How to play Miner 2049er online
- Walk: left and right arrow keys. Ladders: up and down.
- Jump: Z (the lower buttons), in the direction you are pushing
- Choose a zone and start: on the title or high-score screen, press a digit key 0 to 8 (or open the on-screen keypad with K for 9) to set the difficulty zone and begin. Enter starts a new game at the zone you last chose.
- Transporters (stations 3 and 7): stand inside a transporter door and press 1 to 4 to beam to another level
- Lift (station 8): jump onto the lift and press the = key (the keypad’s # key) to take control; steer with the arrows and press = or Z to let go
- Cannon (station 10): aim with the arrows and fire with Z
- Pause: P. Full screen and save states are in the emulator’s toolbar; move the mouse over the screen to see it.
Gameplay
Bounty Bob, a Mountie, is hunting the fur trapper Yukon Yohan through an abandoned uranium mine. Each of the ten stations is a single screen of ladders, platforms and gadgets, and to clear it you must “claim” every section of framework by walking over it, turning it solid as you go. The timer at the top flashes and beeps when it is nearly out and kills Bob instantly at zero; whatever is left when you finish a station is added to your score.
Mutants patrol the platforms and are fatal to touch, but you can hop over them. Pick up one of the possessions left behind by earlier miners and the mutants turn green for a short while, when touching them wipes them out for points. Bob survives only short drops, and a fall into the radioactive waste is always fatal. Zones run from 1, the gentlest, up to 255, and two players can take turns. Every piece of framework is worth 5 points, a green mutant 80 or 90, and possessions 100 to 1,100 each. An extra Bob is awarded at 10,000 points, and when the last one is gone a good score earns a place in the top-ten table.
| Station | Name |
|---|---|
| 1 | The Mine Shaft |
| 2 | The Slides |
| 3 | The Transporters |
| 4 | The Lillipads |
| 5 | Advanced Lillipads |
| 6 | The Radioactive Waste |
| 7 | Advanced Transporters |
| 8 | The Lift |
| 9 | The Pulverizers |
| 10 | The Cannon |
Tips
- Check under the slides. If a station will not end, the framework beneath a slide is the piece most people miss.
- Finish the open areas first. Some corners can be entered but not left, so claim everything else before you drop in.
- Time your transports. Arriving on top of a mutant is fatal, so watch where they are before you press the key.
The story behind Miner 2049er on the 5200
Big Five Software started in 1980 in Van Nuys, California, with TRS-80 games. Miner 2049er was Bill Hogue’s first game for Atari computers; it shipped in December 1982 on a 16 KB cartridge, twice the usual size, sold very well, was licensed to 22 systems in all and won the 1984 Arkie Award for Electronic Game of the Year.
Big Five published the 5200 cartridge (BF1912) itself in July 1983, making it the first 5200 game not to come from Atari. It keeps all ten stations of the computer original, while the Atari 2600 cartridge from Tigervision has only three. AtariMania users note the code matches the Atari 800 version, so the main difference is the 5200’s non-centring stick, which makes precise jumps harder. Hogue followed it in 1985 with Bounty Bob Strikes Back!, also released for the 5200.
