Emerald Mine: The Best Amiga Game Ever

For some people Emerald Mine is a clone of the Commodore 64 epic Boulder Dash. In my opinion though it is more like the next generation of Boulder Dash. To make a proper comparison would be to say:-

"Emerald Mine is to Boulder Dash
as
The Commodore Amiga is to the Commodore 64"

That would be the proper analogy as the games are that much different. Emerald Mine is of course based on Boulder Dash, but Kingsoft (the programmers of Emerald Mine) gave the game a complete overall with better graphics, better sound and added game elements.

Kingsoft retained all the elements of Boulder Dash, enlarged the level size by approximately 6 times and doubled the amount of game elements and also improved on the game mechanics.

The basic gameplay of Boulder Dash remains the same though. Run around the levels and collect the diamonds while evading or killing the various monsters. There is also added puzzle elements and last but not least a time limit.

Kingsoft made a brilliant move when they released Emerald Mine 2, that being they included a level creator. When certain gaming groups got hold of the level creator they started making more levels for the game, improving on the editor and they also made extra improvements to the game and the graphics.

Also around this time EMC's (Emerald Mine Clubs) starting appearing and the level making frenzy started. The original Emerald Mine had 81 levels (numbered in game from 0-80) and these clubs and gaming groups released their games some with new loading screens and graphics as complete stand alone Emerald Mine games.

The biggest of these gaming groups was No-One Inc and they were responsible for creating at least 3 series of the Emerald Mine Games which included Eat Mine 1-3 and No One Mine 1-20 each having the aforementioned 81 levels. No One Inc also distributed and edited quite a lot of the other series. Other big Emerald Mine creators were De Bond and Skippy.

I would like to thank all the Emerald Mine level creators out there for making Emerald Mine the greatest Amiga game ever. Thank You All!

Rocks 'n' Diamonds is the updated version of Emerald Mine for Unix, Mac OS X, Windows and DOS. It also contains Sokoban, Boulder Dash and Supaplex.

For Emerald Mine the graphics have been smoothed and look crisper with soft scrolling (50 frames per second). Apart from a few missing features of the original Emerald Mine it is the definitive version of Emerald Mine. Which means that you can now discard your Amiga emulators and play this version instead. On the Rocks 'n' Diamonds website you can download the Emerald Mine level sets that they have accumulated over the years so you will have 50,000 levels to play and best of all the game and downloads are all FREE!

There are a few things that I don't like about this version but all the added niceties make up for this. The things I don't like:

• No more heavy boulders (original Emerald Mine players will know what I mean)
• There is no overall score or amount of games played/won
• Because of the updated graphics systems the graphics from custom levels packs are very jerky, fortunately though you can turn off the custom graphics and play using original graphics which are uber smooth

All the polaroids on this lens are screenshots from some of the different Emerald Mine levels packs.

To download your own copy of Rocks 'n' Diamonds just follow this link!