Is old rock or new rock better?
ROCKFORD'S RIOT
(Monolith, 1985)
Boulder Dash was a funny old game, really quite unique I think. Wonder if it featured in this site’s top 100 best Spectrum games list, it’s been so long I can’t remember. Ah yes, there it is at number 75, good show! Personally I’d probably place it a fair bit higher in my own list, but that one was compiled from a number of sources if memory serves, and other folk obviously had their own opinions on the subject (philistines). In terms of playability, it’s got to be right up there – an actually playable game on the Spectrum, one you could have a decent go at, not like yer Loony Jetmans and Ghosts ‘n’ Goblinses of the day. You could even start it from different screens, a rare old luxury the like of which I can’t recall at short notice. Did Manic Miner let you start the game from whatever screen follows Solar Power Generator? No it did not, unless you cheated, which of course you did.
Clearly I like it. So it’s quite surprising that I’ve not played any of the sequels that cropped up over the years, both official and not. Not until an app popped up on my Firestick a few years back for an updated version of ‘the Dash’ to celebrate its 30th anniversary. I paid the requisite few squid and entertained/irritated my kids no end by completing level after level and having more fun than is reasonable. There were all sorts of new features too, none of which I can remember, and trying to use your remote control to play it was a challenge, but overall ‘twas reet good.
But even then, only now am I playing the official sequel, Rockford’s Riot. And that’s probably only because I’d had a stab at Tourmaline, a modern day B.D. if you like, and thought an old/new comparison might be in order. To start a fight between the generations and cause as much trouble as possible. I’ve only done this once before and on that occasion Bonnie And Clyde pretty much trounced Bomb Jack 2, so maybe this one might make for a fairer fight? Let’s watch...
Boulder Dash was an American import to these shores, designed by Peter Liepa, and marketed by First Star in the US of A. Over here, Front Runner released it, not U.S. Gold (phew), and the game was later even made into a coin-op, such was its success. Although it seems a bit odd to be playing it in an arcade, but I’d definitely give it a go if I saw one in the local chippy.
After B.D. and R.R. there was an official B.D.3 made in ‘86, written by a Swedish company, then a B.D. Construction Kit from Databyte in 1988. They’re the official releases, but since then every man and his dog has had a go at further bouldery exploits, a couple of Russian efforts in ’92, then a ‘Classic Collection' in 2008, claiming to contain ‘all 17 volumes’. The situation had clearly got well out of hand by then, there were way too many Rockford Files. Thanks.
Rockford’s Riot was released together with the original Boulder Dash, in a move similar to the Bomb Jack 2 release actually, by Beyond Software, but disguised as ‘Monolith’. They only released this compilation and one other game, the medieval rubber-band tennis simulator, Bounces. Maybe then Beyond decided that Monolith was actually not a terribly good name, and just left people with blank expressions, so they went back to Beyond again. Ho hum.
Starting it up, there’s a fairly pointless loading screen with some ‘First Star’ writing on it, so those few seconds loading that bit up were pretty much wasted, but after a bit we get a menu screen similar to the original’s. Only with some pretty duff music, not the cute little tune from B.D. that sometimes gets stuck in my head (I’m sure you’ve got your own, if not a few. Dynamite Dan II’s ditties often live rent-free in my noggin). Press a key and as a reward you get a pretty rough picture of Rockford himself with an awful Bart Simpson Sunday hairdo. Quick, get it off and let’s get down to business.
The first level will surely ease us into things, much like the fondly-recalled red and yellow start stage in B.D., before those evil flashy squares took over on level 2. But no, R.R. starts with a real ba***rd hard one, a proper puzzler that will definitely take quite a few attempts to solve. There aren’t many diamonds at all, and you have to squish a few evil butterflies to break a wall, which then turns all magical and transfers rocks into gems. But the margins throughout are very, well, marginal and frustration is inevitably your bedfellow. Actually level 2 is even more puzzlier, one of those where green amoebae wibble all over the place and you have to contain them quick before everything turns to sh… sorry rocks, not gems. And on it goes.
So if you play this before ever attempting B.D., you’ll probably struggle. However, if you’re a bit of an old hand at spelunking (cough) then this game is kind of a “Boulder Dash – The Deeper Dungeons” experience, following in Gauntlet’s footsteps. And as such, if you love to try to get your head around the problems it creates for you, it’s great fun. Maybe getting into puzzly type games more just shows how old I’m getting, as recently I’ve been enjoying the likes of The Talos Principle (PS4) and Portal 2 (PS3), but the Boulder Dash games have a fair old dose of arcade action on top of the mental anguish, which seems to me to be an impressive combination.
