BOULDER DASH 40th Anniversary – PS5 Review 2

While classic retro gaming often focuses on shooting things or jumping on platforms, the act of avoiding rocks in tunnels was pretty popular in the 1980s.  Namco’s classic Dig Dug is the obvious example, while us real ones might prefer Mr. Do but every single format back then had some sort of take on Atari’s own Boulder Dash.  

Originally released on the Atari 8-bit computer series, the game ended up spawning many further releases from official ports on every format possible (including an arcade version), multiple sequels, updated ports and even some anniversary versions.  The latest of those, released forty years since the series first debuted, is here on the PS5 and ready introduce a whole new generation to Boulder Dash‘s charms.

While it looks very much like an arcade action game, Boulder Dash is a puzzle game.  You start off in a chamber full of dirt and you need to collect diamonds.  Get enough of those and you’ll unlock the exit.  And while there are creatures in there that can kill you, they’re quite predictable (they just follow walls in clockwise pattern), the real issue comes from those titular boulders.

Much like Dig Dug and Mr. Do, you walk through dirt, tunnelling it away and if you travel under a boulder, it’ll fall through empty space.  And that can have a few different outcomes.  Boulders can just land safely, they can take out enemies, they can also take you out or, most frustratingly, block your progress.  You need to get a real sense for how boulders fall and roll because it’s very easy to make a wrong move and find yourself trapped in a section with no option other than to restart the whole level.

To be honest, the more complicated the levels get – and they do get pretty damned complex – the less immediate the game gets and also a little less fun.  If you want absolute puzzling frustration with lots of trial and error, then this will be for you but certainly the solutions to the levels get pretty intricate and see you leaning on your memorisation skills rather than any immediate strategising.  And it’s not as though the Boulder Dash series has ever been one for adding new mechanics and so you’ll need to really dig in (shut up, me) and prepare for a lot of the same thing.  And if the trickiness of the levels doesn’t get you (it will) then the utterly unnecessary time limits will.  It’s quite annoying getting to within spitting distance of the exit only for time to run out on you.

That said, there’s a lot of Boulder Dash to enjoy here.  You get all of the levels from the first three official Boulder Dash games and then a further 180 modern stages.  And if that’s not enough for you, you even get a level editor, although we found its UI to be unbelievably unintuitive but your mileage may vary on that.  Do you really need hundreds of levels?  Well, this game’s not for the general gamer but it’s an absolute treasure trove for Boulder Dash fans and nothing more.

Visually the game is a bit of a mixed bag.  The first three games can be played with either Atari or Commodore 64 visuals which are admittedly the two worst formats from retro history graphically speaking but they’ll appeal to fans of those systems but it’s the game’s modern makeover that is the main feature here.  The new look is very clean, colourful and detailed and is a big upgrade from the original games but it is a bit of a ‘mobile’ kind of look that’s maybe a little casual in its style.

However, the only real problem we have with the game is the control system.  The movement of your character is mainly controlled by the left stick.  If you try to use the d-pad you’ll stay stationary but will dig in whatever direction you are pushing.  It’s an odd set up because the left stick is a bit twitchy and you can overshoot when trying to rush through tunnels while trying to beat the sometimes punitive time limits.  There definitely needs to be an option to use the d-pad for movement.

But as an overall package this release has one job and that’s to give you all the Boulder Dash-ing that you can handle and more.  And in that facet the game is a roaring success.  You might need to be in your forties to get any real value out of it but for £15.99, you get 240 levels to get through and that’s not a bad deal at all.