It's hard to believe Boulder Dash is 25-years-old. I remember playing it brand new when it was released for the ZX Spectrum.
Retro remakes are a very real challenge for developers, but it's hard to see how - other than a greatly improved colour palette - Boulder Dash - Rocks! has built on those aging foundations.
Rockford returnsIt always seemed to me that Boulder Dash struggled a bit to find a solid concept. You play as the intrepid miner Rockford, who runs around the various mazes recovering gems.
The danger lurking in these mazes are the eponymous boulders, which are usually placed precariously on top of the diamonds or shrubberies.
Collecting a jewel is as simple as walking over it, and shrubberies are removed in exactly the same manner. Any boulders hovering above will then drop to the next solid floor level, and if Rockford is underneath when the slow rock slide begins he's a dead man.
It does work, ultimately, but the distinct difference between the dimensions of the flat maze and falling rocks tends to spoil the illusion of the game. Is this an underground mine where gravity governs the falling rocks, Dig Dug-style, or are these boulders rolling around on the floor in just one direction?
Diamonds in the roughBoulder Dash - Rocks! mimics its retro inspiration perfectly, and the slightly jazzed up graphics afforded by modern phones allows a new levels of colour and detail to permeate Rockford's world.
There are loads of levels to go at, and although the music is pretty tuneless, the game runs as smoothly as expected. There are no real surprises involved, which puts a bit of a downer on this 25th anniversary celebration, but fans of the series will probably be quite happy to get their old game back and in good shape.
However, there's no avoiding the fact that the core of Boulder Dash - Rocks! simply hasn't aged all that well. It's inoffensive enough that no one can reasonably say they hate the game, but it's also just a little too easy to not feel anything about it one way or the other.
A good conversion of an overly vanilla game.
Boulder Dash - Rocks!
The 25-year-old Boulder Dash concept hasn't aged particularly well, and although we're presented here with a good quality conversion in every way, Boulder Dash - Rocks is a difficult game to get excited about
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.