Crash quite liked R.R., giving it 84% but admitting it was more of a “step sideways” and was “getting a bit long in the tooth”. Even longer now, mateys. While Sinclair Confuser grumpily gave it 3/5, mentioning it comes “packaged in a ludicrous vertical box crowned with a luminous disc”. Sounds funky, I can’t find a picture of it sadly. The rarely-read Your Computer were impressed to the tune of 5/5, claiming “there is enormous variety, so that each level could almost be described as a separate game”. Wow, well almost, I suppose.
For me, the graphics are perfunctory, the sound is adequate and the colour is trippy as hell on some levels, the programmers not being at all scared to use magenta copiously, so more power to their elbow on that score. But the aesthetics aren’t what these games are about, it’s the playability. And no, the scrolling STILL can’t keep up with you, which I’m now thinking is probably a deliberate feature rather than coding shortcomings. But it just adds to the sense of frenzy when you’re trying to get stuff done as the seconds tick away. I enjoyed this one a lot, a worthy sequel to a classic original. Hurrah!
TOURMALINE
(RetroSouls, 2016)
“Tourmaline, tourmaline, tourmaline, tourmaleeeeeeeen. I’m begging of you, please don’t take my man” sang the RetroSouls crew back in 2016, probably in Russian for they were the mighty Denis Grachev, Vasiliy Kostin and Ivan Seleznev. But you’ll almost certainly (not) know it from off one of those compilation thingies, “They Sold A Handful” (great title though) released three years later by Bumfun (oh god). A strange compilation indeed as it otherwise featured Dead Flesh Boy, Phaeton and… Saboteur! Whaaaaaa… All for £20. Whaaaaa again…
RetroSouls need no introduction, so here’s one anyway. Well more of a list of the games they’ve made, which works well if you sing it to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire”. Y'all ready for this?
Alter Ego, Gravibots,
Dreamwalker, Multidude,
Gluf, Lirus, Old Tower,
Tiny Dungeons.
SIP, Sector, Twinlight,
Yazzie, Join, Sector Invasion...
ah crap it’s fallen apart there, but it was fairly convincing for a little while at least. Yes, I’ve lost my mind.
Tourmaline is a crystalline silicate mineral group in which boron is compounded with elements such as aluminium, iron, magnesium, sodium, lithium or potassium, and comes in a wide variety of colours. That’s either fascinating or very ‘boron’ indeed, depending on your outlook I suppose. I thought they were kind of green myself, but what do I know? Needless to say, they’re worth a pretty penny (or perhaps not) so they must be worth risking life and limb for, in Russia at least.
The blurb warns us that, nice and shiny though these torremolinoses might be, if you want to nab them for yourself, you have to endure the ire of the cave-dwelling denizens “in these long-forgotten profound depths” who “live by the light of the tourmaline”. So basically you’re committing genocide if you go and deprive them of what keeps them alive, great. I never saw Rockford as being one of history’s most evil people, but now I’m beginning to wonder… You’re going in strong as you’ve got a stack of bombs and an anti-grav backpack, in addition to your trusty rusty shovel.
Unlike Boulder Dash and its offspring, in order to progress on each level, every single gem must be snaffled. And frequently gems are hidden inside the cave creatures, so you have to explode them out of them (urgh). So collect and kill everything is the order of the day. Your infinite supply of bombs is reet handy, as they blow up an area of 3x3 squares – the trick is to anticipate the enemies’ movement patterns, which often proves tricky. Dropping rocks on them is another viable alternative when it comes to smiting creatures you don’t like the look of.
There are a lot of screens, which change colour every few levels, together with the jolly nice AY soundtrack. Gameplay is like a cross between Boulder Dash and the Bomberman games, which I’ve never taken to, but it’s hard to deny that explosives often come in useful, and you’ll be chucking them everywhere before long, blowing yourself up plenty along the way. You get a few ‘continues’ but not an infinite number, so don’t get too carried away, or back to the beginning thou wilst go.
Lookswise I suppose there’s not an awful lot you can do with the basic Boulder Dash formula, and this game doesn’t look better than the original, in fact I’d say it loses something as the newer ‘Rockford’ if you like isn’t nearly as characterful and weirdly cute as the original. Maybe they could have made it a different creature instead? It’s all very colourful and sonorous though in typical RetroSouls fashion.
And as for gameplay, well it’s pretty good but again it somehow seems a bit less fun than the older titles. Maybe it’s not entirely fair to play Tourmaline at the same time as reigniting my interest in B.D. & R.R., as it’s possibly likely to suffer by comparison. Even so, it’s well worth a go, if only to show off that you know a new word and you’re not afraid to use it in everyday conversation. But on this occasion, I reckon old rock edges out the new-fangled stuff you hear on the radio these days.
ROCKY RATINGS
ROCKFORD'S RIOT 88%
TOURMALINE 81%
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