Miner 2049er
Miner 2049er is a platform game developed by Big Five Software and published in December 1982 for the Atari 8-bit computers. The player controls Mountie Bounty Bob through multiple levels of a mine, with the goal of traversing all of the platforms in each level all while avoiding enemies and within a set amount of time. Miner 2049er was widely ported, being released on a total of 22 different systems. Video magazine's editors commented on the game's popularity in January 1984, declaring it "the most widely played home electronic game of all time" and that "no home-arcade title has had the impact" that Miner 2049er had.
Programmer Bill Hogue blended ideas from popular arcade games, specifically Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. It was the first game he developed for the Atari 8-bit computers. His previous games were monochromatic, and Hogue was excited at the opportunity to make the games in color for the system and wanted to surpass Donkey Kong. The resulting game has ten stages, most of them with unique gameplay elements. Big Five Software developed a custom 16 kilobyte ROM cartridge for the game compared to the standard 8 kilobyte cart for the Atari computers.
The game received positive press throughout 1983, appearing on best-of lists, with video game critics complimenting its colorful graphics, game design, and originality. After a cancelled attempt at a spin-off, the sequel Bounty Bob Strikes Back! was released in 1985, after which Big 5 closed its doors and Hogue stopped writing games. Richard Stanton, in his book A Brief History of Video Games, said that Miner 2049er was generally forgotten in the wake of Super Mario Bros..
Gameplay
Miner 2049er features a Mountie named Bounty Bob who has been chasing a wanted criminal into a series of uranium mines. The object of the game is to complete all levels of the mine. To complete a stage, Bob must survey the mine by moving left and right across every part of the floor of each level. Each screen must be fully traversed within a set time indicated at the top of the screen to progress to the next level. Levels feature different hazards such as gaps in platforms and radioactive waste to be avoided and slow moving platforms such as lifts. Other modes of transportation rapidly move Bob across the stage. These include transporters that warp Bob to different numbered doors, a cannon that must be powered by collecting TNT, interconnected slides which force Bob down a path. The original Atari computer and Atari 5200 versions of the game have ten different levels. This was changed in some ports: the Atari 2600 cartridge had three, the ColecoVision version has eleven, while the TI-99/4A port has eight.The player has a set amount of five lives indicated at the top of the screen. The player loses them by interacting with mutant enemies, falling from certain heights off a platform, and running out of time in a level. If Bob collects prospecting gear, such as candles and drills, the mutants turn green momentarily, making them vulnerable to Bob's touch. Points are awarded for collecting prospecting gear, eliminating enemies and the remaining time at the end of a level. After the game is over, the player can add their name to a high score list if they scored high enough. The high score is not saved after the cartridge is removed from the computer.
Development
Miner 2049er was programmed by Bill Hogue of Big Five Software of Van Nuys, California. The company officially formed in 1980 and made computer games that were sold through mail order for the TRS-80 line of computers. Big Five Software's games were primarily clones of popular arcade games prior to Miner 2049er.After finding that the TRS-80 game market was in decline, the team refocused their attention to making games for the Atari 400 and 800 computer line. As the TRS-80 had graphics that were monochrome and described by Hogue as "limited", The game was Hogue's first published game for Atari computers. His team chose to develop for the line, as they felt it was the best combination of graphics and sound and that their cartridge games could not as easily be pirated. The graphics and audio in the game are credited to Curtis A. Mikolyski, Jeff Konyu, Kelly Bakst, and Hogue. It was the group's first color computer game. Hogue said he was obsessed with the advanced color capabilities of the Atari computers, which allowed for 15 different colors on the screen at any one time. A black-and-white version was developed for TRS-80 computers, but it was never released. The game was released on a 16-kilobyte ROM cartridge—a large amount of storage at the time, with other games for the Atari 400 and 800 computers such as Star Raiders and Missile Command requiring only 8-kilobyte ROMs. The group designed their own circuit boards to store the game at this size. The game was written in assembly language on an Atari computer.
The gameplay for Miner 2049er was developed first, followed later by the mining theme and narrative. Like their previous games, Big Five Software looked to arcade games for inspiration. Hogue recalled that the team really liked the climbing-aspects of Donkey Kong and believed they could improve on the gameplay formula. Hogue wanted to blend together the elements he found fun from different arcade games; specifically, the climbing from Donkey Kong and both traversing the entire screen and enemies who can be made vulnerable from Pac-Man. He recollected that "I was never very good at Pac-Man, so I'm not sure why I borrowed any elements from the game." The mutant enemies were also inspired by Pac-Man, with Hogue discussing he used the arcade games ability to grab items to make enemies vulnerable to defeat for a short period of time. In Miner 2049er, Hogue described the level design "a somewhat tedious process" with all of the platforms that the player can step on being hard-coded, allowing level design to be tweaked by adjusting coordinates in the code. Other traversal methods such as the cannons and transporters were made as an iterative process, and that none of those gameplay mechanics were thought of ahead of time.
