Boulder Dash

1001 Video Games

Boulder Dash appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Amiga

A real Amiga version of Boulder Dash was never released. But Emerald Mine, a close variant for the Amiga, became very popular.

Arcade version

Boulder Dash was so popular on the home computer that it was one of the first home computer games to be ported to the arcades, usually it is the other way around; in that a popular arcade game gets ported to the home systems. The initial Exidy version was simply an Atari 800 in an arcade cabinet, running a slightly modified Atari 8-bit version of the game giving 30 seconds of gameplay per credit. The 1985 Data East DECO version had improved graphics and slight level layout changes due to it's vertical monitor layout.
A later Data East arcade version was released in 1990 with improved graphics and new level layouts.

Atari 2600 port

In 2012 a port to the Atari 2600 was released as homebrew software with support from First Star Software. The programmers Andrew Davie and Thomas Jentzsch worked for almost a decade to port the game completely on the VCS.

Game Art Beyond

In 2018, Boulder Dash was selected as one of the biggest classics on the Commodore 64 by the creators of the C64 graphics collection Game Art Beyond. Boulder Dash was honoured with a high resolution title picture (based on the box artwork) in a special C64 graphics format called NUFLI, along with a new C64 SID interpretation of the Boulder Dash theme.

Awards

• Commodore Format
  • January 1991 (Issue 4) - Listed in the 'A to Z of Classic Games' article (Great)
• Retro Gamer
  • October 2004 (Issue #9) – #31 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
• Zzap!
  • May 1985 (Issue 1) - #1 'It's the Zzap! 64 Top 64!'
  • January 1990 (Issue 57) – 'The Best Games of the 80's Decade' (Stuart Wynne / Robin Hogg)

Information also contributed by LepricahnsGold