It’s amazing to us that 2020 is only Boulder Dash’s 30th anniversary. In fact, come to think of it, that can’t possibly be right, because we remember this one back on the Apple II. Indeed, a quick glance online reveals that Boulder Dash was first released in 1984, which would make this Switch version Boulder Dash 36th Anniversary, if anything. Or it would if we weren’t getting hefty “late mobile game port” vibes from this game’s extremely familiar phone-optimised user interface. And yes, it turns out, this was a mobile game. Back in 2014. Which was Boulder Dash’s actual 30th anniversary. Hmmmm.
Still, all things considered, this is assuredly Boulder Dash, and you’ve most likely played it or one of its derivatives (such as the excellent Repton) before. We’ve seen the hero, Rockford (surely one of the most frequently-redesigned characters ever), rock up on Nintendo systems in the past – besides his bows on DS and 3DS (2007’s Boulder Dash: Rocks! and 2011’s Boulder Dash XL), the original Boulder Dash saw a NES port back in 1990 (wait, that must be what this is the 30th anniversary of! Let’s all agree with that and move on).
If you somehow haven’t encountered it before, Boulder Dash is quite difficult to get your head around at first. You have to move around caves collecting items (mostly colourful gems) while avoiding enemies and hazards. The unusual bit is that while Rockford moves as though he's in a top-down game (think Chip's Challenge), gravity is strictly in 2D side-scrolling mode. If you dig out the dirt under – yes! – a boulder, it will fall straight down and crush anything in its path, despite the fact you can still manoeuvre in all directions. Not only are the boulders slaves to gravity, they’re also slaves to momentum, and they’ll roll down “steps” if you’ve left such a path in the dirt, which may require you to – you guessed it – dash out of the way. It’s a little weird, but you’ll quickly get the hang of it.
Graphically, Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary can best be described as “functional”. It doesn’t look bad, but it doesn’t have any real flair. That said, it’s hardly a game that has ever pushed its spectacular looks as a selling point. With something as ultimately demanding as Boulder Dash, the most important thing is the ability to instantly parse what’s available to you in any given situation. And you can. So it’s exactly as good-looking as it needs to be; it’s a simple arcade puzzle game that lives or dies on its lack of visual clutter.
Unfortunately, the menus are a different story. Stiff, banal and strangely confusing, they’re quite frankly hideous remnants of the game’s shameful freemium past. Speaking of which, there’s quite a lot of that about. Each level ranks you one, two or three stars based on your score, with certain numbers of stars needed to unlock later worlds. You can also gather items within the levels that will give you an easier time – the ability to freeze gravity for example, or use dynamite to blow up inconvenient walls.
You get so many of these items thrown at you that we found ourselves wondering if the game had been balanced in such a way that the levels were near-unbeatable without them, and their microtransaction intent became jarringly clear. Of course, it would be unfair to criticise Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary for having previously been microtransaction-heavy, but simply giving the necessary items to the player feels a little bit like a shrug of the shoulders where deeper design tweaks would have been strongly preferable. That’s speculation, of course, but the fact that the game raises these feelings is a symptom of feeling a little undercooked, a little cheap. And, you know, it is cheap. But there’s being cheap and there’s feeling cheap, and only one of those is positive.
You’re certainly far from getting short-changed, mind you. There are almost 300 levels here with extra characters to unlock, classic 1984 levels to play and – perhaps most excitingly – new stages from Boulder Dash’s original creators. There’s a huge amount of content to keep you plugging away and the levels get very difficult, very quickly. If you like Boulder Dash, this is almost certainly the version to get.
Conclusion
It’s a little bit of a cop-out, but if you enjoy this series you are likely to wring a tremendous amount of gaming glee out of Boulder Dash 30th Anniversary. It’s vintage stuff and plenty of it. However, if you’re totally new to the series, you can expect to get viscerally frustrated by the old-school microcomputer cruelty exhibited by many of the levels; it’s also a little tainted by a terrible UI held over from its mobile game past. Still, the price is right and if you’re up for a proper challenge there are much worse ways to get your rocks off – or you could just wait a few years for Boulder Dash 40th Anniversary, which will most likely arrive on a Nintendo console many years after its initial release.
