Boulder Dash

Boulder Dash is a series of computer games and video games for home computers (such as the Atari 800, C64, Amiga), which was later ported to the PC and arcade machines. The Urprogramm was programmed by Peter Liepa with Chris Gray support for the Atari 800 and published by First Star Software in 1984.

Game play

The character " Rockford " must collect a certain number of gems and find the exit in each different " caves ".

He has to deal with many obstacles and enemies, such as falling boulders, a growing " amoeba " and flying enemies.

Some of the gems have yet to be produced, for example by dropping certain enemies or by a "magic wall " boulders.

An appeal of the game is that most of the elements (an exception is the " amoeba " ) does not behave randomly but are exactly predictable. So caves are possible, requiring a complex solution strategy. To rotate a shape of the opponents always to the right if there is space, and the other form is always to the left. Some caves can be solved only by directing these opponents on circular orbits and thus sets out of action.

The publications

Boulder Dash 1: It uses the BD1 engine with the elements: gaps, earth, brick walls, magic walls, titanium walls, rocks, gems, Amoeba, fireflies, butterflies and of course the output. The game was unpacked 16 KB in size. Boulder Dash 1 was also implemented for Game Boy, with some spruced-up music and optics.

Boulder Dash 2: It uses the BD2 engine. Known bugs have been fixed. The new elements mucus and Growing walls were added. In contrast to the BD1 engine here stops the amoeba not, if you drop a rock into the Magic Wall, which is also related that this peculiar Magic Wall timing is not required.

Boulder Dash 3: This game was created by a different team of programmers. It re-used the old BD1 engine, but with new graphics. The caves have some design flaws that make playing through the level 4 and 5 impossible. In addition, many Animationsbits are wrong, which is why the monolith (new name for the amoeba ) are not animated in most caves.

Boulder Dash Construction Kit: Here is the PLCK engine. Newly arrived hidden exits and Voodoo Rockford. For the first time Magic Wall and Amöbezeit adjusted separately. The five level there is no longer, as the cave format has changed. For 48 caves with any content are possible in this version. The ability to build his own games is fraught with defects: A fatal error ensures that the game often crashes when cave construction. 15 caves are as Boulder Dash 4 with included on the disk.

2011 Boulder Dash -XL: Is a remake of the old classic, which makes the gameplay unchanged, but three new game modes introduced ( "Puzzle ", " Zen" and " Time Challenge ") and the old arcade mode. The game contains 150 all-new, error-free level in "high- definition " graphics ( 720p). In addition, there is a so-called " retro mode " with 25 other caves. Online leaderboards and achievements keep the game up to date. The game was developed by Catnip Games and published by Kalypso Media.

DIY Games

Even before the release of the official construction kits there were the first versions that were created by fans. Dr. Watson had his own Boulder Dash 4 built and Don Pedro led the series with the parts 5-11 on. No One and The Blockheads launched during its own ranks. All of these versions use the BD1 engine. Furthermore, there are two final boulder games, where it is remixed versions of older games. An editor there was not for this engine, so everything had to be built directly into memory with a primitive monitor.

The Construction Set (1987 ) by The Killers Soft is a Level Packer, with which you can build standalone games. The old cause of the crash in the Game module has not been resolved. In this editor you can also edit the graphics for the first time and import fonts. The slightly modified for this game module is briefly referred to as soft - Engine.

With the proliferation of the Internet, several fan sites where you can download a collection of fan-made Boulder Dash games today emerged.