Source: Video & Arcade Games – Volume 1, Number 2 – Fall 1983
In Miner 2049er, you play the role of Bounty Bob, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as he searches for the villain Yukon Yohan. This search occurs in an abandoned Uranium mine. Miner 2049er is a sort of juxtaposition of past and future. While the theme and even the title reflect gold mining in the 1840s, this is a Uranium mine and the obstacles you face are futuristic in nature. things like matter transporters and jet-speed floaters among other odd items. In addition, you will have to face various creatures that have mutated due to radiation. Only in video games and sci fi does radiation make you stronger.
Game play is pretty straightforward. You must walk over all sections of the mine in order to “claim” it. Each screen consists of platforms and ladders. Along the way you’ll find weapons and other objects to help you in addition to the mutated creatures you must fight.
Miner 2049er was first developed for the Atari 800 and then ported to a wide variety of other systems. Miner 2049er was unique for its time in terms of size. It was much larger than normal, especially for a platform game. Miner 2049er consisted of 10 separate screens at a time when most other similar style games only had 3 or 4. Because games for the Atari 800 were typically released on cartridge, this meant a cartridge size of 16K instead of the more typical 8K.
The large size of Miner 2049er led to a fairly high priced game for the time. Miner 2049er initially sold for $49.99 which adjusted for inflation would be about $133 today. The Atari 2600 version was released as two separate games and in total still encompassed barely more than half the levels: Miner 2049er contained three levels and Miner 2049er Volume II contained three levels. Other computer ports were a bit easier because they were mostly on disk. Sure, you may have a bit of a load time between levels but it was much cheaper to produce that way.
Despite the high price, especially for the Atari 8-bit cartridge version, Miner 2049er was a very popular game. It received outstanding reviews and even though the graphics were really only mediocre, even for the time, the playability was excellent. It’s truly one of the classics that every gamer should at least try. Without games like Miner 2049er, there may never have been games like Super Mario Bros.
In addition to the Atari 8bit and Atari 2600 versions, Miner 2049er also made its way to the Commodore 64, Atari 5200, VIC-20, ColecoVision, Intellivision, Apple II, IBM PC, TI-99/4A and a variety of other platforms. There were also a couple of later re-releases on the Game Boy, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and iOS. There was even an official emulator released of the Atari 8-bit version but it only worked with older versions of Windows (pre Windows 7). If you want to play it today and don’t have original hardware, the best way is probably to emulate your favorite version.
Screen shots above are from the Commodore 64 version…because the Commodore 64 is my favorite retro platform. The ads above are from the Fall 1983 issue of Video & Arcade Games.
