PCS and Racing Destruction Set were beyond huge on the Atari 8bits. I never heard of Lode Runner until after the 8-bit scene began to wane and I got into the Apple IIgs (which of course promptly waned as well).
Racing Destruction Set and Nuclear War are maybe the first games I remember playing on a friend's C64. Building levels was the bigger part of the fun. Changing to low gravity so that when your car hit a mine, it flew up in the air and maybe never came down. Pretty amazing for that computing power, at least what my memory is recreating. It really was an early taste of the PC's true power, as an authoring tool.
Though once my parents got an Apple ][e and someone gave me some pirated games, Dig Dug, Hard Hat Mack, Robotron and especially Lode Runner were all I thought about. The last I think was so successful because while you died a lot trying to figure out the choreography on a level, the motion was so fluid-feeling that it was a joy to play, and die, and play.
