Lode Runner: The Legend Returns

The game takes place in a single frame with many different elements such as ground, ladders, treasure, items, and villains. The goal is to collect all the treasure, avoid touching any of the monks, and reach the exit.

New elements include devices that can be picked up and used only one at a time. These devices include snare traps, incapacitating sprays, jackhammers, two types of bombs, pickaxes (which make a pile of rock from the ceiling blocking enemies from advancing), and buckets filled with goo that is used to cover surfaces and slow characters down.

The player character is named Jake Peril and wears a gray suit, although a second player can play as his partner, Wes Reckless (who wears a blue suit), during two-player cooperative levels and head-to-head hotseat play. The robots of the original game are skeletal "mad monks" who wear red robes. The game's manual explains that Jake, and optionally Wes, travel to unknown underground worlds in the hopes of scavenging the untold golden treasures that litter the game's levels. At the end of the game, Jake is seen in the Technological world calling an elevator to the surface, eagerly waiting while the credits roll. The elevator arrives but malfunctions, leaving Jake no other choice but to reach the surface using the presumably tall staircase.

The Macintosh and Windows versions of the game were developed by Presage Software.

Pyramid magazine reviewed Lode Runner: The Legend Returns, contrasting it with the original game as "a classic game which was almost instantly addictive" and noting that "The basic premise has not changed: your mission is still to go and swipe all of the goodies from each level without getting torn limb from limb by the Mad Monks (which happens in a delightfully graphic manner in the new version, by the way)."

A reviewer for Next Generation gave the PC version two out of five stars, saying that though the new graphics, soundtrack, and sound effects are all pleasing, the gameplay is not different enough from that of the original Lode Runner to interest players looking for something new.

One year after its release, Sierra released Lode Runner Online: The Mad Monks' Revenge, which fixed many of the bugs and added additional gameplay features.

In 1998, Natsume Inc. packaged Lode Runner: The Legend Returns with Lode Runner Extra as Lode Runner, a 2-in-1 game for the PlayStation. The game included a video introduction by the game's creator Doug Smith explaining how Lode Runner came about.