Microsoft’s Days of Arcade comes to an end on Wednesday, but not before the release of Lode Runner on Xbox LIVE Arcade. In a similar fashion to last year’s Bionic Commando this shiny new release arrives with fancy new 2.5D graphics and, hopefully, the original magic intact.

For those of you who have thus-far missed out on Lode Runner (or any of its multitude of follow-ups), let us recap: The original Lode Runner was released waaaaay back in 1983. It was a pretty basic action/puzzle affair, with your hole-blasting hero collecting gold avoiding enemies and trying to climb the ladder to the next level. Then the next. Then the next. You see, Lode Runner belongs to that grand tradition of old-old-school games that have eight-bazillion levels. That is pretty much all there was to it. But back in the day it was oh-so-addictive.

Tozai Games and SouthEnd Interactive’s re-imagining of Lode Runner takes the original’s premise and runs with it (sorry about that!). The crazy amount of levels survive (220), but now there are a ton of new gameplay elements and modes, including online multiplayer and co-op. Also, as the original was the first game to come with a level editor, they’ve included it here too with the added option of uploading your creations onto LIVE.

Lode Runner is released this Wednesday on XBLA and will cost 1200 Microsoft Points.