Hands down, Emerald Mine was the most fun game on the Amiga. The prerelease version had the nice "Yum!" sound for the orange monsters, which made the game even more exciting.
I tuned my Competition Pro joystick to have shorter travel for Emerald Mine, because milliseconds did matter.
Looks great! Just had a go and the "physics" are off, at least compared to the original Boulderdash. Roughly 20 years ago when I wrote a Boulderdash clone, there was a test level floating around that you could use to verify your engine. A cursory Google search fails to find it, now, but I'm sure it's still out there.
That scrolling effects in the diamonds is actually a very clever hack using the KC85/3 color blinking feature where the blink frequency was controlled by a CTC counter. When I finally figured out how it works I was so excited that I wrote a whole blog post about it: https://floooh.github.io/2017/01/14/yakc-diamond-scroll.html
I never said that KC85/3 Digger was an original game (but I would assume it's more inspired by Boulderdash than the Atari Digger version, but I guess only the author knows that).
I only said that the original of the OP's Javascript "re-implementation" was the KC85/3 game Digger (e.g. the gameplay, graphics and audio is exactly the same).
Good catch. I knew right away that it wasn't an exact likeness of the Atari game but didn't know what it drew from. Boulder Dash has really gotten around in terms of clones and remakes(even official releases have been relatively frequent over the years, if not widely acknowledged). And all of them play slightly differently from each other, sort of like different versions of patience solitaire.
For those who never played Boulder Dash, or haven't played it in a long time, the game is particularly uninviting. There are no instructions or key guide. Not even an indication for what the goal is.
Speaking of keys, I vaguely remember there being a key which, when held down and a direction key pressed along with it, would make the digger dig on the square adjacent in that direction. If the target tile was soil or diamonds, it would disappear, while the action would not have any effect on the other types of tiles. I tried the usual SPC/CTRL/ALT, but they don't seem to work in this way. Am I misremembering this feature, or is it simply not part of this implementation?
I'm on mobile now right now and can't really test, but one thing that a lot of versions of this game gets wrong is that they omit the feature to be able to dig without moving. On the C64 this is done by pressing the button while moving in a direction.
I think a lot of people simply didn't know you could do this, which made it pretty much impossible to complete certain levels.
It's labeled "Digger", and I thought for a minute it was http://www.digger.org/ (Windmill Software's classic)- but no. Both the digger.org ports and the one I've found online (https://www.playdosgames.com/play/digger/#) suffer from inability to properly fullscreen, and also seem less performant than the game originally was. Would love to see those issues ironed out.
The original game from 1988 was actually called 'Digger', not Boulder Dash (although it clearly draws inspiration from BD), and it was quite legendary in the East German computing scene, because it was one of few very well designed and polished games on the KC85/3.
It was one of my favourite games on our family's Acorn Archimedes in the early 1990s. I could play the first couple of screens on each of the ~40 themed level sets at age 7-8 or so, and sometimes the third screen, but then they became too difficult. I found it again at age 20 or so, and I could complete some of the level sets (8 screens in each), and I've gone back to it every 5 years or so, but there are still some puzzles I haven't solved.
Wow, that brought me back, thanks. My final project in my college computer graphics course was a Boulder Dash clone from the version I had on my Commodore 64 growing up. I brought in the C=64 to compare and contrast the two versions. Wrote a level editor and everything. It's still a fun puzzle game.
A family friend bought this for our family on the C64 and then my dad got super addicted to it, he was up until 2am most nights trying to crack the game. He would leave work early (he ran his own business) to come home and play it. It also meant no-one else could play the computer or watch TV.
Eventually, I took a biro to the tape, sorry dad, and scribbled across it, which seemed to break it. Finally we were free.
This comment gave me a sense of nostalgia in two weird ways. My dad used get addicted to a few select games too and play them through. I remember him playing Zelda and Metroid obsessively. The other thing was how communal playing video games was, when there was only one tv and everyone watched others play, while awaiting their turn.
I remember playing it on the Atari 8-bit machines. I liked how if you stop for a while the guy taps his foot waiting for you to get on with it. A friend and I made a game on the Atari inspired by it that was more challenging as a puzzle rather than fast-paced.
Ah, Lutz, original author of .NET Reflector. I didn't know he was into making games too.
Used to play this back in the day on my ZX Spectrum. It's such a simple concept but, if you're not paying attention, it's way too easy to accidentally squash yourself with a falling boulder. Also played the somewhat similar Repton on the BBC series of microcomputers.
