The BBC Micro conversion of Peter Liepa and Chris Gray‘s classic Boulder Dash was programmed by Andrew Bennett and published by Tynesoft in 1988. And I don’t know what it is about this port, but there is something wholly unsatisfactory about it.
Maybe it’s the overly-responsive controls, that often ruin a game? Or maybe it’s the headache-inducing, garish colours? Or the shocking lack of time given to you on most levels? Or a combination of all those things? Whatever it is that’s wrong with this conversion: the BBC port of this amazing game is somehow very frustrating to play.
I generally love playing Boulder Dash, but this made me tear my hair out. And not in a good way. It’s another example of a programmer not really understanding how to capture the essence of a great game and ballsing it up.
If you’re going to play Boulder Dash: there are so many other better versions out there. The Commodore 64 or Atari 8-bit versions are probably the best place to start. Give this failed BBC Micro effort a miss.
See also: Boulder Dash Special
More: Boulder Dash on Wikipedia
The King of Grabs 
Have you tried Repton, the Boulderdash clone (ish) original to the BBC Micro?
Or, even better, Repton 3 on an Archimedes. The puzzles on each of the 18 themes start out such that 7-year-old me could do one or two of each, three if I was lucky, but end up with 37-year-old me still unable to complete some of the most difficult ones.
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No, I haven’t tried the Archimedes version of Repton 3 yet (only the BBC Micro originals, which I’ve written about on here), but I have made a mental note to give it a try. Thanks for the tip.
Repton:
Repton 2:
Repton 3:
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Ah, I missed those pages — I looked through the Archimedes tag, not the BBC Micro one.
I think the gameplay is identical. The difference is the graphics are double resolution (32x32px), and drawn with 16 colours chosen from 4096. There are some screenshots here: https://www.mobygames.com/game/acorn-32-bit/repton-3_/screenshots
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I’ll check it out. I remember liking Repton 3 much more than Repton 2, which I thought was almost impossible to play. I do like the Archimedes, though. Am always happy to include more of its games on here.
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I’ve played Boulder Dash a fair bit on an Acorn Electron, which looks very similar to the BBC Micro version. I can honestly say this is a fun game to play and definitely comparable to the C64 and Atari versions, which I’ve also played extensively. Sure the colours aren’t as subtle as on those platforms and the sound isn’t as sophisticated but it’s a very playable and worthy port for a less capable machine. I think the developer did an amazing job for the Acorn Electron at least.
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It seems that just one version of the game was produced for the 8-bit Acorn machines and that the game timings were suited for the Electron but too fast for the Beeb. It really is very twitchy on the latter!
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Boulder Dash has been enhanced for this platform (BBC and Electron). There is a compendium which includes Boulder Dash 1, 2, 3 and a couple of extra / enhanced versions. See: Boulder Dash Compendium and the forum More Boulder Dash! – stardot.org.uk for details. The twitchy controls problem has been fixed too! 🙂
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Maybe give this new, revised version a go and see how you get on 😉
https://www.bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=4514
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