What is Earth Shaker?EARTH SHAKER was released in 1990 for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum by Michael Batty. The basic strategy is similar to that of Boulder Dash (more people seem to have heard of this game) in that you must collect a certain number of diamonds from each level and reach the exit door within a time limit. I decided one day back in March 1991 to buy the issue of Your Sinclair magazine that came with Earth Shaker and five other programs on a free tape. After loading and playing Earth Shaker on my Speccy I found it was an excellent game, better than Boulder Dash in my opinion. I finally completed the game a few years later, and now I have created this web site which contains just about all the information I could find on it.
What's so good about it?Where do I start!? The playability of this game is amazing, if you really get into it you can be going for hours. The graphics and animation - to say it can only use the Spectrum's 16 available colours are excellent, as is the sound - I found it hard to believe that it only uses 48K sound and not 128K (therefore will run fully on a 48K machine). And to think that this was all squeezed into 37,566 bytes of data just proves that it doesn't take hundreds of megabytes to make a really top class game.
Basic game strategyThe game consists of 32 levels, each with a name that acts as a password so you can resume play from that level when you die. You start the game with five lives, but if you're only interested in getting as far as possible, this is pretty irrelevant. Each level has a number of diamonds, and one exit door which opens when all the diamonds have been collected. There are various items along that way that can help or hinder your progress (for a full list and description see items section). The game can be controlled using a joystick or the keyboard which has redefinable keys, and uses up, down, left and right to move the main character around the level, and fire can be used with one of these directions to collect an item in a space without moving there (an essential skill in some levels). Each level has the same amount of time to begin with, although various items will gain and lose time. Lives can be lost by either running out of time, getting crushed by a falling object, getting trapped so that the level becomes impossible to complete, or getting burnt by fire (nasty). A map can be viewed of the level you are on at any time but only once per level/life, this is also essential on some levels and it is the only way of pausing the game for a few seconds. There are various techniques required to get through levels, such as melting boulders, bursting bubbles and getting rid of slime. Some of the level designs are very well done, it took me a long time to complete this game but I never lost interest.
