Boulder Dash, the classic tunneling game from the mid 80’s is going back to hard-to-find status soon. Well, at least this Atari 2600 port is. If you are a fan of Boulder Dash then you know how fun this game can be, it never officially saw a port to the Atari 2600 but thanks to two fans, it made the jump decades after the console was commercially dead.
This port of Boulder Dash was handled by Andrew Davie and Thomas Jentzsch who worked on it for nearly a decade. It appears the first console port of Boulder Dash was on the ColecoVision console in the mid 80’s.
The product art for this port was handled by William Thorups who did an amazing job with capturing the essence of the game while enticing players to plug in the game. That artwork was what caught my eye, even though I am not a huge Boulder Dash fan.
Boulder Dash holds the right to being the first computer game that later became an arcade game. Normally arcade games are ported to home consoles and computers.
Exidy licensed the original Boulder Dash in 1984 for their Max-A-Flex arcade cabinet. They charged a quarter for 30 seconds of play time. Talk about counting your pennies.
AtariAge will be removing Boulder Dash from their online store on December 12th, 2024. This is sad news but understandable. The retro gaming community is only so big, resources are quite limited, especially when making more than just a cartridge available.
The base release is $40, I believe this comes with a manual and the poster (10 x 14 inches). For $60 you can get a box that is the same size as Atari’s original releases back in the day so it will fit nicely in your boxed collection.
Head over to the AtariAge store and grab your copy of Boulder Dash for the Atari 2600.