The games theme was inspired by the California Gold Rush of 1849, in which the miners were nicknamed 49ers. Some versions of the game feature a rendition of the song "Clementine" as part of the score. Hogue said the song was included as it was appropriate for the theme of a 1849 prospector. The game's narrative was later changed to be in the future to explain the presence of mutant enemies.
No less than 15 companies were scheduled to produce versions of Miner 2049er for various video game consoles, computers, and handheld machines. Mike Livesay designed the adaptations of the game for the Apple II computer and for ColecoVision. Livesay initially approached Micro Fun about adapting the game for ColecoVision but was turned down by the company, which stated that they did not want third-party games. Despite this, Livesay reverse-engineered the ColecoVision and developed his own kit for it based on the Apple II. Livesay eventually got Micro Fun to agree to develop the ColecoVision version of the game, allowing him time to make more levels for it.
Release
Artist Scott Ross was responsible for the cover art for Miner 2049er. Ross had not seen anything about the game, and based his illustration on recollections of how prospectors looked in films he had seen. Ross recalled that "there was no big discussion about what Bob looked like, and I'd no idea I'd draw the guy so many times in the future."Miner 2049er was first released for Atari computers in December 1982.
Creative Computing reported that plans were being finalized in October 1982 for a variety of other manufacturers to produce versions of Miner 2049er for popular home computers and video game systems. International Computer Group handled the licensing of the game, with Hogue stating that "Just about every computer imaginable had a port." This mass-licensing and large advertising campaign by ICG, was described by William Cassidy of GameSpy as being new for the video game industry. Most game development company would design a game for one platform, then have its in-house programmers port the game to one or two other systems if it was successful. Kiren Hawken of Retro Gamer magazine said the game was released to a total of 22 different systems, including a LCD handheld game. In 1983, the game was released for various systems, including the Atari 2600 in May, the Atari 5200 in July, the Colecovision in August, the TI-99/4A in October, and the IBM PC in November. Miner 2049er was the first independently produced game released for the Atari 5200 and the ColecoVision. It was released for systems like the Super Cassette Vision and some of the major Japanese 8-bit computers of the 1980s, including the PC-8800 series, Fujitsuo FM-7, and the Sharp X1.
The Atari 8-bit computer version of the game sold well, with one review stating that it sold in similar quantities to the highly publicized Ultima II. By 1983, Joaquin Boaz wrote in InfoWorld that Miner 2049er was "selling like crazy". Computer Entertainer reported that the ColecoVision version of the game by Micro Fun was the number-one-selling video game of the year. In an article published in Video magazine in January 1984, the game was described as "the most widely played home electronic game of all time", and the article also said that "no home-arcade title has had the impact" that the game had had to date. Livesay recalled the success of his ports of the game, saying that in "six months later I was making $15,000 a month in royalties, which was a huge amount for a single, 24-year-old kid in the early '80s." In a 2007 interview, Hogue reflected on the popularity of the game, saying that it was "a simple game and it's clear at first glance what needs to be done to finish a level. But as you're playing along you discover it wasn't quite as easy as you thought."
In the early 1990s, Hogue licensed Miner 2049er to Mindscape, which designed a version of the game for Game Boy. This version which featured scrolling versions of levels from both the 1982 game and its sequel Bounty Bob Strikes Back!. Hogue recalled that the Game Boy version was "a really poor sales performer" and that "The developers weren't integrating with me on a daily basis; there was more of a 'We've done it, here it is,' approach."
In 2001, Hogue released the game and its sequel, Bounty Bob Strikes Back!, for free online with an embedded Atari 8-bit computer emulator. Hogue said that he released it this way, as opposed to releasing the games' ROMs, as "I'd spent so much time back in the Eighties tweaking those color registers to achieve perfection and I wanted to see the game that way again."
Magmic released the game for mobile devices in 2007. The mobile version of the game features two versions of Miner 2049er: a new version with contemporary cartoon-style graphics of the game as well as a port of the original game, which was coded from scratch. Both versions feature gameplay similar to the original release. Both the Atari 800 and Atari 2600 versions of Miner2049er were included as part of the Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration compilation for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Steam, and Xbox One.