{"id":3732,"date":"2016-03-29T14:58:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T13:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/retrovideogamesystems.com\/?p=3732"},"modified":"2018-01-18T13:06:31","modified_gmt":"2018-01-18T13:06:31","slug":"boulder-dash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/retrovideogamesystems.com\/boulder-dash\/","title":{"rendered":"Boulder Dash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bda\"<\/a>Every now and then when I’m searching through my disks for something to play, Boulder Dash always makes an appearance.\u00a0 With a classic blinking & foot tapping character by the name of Rockford, Boulder Dash still is one of those games that keeps you coming back for more!<\/p>\n

Created by two Canadian programmer’s, Chris Grey and Peter Liepa and published by First-Star Software, Boulder Dash has become one of the longest ever, running franchises.<\/p>\n

Chris’s inspiration for the game started in 1982 at the age of fourteen with an Atari 2600, he later up-graded to an Atari 800 home computer where he spent the next year or so messing around with gameplay mechanics and how to write games based on what he played or inspired him, such as Universal’s Mr Do! and Namco’s Dig Dug.<\/p>\n

It was a game called ‘The Pit’ that really caught Chris’s attention, giving him the idea to create a game involving rocks in some kind of way.\u00a0 He wanted the rocks to be more than just a background image and wanted them to play a major a role within the game so started by writing algorithms to make the rocks shake, roll and even fall.<\/p>\n

Chris regularly visited a store in Toronto called called ‘Electronic Playworld’ where he could keep upto date with the latest games, he’d also, like many of us, spend quite a lot of time in the arcades.<\/p>\n

Over a period of time he got to know the owners and was surprised to find they also ran a company in house called ‘Inhome Software’.\u00a0 It was here where Chris met Peter, who had also approched them about creating a game.\u00a0 Peter was twice Chris’s age, was a maths graduate and had something that would be an advantage to the game, an interest in physics.\u00a0 Having discussed his idea between them, it only took a couple of days to roughly lay down the basic’s of what was to become Boulder Dash.<\/p>\n