Comments 32
Hmm. I think I’ll go ahead and give it try.
I will get this at some point.
"Boulder Dash is quite difficult to get your head around at first"
Wait, WHAT? How the hell is this difficult? The first time I've ever played a Boulderdash game was on the good old MSX home computer, in 1985, and it was immediate pick up and play. Both the controls and the objectives are clear as day from the outset.
For those curious, here's the original game:
Might even make the okayish graphics of this new version look brilliant in comparison, but to be honest, there's only so much you can do with these kinds of games, where graphics are concerned, seeing as this isn't a fully 3D open world game...
Boulder Dash EX on the GBA looks much better than this and was released a very long time ago. Still feel like I want to give this version a go though.
I'm 46 years old and never played a Boulder dash game before.Hopefully they will do a demo so I can see the reason why..
@ThanosReXXX
I feel the original makes this new game looks even worse. It's the lack of clarity that really messes it up for me. :-/
@Pod Hm, interesting point, and actually yet another reason to support mine, concerning why these types of games will never have any stellar graphical upgrades, nor do they need to.
In all fairness though, I think we should not compare a video to screenshots, because screenshots only tell half the story. And personally, I'm not really seeing the issue here, but fair enough if you do, seeing as that's your opinion.
Anyway, guess we need another video to do a fair comparison:
This game looks like a rotten pile. The visuals and gameplay look terrible. The near constant references to the creator are sad. Nobody knows or gives a front door about Boulderdash or especially the original creator. Yet I think the text and screenshots on the eShop page mention the games name about 5 times. I found it so hilarious that I had to show my partner who also found it Alan Partridge-levels or hilarious. Why so many mentions?
It looks like a cheap mobile game and that price does NOT come close to being worth it.
And you know what? I was around in the Boulderdash days. I had versions on my Amiga, C64 maybe even a ZX port. It wasn’t good then!
They should have approached this a completely different way.
I loved Boulder Dash back in the early 80s on my C64, but this looks unnecessarily complicated and strangely unappealing
I don't like the new design for Rockford and it's missing the Boulder Dash theme and all the iconic sound effects as well. For an anniversary title they should have gone back to the roots. But I love the gameplay and I bought the 1984 Commodore 64 original on the Wii Virtual Console for nostalgia and to finally beat it.
Boulder Dash was addicting as heck back then and it had hundreds of clones and many sequels. A true retro classic. One of the games came with a level editor - Boulder Dash Maker anyone? Spent many hours creating stages for my family. It was one of the very best games at a time when stuff like Super Mario Bros. 1 didn't exist. Emerald Mine was my favourite clone, also available on the C64.
I wish they would do a proper stylish version (bring back Rockford's old design and the original's music) with good new levels - or a compilation of the old games. But this one I'd rather skip. I've played it on mobile and it felt like a mediocre clone. And there are enough mediocre clones of this game already (and probably better ones too).
Loved the original back in the day, even with the stuttering scrolling. This, is a pile of that's trying to leave the mobile market and claim legitimacy through a unassisted port.
...this must be one of the worst looking video games I've ever laid eyes on tbh. A shame because I wouldn't have minded a fun proper game of this series on my Switch.
I’d much rather just have the original, I cannot stand this Mobile Aesthetic. They could have at least added the original like the 3DS version
I loved Digger Dan.
The original was cool because it didn't have too many mechanics and yet every level felt fresh. You'd play a simple introductory level, then move on to something that introduces a new element of the physics engine, then a level that's full of bits of wall and dirt and rocks in which it is easy to get yourself stuck, or to render a diamond inaccessible, making completing the level impossible because you need all of them for the exit to open.
I feel like any newer BD game that adds powerup in the mix completely misses the point of what made BD great. You had one joystick and one button to dig or grab on something that's on an adjacent square, and that's it. And the variety came from clever level design that played around with some of the quirks of the physics engine, which by the way for its time was very complex. Rocks would roll off the edge of bricks walls and other rocks they're sitting on top off, but not off titanium wall tiles. Then sometimes a white brick wall could be a "magic" wall which turns into diamonds any rock that falls through it, so long as there's open space under it for those diamonds to spawn. You had firefly enemies that explode when coming in contact with you or the ever growing amoeba (which I would call the "blob" because of the 1986 film, because that's what it reminded of XD).
