I first played this game at a home daycare where the husband worked at IBM. They had a computer in the house, which was extremely rare at the time. It was the first time I had ever seen or used one, and Lode Runner is the only thing I remember seeing and playing on that computer. I loved it so much my parents got me my first computer at 7 and it changed my life forever. It’s crazy the impact a single game can have on someone.
Ironically, my first computer couldn’t play Lode Runner!
We had great fun with Lode Runner in grade school. I ended up hacking our copy by modifying one of the sectors on disk to let us start at the higher levels, as we had at most about an hour over lunch to play the game. I had a handy plastic 6502 reference sheet with all the instructions and details about the CPU on the front and back. Ah, those were the good old days when computers came with an assembly monitor in ROM that you could use for all sorts of crazy things...
(edit: this was on an Apple ][e we had in the classroom)
Ironically, my first computer couldn’t play Lode Runner!