This game originally appeared on the Atari 400/800 back in 1983 and was subsequently converted to the C64 where it first made an impression on the game-playing public, but it's the 1987 Atari ST version of the game that we honour here.

A simple puzzle game, Boulderdash merely involved moving around a 2D screen filled with, well, we'll call it earth for sake of argument, either up, down, left or right leaving little tunnels behind you. The point of all this moving was to collect the randomly placed diamonds scattered around the screen. The main obstacle to your goal being randomly placed boulders, which would kill you if they fell on you. And fall on you they did, a lot. Basically, you'd go scooting under a boulder, which would then drop down.

This was fine if you were going say left-to-right and were quick enough to scoot out of the way, but if you unearthed a boulder by scooting, for example, down, and the boulder fell on you, you were dead.

It might sound a lot more complicated than it was, but Boulderdash was maddeningly addictive thanks to its progressively harder gameplay - and it was a joy to play. The game spawned many clones - some of which were actually better than the original, but it is that original we will hail above all others.