Dazeland: Amiga games: Boulderdash C64

Based on the arcade game The Pit (1981), Boulderdash is the precursor of a new video games genre where you have to collect diamonds in large mines filled with rocks and monsters. You can dig tunnels, push boulders and drop them on critters to make them explode, releasing somtimes a few more diamonds. The concept is simple but terribly effective so that hundreds of other titles followed. . . .

What I call the classic ones appeared on Atari 800 and C64 in 1983 with the great Boulderdash (there is also Royal Boulderdash and Rockford) :
-Only one kind of diamonds.
-Only two different types of enemy (the butterflies which follow the walls on their right and give diamonds and the fireflies or tanks which always turn left and give nothing).
-A limited number of lives.
-The "intermissions", kind of very small bonus levels where you have only one try.
-A green substance called "amoeba", which multiplies, blocking spaces and killing enemies on contact. If you manage to contain it with walls and rocks, it turns into diamonds, if you let it reach a certain size, it turns into rocks.
A blue amoeba which does not grow. Rocks and diamonds can pass through it. (Boulderdash II)
-Walls that extend themselves if you dig where you should not (Boulderdash II).
-You can catch falling diamonds.
The second generation will make the glory days of the Amiga with games like Emerald Mine (1989), Eat Mine, Bond Mine among others:
-More colorful, better animations, unlimited lives.
-Ability to save and return to the previous caves.
-2 types of diamonds (green emeralds and blue saphires, which are worth three emeralds but which can be broken by rocks).
-2 new enemies (aliens who move toward the player and yams, sapphire eaters).
-The amoeba does not transform anymore, no more extending walls, the diamonds cannot be caught while they're falling.
-Additional elements, such as bombs, dynamite sticks, wheels, doors, keys, invisible walls are implemented.
The third generation, in the 90s, with the famous Supaplex followed by Forgotten Mine on Amiga, but also DX-Boulderdash and Rocks'n'Diamonds on PC:
-Streching walls come back!
-New items such as radio-controlled balloons, enemy and boulder generators, bicolor doors and keys, areas where only enemies can dig into, spring-traps, bumpers, etc., etc., etc.
The last generation in the 2000s with titles such as Boulderdash ME on cell phones and Boulderdash EX on Game Boy Advance, among others.
-Tiny levels.
-Ability to rotate the screen by 90 degrees.
-Ugly japanese-style graphics.
-Soppy music.
-New game modes, items and special abilities. . . .

Why is this game so addictive? I read the interview with Peter Liepa, its creator, on Arno's Page. Here's what he says:
"The game play was not only interesting from a puzzle standpoint, but it also appealed to various emotional drives – not only obvious psychotic ones like greed (collecting jewels), destructiveness (dislodging rocks and killing fireflies) – but more neurotic ones like cleaning all the dirt out of a cave."
It made me laugh, that's exactly it! Except the household part. . . .

Back to Boulderdash 64, as its name suggests, is the adaptation of the C64 version on the Amiga. It is prettier than the original, of course, and the level-design is still awesome, but the game engine is different. It is a kind of impoverished "second generation" version, with no intermission and no limited number of lives.
I recommend instead Boulderdash Collection 2 which contains the first three Boulderdash episodes in their original form!