Repton for the BBC Micro is a classic digging/puzzle/maze game written by Tim Tyler and published by Superior Software in 1985. The game is usually described as a Boulder Dash derivative, and while it’s true that its author was influenced by Chris Gray and Peter Liepa‘s classic game, he hadn’t played it before he wrote Repton – he’d reportedly only read a review about the game in a magazine. Repton is sufficiently different to Boulder Dash to stand on its proverbial own two feet, but the similarities are obvious and drawing comparisons is unavoidable.
Tag Archives: puzzle
Brainstorm, ZX Spectrum
Written by Pete Cooke and published by Firebird (as a £1.99 budget game) in 1987, Brainstorm is a clever puzzle/strategy game where the aim is to draw lines using a pointer in order to make a bouncing ball travel over coloured sections of the screen, to accumulate points.
Turboflex, Atari 8-bit
Jeff Minter‘s 1982 Atari 8-bit game, Turboflex, is an interesting but frustrating bouncing ball game where the aim is for you to deliberately bounce a ball into a target inside a box by dropping flippers onto it – diagonal posts that spin the ball in different directions, depending on its position when hit by the ball. The target, depending on your game settings, moves, reverses or does other tricks, so as not to get hit/caught by you.
Quedex, Commodore 64
Quedex is scrolling action game programmed by Stavros Fasoulas and published by Thalamus for the Commodore 64 in 1987.
Mr. Driller Drill Land, GameCube
Developed by Project Driller (an internal, dedicated team within Namco), Mr. Driller Drill Land was released exclusively for the GameCube in Japan in 2002 and is the fifth instalment in the Mr. Driller series. And it is arguably the best game in the series.
Boulder Dash Special
Boulder Dash is a very special game. It is a simple idea, with cute graphics and devious gameplay that combine to make an addictive combination of arcade-style action, survival and puzzle-solving.
Boulder Dash: Rocks!, Nintendo DS
Boulder Dash: Rocks! was developed and published by German company 10tacle and released in Europe and Australia in 2007. It is a dual-screen remake of the classic action/puzzle game, Boulder Dash.
Boulder Dash EX, Game Boy Advance
Boulder Dash EX is an updated version of the classic Boulder Dash, developed by Vision Works and published by KEMCO in 2002. And it’s not bad at all.
Boulder Dash III, Commodore 64
Boulder Dash III was developed and published in Europe only by a Swedish company called American Action AB in 1986 (it wasn’t released in North America at all). It was the first game in the Boulder Dash series not to be designed and programmed by original co-creator Peter Liepa, and it suffers as a result of that.
Boulder Dash II, ZX Spectrum
It’s not clear who converted the ZX Spectrum version of Boulder Dash II, but the game was published by Prism Leisure in 1985.
The King of Grabs 