Boulder Dash by CHAOS Software - Full Speedrunning
Channel: BD8x
Date: 2022-12-18

Boulder Dash by CHAOS Software (June 1987).

This is indisputably the best successor of the first BD (originally created by Peter Liepa and Chris Gray in 1984). Maps are well designed and it is clear that somebody put a bunch of effort for the final result to amuse and trick the player.

This game is really hard. CHAOS claims that all levels are doable. Indeed they are! However, it is absolutely impossible to complete the game in a single run unless one has an incredible luck. Especially on a genuine 8-bit machine equipped with the most resistant joystick. I played on Altirra (4.01) emulator using a convenient k/b and even this did not help me a lot. For example, see the cave F/3 or F/4 (or I/...), where only very specific combinations of lava paths allow one to get the required number of diamonds in the regime of only a few seconds!

What is presented here is the second attempt to complete the game - this time it is a full and continuous gameplay from A/1 to P/5 (and A/5 again), done over three days (2022-12-15, 16 and 17). It is still not perfectly optimized (caves can be solved much better and faster!) and one can readily notice irritating noise glitches from the postprocessing (as always, f**k you m$!).

Enjoy!