Played it now, but the controls, for me at least, are a little inconsistent. Sometimes a key registers, sometimes it doesn't, and other times a single keypress results in 2 moves.
I played this on the Atari 800. My dad and brother somehow wrote mods for the game to do things like make Rockford invulnerable, or make it so that Rockford could dig through anything (solid walls, boulders, slime, etc).
I think they learned how to do the mods from a computing magazine to which my dad had a subscription. I remember this magazine would have whole programs printed in it that you would have to type by hand. My memory is fuzzy as I was very young, maybe 7-years-old. I'm not sure if the mods were typed out in the magazine, or if it just gave the general theory and they figured out the rest.
I typed in a lot of those programs on my Atari 800. One magazine had an editor mod that would checksum the line after you typed it in (some programs were pages of hex data, the compiled program; others were regular BASIC).
I subscribed to both Analog and Antic; I honestly couldn’t say which it was but remember my dream was to get good enough to get one of my programs published in a magazine. (I never did.) Little did I know where that would take me.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l9pf-SdCM8&t=72s
I tuned my Competition Pro joystick to have shorter travel for Emerald Mine, because milliseconds did matter.
Looks like this is a re-implementation in Javascript.
Alternatively, here's the original KC85/3 version in an emulator:
https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/kc853.html?mod=m022&file=k...
...to start a game round, you first need to press Enter before the arrow keys can be used to move the little chap around.
There were also other Boulderdash clones for the KC85, which were a bit closer to the original, like: https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/kc853.html?mod=m022&file=k...
That scrolling effects in the diamonds is actually a very clever hack using the KC85/3 color blinking feature where the blink frequency was controlled by a CTC counter. When I finally figured out how it works I was so excited that I wrote a whole blog post about it: https://floooh.github.io/2017/01/14/yakc-diamond-scroll.html
I only said that the original of the OP's Javascript "re-implementation" was the KC85/3 game Digger (e.g. the gameplay, graphics and audio is exactly the same).
http://mpm-kc85.de/html/C0169_Spl_07.htm vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulder_Dash
This is what made games so much more interesting back in the day.
Games that tell you what to do the entire time aren't more "inviting." They just want your time so you'll buy horse armor when they offer it.
I think a lot of people simply didn't know you could do this, which made it pretty much impossible to complete certain levels.
Here's the web page of the original author Alexander Lang (who AFAIK lives in Berlin now): https://web.archive.org/web/20230101011143/https://www.lanal...
edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxzv1o1ngRw
full screen scroll on a 6502-powered BBC Model B
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.superiorin...
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/repton-3-free/id895768027
It was one of my favourite games on our family's Acorn Archimedes in the early 1990s. I could play the first couple of screens on each of the ~40 themed level sets at age 7-8 or so, and sometimes the third screen, but then they became too difficult. I found it again at age 20 or so, and I could complete some of the level sets (8 screens in each), and I've gone back to it every 5 years or so, but there are still some puzzles I haven't solved.
Here's an early map (Finale screen B) from Repton 3 showing the complexity of the puzzles: https://www.reptonresourcepage.co.uk/GetMap.php?level=2&game... (via https://www.reptonresourcepage.co.uk/ )
A key difference with Boulderdash is in Repton, the diamonds don't fall if they're unsupported.
Original publisher in the 80s was 'Superior Software', I'd be interested to know if this is the same people 40 years later
edit: yes its the same people!
Eventually, I took a biro to the tape, sorry dad, and scribbled across it, which seemed to break it. Finally we were free.
How did he react? This sounds like the beginning to a Netflix true crime miniseries
We ended up getting an Amiga and he completed it on that at a more measured pace and once he was done he was done.
[0] https://youtu.be/n9zf510_9gU?t=105
Used to play this back in the day on my ZX Spectrum. It's such a simple concept but, if you're not paying attention, it's way too easy to accidentally squash yourself with a falling boulder. Also played the somewhat similar Repton on the BBC series of microcomputers.
Such a great game!
Puzzle games are generally better when they make creative use of a small set of elements, and when there aren't hidden surprises.
I think they learned how to do the mods from a computing magazine to which my dad had a subscription. I remember this magazine would have whole programs printed in it that you would have to type by hand. My memory is fuzzy as I was very young, maybe 7-years-old. I'm not sure if the mods were typed out in the magazine, or if it just gave the general theory and they figured out the rest.
Edit to add: your question sparked my curiosity, so I looked it up. It was Typo II: https://www.atarimagazines.com/v3n9/TYPOII.html