The game's appeal stems from its tight, focused gameplay. The player takes the role of the titular Runner, who must travel around stages collecting gold, while avoiding enemies and digging holes as traps.

From this inauspicious set-up, the game blooms into a fast-paced, strategic kind of puzzle game; a mid-point between Tetris and Pac-Man. The developers have kept this central gameplay and expanded the game outwards, updating the graphics to sleek HD and adding in various single and multiplayer modes.

Like with Dimensions, the focus is on the original game's timeless quality, with extras providing depth and approachability. Brett Ballow, executive producer at Tozai, says that over the years "many versions of Lode Runner... have fallen away from the original gameplay, and we've pushed back. We tried to start with the basic gameplay and the speed of the game and AI, and get it to play like the original twitch-puzzle game that it was".

These previously announced bells and whistles include the survival-like Hang On Mode, and the fiendish Puzzle Mode, as well as functionality for 2 player co-op and up to 4 player competitive play.

However, despite a series of previews and first-look pieces after the game's debut at CES 08, Lode Runner was delayed beyond its original 2008 release date. Sheila Boughten, Tozai president, explains: "we actually started development on Lode Runner a few months before we started developing R-Type Dimensions, but we kept adding functionality to Lode Runner and just kept making it better and better, to make it be exactly what we wanted it to be, so it extended the dev time".

One of these functionality aspects is the reintroduction of one of the series' key innovations, a level editor. Tozai and Southend planned to include the level editor for this version of Lode Runner and, after encouragement from Microsoft, altered the release date to incorporate a community system for players to share their own levels.

In describing these user-creativity aspects, Ballow says "you can create levels with any of the game modes and share them over Live, or you can host Live matches and anybody who joins the match can have the option to download those levels; it's a completely new experience".

Boughten elaborates, "you can create share lists and share those with other Lode Runner players; we went as far as we could go given what we could actually allow and handle on [Live], there will be a lot to see and play in this version".

This new version of Lode Runner is certainly shaping up to be a high watermark for content on Xbox Live Arcade, with the user-creativity and community functions maybe setting it up as the 360's answer to Little Big Planet and Bangai-O Spirits. Previous installments have already been ported to the Virtual Console, but Tozai's suped-up remake may prove to be an addictive, inclusive and engrossing gem. The game is released on Xbox Live Arcade in April.

[Mike Leader is a freelance journalist living in London, UK. He primarily writes about video games and films. Check out his personal blog/writing portfolio at http://wildtyme.blogspot.com]