Boulder Dash

Overview

Boulder Dash is a maze game with added gravity. Players control Rockford, a stick man who navigates a series of caverns filled with Earth, boulders, diamonds and a series of creatures who kill on touch. The concept is simple: collect enough diamonds to escape each level within a time limit. But while Rockford isn't affected by gravity, the boulders and diamonds are -- remove a piece of earth underneath a boulder and it will fall, often setting off a chain reaction of falling debris. So the game plays as a puzzle game; with each move that the player makes, they have to anticipate the consequences.

Boulder Dash is one of a very short list of titles that began on home machines that were later transferred to the arcades. In 2006, Atari2600.com developed an Atari 5200 version of the game in conjunction with First Star Software. One iteration of the game was released in 2007 by ZX Games, and is a largely faithful remake of the original over 20 years after its original release. In 2009, a flash-based Browser version was released, sporting updated graphics.

Virtual Console

The Commodore 64 version of Boulder Dash was released on to the Wii Virtual Console on June 1st 2009 for 500 Wii Points.