopefully this is only the beginning of this trend as their are tons of outstanding PC Engine titles that never made the trip here to the US for one reason or another. Battle Lode Runner gained fame back in the early 80's on many of the personal computers of the time including the Commodore 64, IBM PC, and Apple II line of computers. The game gained quite a following because of its extremely addictive puzzle elements. But all these years later, will this simplistic title be able to find an audience again on the Virtual Console? Much the same as the storyline in the Bomberman titles, there's not a lot to the plot in Battle Lode Runner. You basically have to go in and gather all of the piles of gold in each area and then get out. While this sounds fairly simple, it quickly becomes a puzzling affair that will require you to put on your thinking cap if you're to have any hope of getting all of the loot before you're caught. While the comparisons with Bomberman are inevitable, Battle Lode Runner is a very different game at its core. While you do have to spend much of your time avoiding and trapping enemies, your main goal is to grab all of the gold. You can climb ladders and shimmy along pipes in order to move around the many levels, but your main weapon is your ability to dig holes in order to trap the many enemies strung throughout the levels. Button I will create a hole to your right side and Button II will create a hold to your left side. If you dig a hole and an enemy falls into the hole, you can then walk across the trapped enemy. It's careful planning like this that will ultimately decide your success in each level. In many of the later levels, you'll have to carefully plan out your enemy attacks as well as figure out a way to reach some of the gold that's placed in extremely tricky areas. If you fall into a hole yourself, you'll either lose a life when the hole automatically fills itself in after a certain amount of time or you'll have to give up and start the level over. Battle Lode Runner proves that even the simplest game can be quite challenging if it's set up right. Visually, Battle Lode Runner doesn't differ too much from its early personal computer days in the fact that the graphics in the game are fairly plain and simple. Most of the levels are only made up of various colored blocks and ladders, so don't expect too much when you first begin playing. The game features some great use of wildly vivid colors, but while this does add a little visual flare, it still doesn't work a miracle. Even most of the intermission scenes are fairly basic in design and will often make you wonder why they make an appearance at all. Battle Lode Runner is still more pleasing to the eye than it was back in the early 80's, just not by much. Much like the visuals, the music and sound effects in Battle Lode Runner aren't much to speak of. That's not to say that there aren't some great tunes in the game, they're just few and far between and they also tend to repeat a lot during each of the levels which makes them become a little grating after long playing sessions. The sound effects are cute, and one might wonder if they were sampled directly from the original personal computer games, but at least old timers will get a hefty dose of nostalgia out of them. The audio is pretty typical Hucard material, but at least the game will throw you a nice tune here and there. Battle Lode Runner is a hard game to review. On one hand, the nostalgic part of me that played and enjoyed this game series back during my Commodore 64 days still loves to drag this game out and play it from time to time just for old time's sake. But on the other hand, it's quite obvious from playing this game that it's not going to appeal much to gamers who've become accustomed to many of the more diverse puzzle-type games we normally see on more recent game systems. If you like this type of game, you really owe it to yourself to at least give this game a try, but in good consicousness I can really only recommend this game to gamers who've enjoyed this series in years past because it's honestly one of the best versions of the game ever made. Tons of levels to play through and some that are downright brutal in design make this a game that any puzzler fan will get their money's worth out of and then some.