Question retro dirt effects

If you look at the "mother of all games" Scorched Earth, it is a 1991 C++ and assembler video game. If you watch this video of it you will see that around time index 2:18 the weapons can take out the mountain dirt and the dirt will fall. (It also has a suspended dirt mode where the dirt just stays as pixels in the air.) I really want an effect like this but other than making more or less single-pixel dirt objects I am not thinking of any way to do it. Does anyone have some suggestions on how to get this sort of fine-grained behavior? It is like a particle effect but it has more behavioral properties.

If you have never played the game it is an interesting journey into the history of video games. You can play it on the web, original source code I think. Click here.

 

Hello. I have a suggestion.
You can do it not per pixel, but per tile like terraria's sand. When you create an explosion you scan through all the tiles above it, then turn them into objects (i suggest joining multiple falling tiles in vertical lines) and start displacing them down. When an object meets the tilemap, it places a tile or multiple on the tilemap and deletes itself.
Hope I helped.
Edit: If you want that fine grained look, you need to either make the tiles really small or make it per pixel.

 

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/particles-effects/pixelsurface-48371

 

YES! This is what I was looking for. Thanks!