A Look At Boulder Dash

Here we are, ready to celebrate the anniversary of another C64 smash hit of the good old times: Boulder Dash.

Developed by First Star Software and published in 1984 for the Atari and C64 and, later on, for many other platforms, Boulder Dash was a game that looked like a Vic-20 one but was so fun to play to compete with really another entire generation of “consoles”. The gameplay was really simple: the player, controlling a character called Rockford, was put inside a series of caves and had to traverse them while collecting diamonds and avoiding falling rocks. When enough diamonds were collected, a door would open thus allowing to enter the following cave. Yet, despite this simplicity, the game was frantic, action-packed and addictive.

As stated in the May issue of Martin Grundy‘s calendars: Named the reviewers’ all-time favorite game in issue one of ZZAP!64, Boulder Dash is one of the best-loved games of the 8-bit era. The key to its success isn’t great graphics or spectacular sound but brilliant gameplay and pure addictiveness. The critics raved about it with C&VG and Personal Computer Games both awarding it ‘Game of the Month’ and 10/10, the latter stating that “absolutely compulsive gameplay is what lifts Boulder Dash to awesome heights”.