It's a classic that has sadly faded off the face of the earth in its original incarnation. Worth mentioning too that Boulder Dash had a famous "level editor" called Construction Kit. Long before Super Mario Maker, in 1986, you could create your own Boulder Dash games on computers like the C64 and it was awesome!
I have Boulder Dash Xl on the 3ds and I would rather play that than this hell hole 🤣
even the gameboy boulder dash game must be better than this 😂
@ThanosReXXX Just to clarify, the central gameplay/premise isn't hard to grok at all. The perspective, however, is kind of odd if you're new to it; the way you can travel in all four directions unaffected by gravity, but the rocks and gems will fall and roll. I'm not new to it, but I felt like I had to consider the fact that some players could be.
Rockford for Smash Bros next!!!
@StuartGipp Hm, okay. Fair point if you look at it that way, I suppose.
I just always saw it as a side-view game, so as the character climbing up and down walls as seen from the side, so it always made sense to me.
Hmm definitely not a fan of the art style they chose for this new version. I love it when they bring back classics but this one doesn't seem to be that great, kinda reminds me of the Qbert Rebooted game they released in 2014.
I've only ever played the original NES version. As much fun as that game is, the soundtrack was really what made that game stand out for me. I still get the water stage theme stuck in my head every so often.
Not quite sure if that's enough to sway me into checking this one out, but I'd snag it on sale
I played this first on the spectrum or commodore, I forget. I do remember this being the first game to actually hypnotize me. Like dreaming of it and it taking over my imagination. An odd atmosphere but a good game. I may give this a miss though.
I wish they'd rather publish the remade Archon game on the Switch!
Both had NES origins, both are remakes, both are fairly old (I'm still talking about the remakes ) - yet, Archon would be 1000 times more interesting on the Switch, in my opinion.
15 dollars for the port of a mobile game remake of a game from 36 years ago? Are they out of their minds?!
This is the answer to anyone who whines about pixel graphics in this day and age. Sure, we can update to high res sprites (so it looks like a Flash game) or basic 3D objects on a 2D plane (so it looks like a crummy mobile port) but in either case it often ends up just looking cheap. Basic 2D gameplay often looks and feels better with pixel art, to say nothing of the stylistic choice (as opposed to the "generic" style which often comes with those other options).
I like the game but many levels are impossible to get 3 stars on them without using a point multiplier or other item so I find myself playing through tons of levels just to get enough bars so I can buy the item and go back for the 3 stars, that gets tedious fast!
@ThanosReXXX
My main issue is just that the rocks have such a neutral hue, compared to their surroundings. Those things can and will kill you, so they ought to stand out much more clearly.
@Pod Well, in that second video I posted, the background is black or near black, and the rocks are all light brown or encased in ice, and then they are even lighter of color. I don't know how much more of a contrast you'd like to have, but the difference between the two is pretty clear to me personally.
But I'm guessing you probably mean the difference between the rocks and the earth you're digging away, but even there, I don't really see the problem.
@ThanosReXXX
Compared the light-brown hue to those of the gems. The gems are brightly colored, very easily discernible, and of the same danger as the rocks. Aside from that, they're shiny, and they're hexagonal in shape. Those are great, you can't miss them.
The rocks of course aren't as valuable, but having a more immediately recognizable design sure would help.
@Pod Well of course they are. Gems usually are bright, so that's pretty much a given. And rocks are usually dull in color, so par for the course there as well. Let's just agree to disagree because as mentioned previously, I just don't see the problem myself. I'd easily be able to play this game, and I'd have no trouble whatsoever discerning the rocks in between all the other environments and/or elements.
@ThanosReXXX
Sure. I'm not saying it breaks the game for me, but I'd have less fun, as scanning a level would be more taxing.
@Pod Fair enough, I guess.
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