You know all those people who bang on about the 'good ol' days', and how they were infinitely better than life in the 21st century? Well, they can keep 'em. The good ol' days meant that catching flu was genuinely life threatening, an evening's entertainment would be a public flogging and, if school wasn't for you, there was always the local pit or a career in cleaning chimneys.
Granted, there's nothing wrong with reminiscing about life back then, but almost always the past is viewed through rose-tinted (bi-focal) spectacles. Take video games from those dark days, the 1980s. Sure, they were revolutionary, but so was the steam engine once upon a time, and we can't imagine anyone wanting to swap a brand new Ferrari for a traction engine.
Games from that era are often best left there. A case in point is
Miner 2049er, a title that developer Magmic have dug up and re-packaged for today's mobile gamer. Indeed your reviewer, who was but knee-high to a grasshopper when the original hit the arcades, had to look it up on Wikipedia to see what the ancient game was all about.
Now, as then, you play as Bounty Bob, a happy-go-lucky miner who's looking for Yukon Johann in a series of radioactively contaminated mine shafts. You're not alone under the ground, as the abandoned mine is populated with monsters who'd love nothing more than to have a chew on your earlobe and then finish you off.
So it is that you embark on a series of simplistic, sideways-scrolling platform stages as you attempt to walk over every inch of every platform in each shaft. As you do, the platform changes colour, reflecting the fact that you've collected the valuable ore dust that's all that's left from the digging.
Tread across all the floor surfaces, then, and you complete the level. But in order to reach that point you'll need to climb ladders, avoid falling off platforms and not get eaten. Along the way you can pick up items left by the other miners, causing the beasties to become rather less lethal. In fact, walk into them and they'll pop their clogs instead of using yours as aperitifs.
It's straightforward stuff and, to be honest, it's all bit dull and unexciting. Anyone who's grown up with
Sonic The Hedgehog and
Super Mario Brothers is likely to feel the same way, and quite why you'd want to limit yourself with
Miner 2049er is a question that should, quite legitimately, be asked.
Because time – and games – have moved on so far in the two-plus decades since its debut,
Miner 2049er compares badly to a modern platformer in not just its looks, but more importantly in its gameplay. It's slow, frustratingly constrictive and not terribly conducive to repeated play.
Even though there are two versions in this mobile edition of the game, a pixel-perfect port of the original arcade and a glossy revamp with cartoon-style visuals, the way that each plays is nearly identical, with a few changes in the levels in the remake but little else.
As a short glimpse at the prehistory of videogaming as we know it,
Miner 2049er is of interest. Even if it had secured itself a guest spot in a more modern game (a la the classics in
Namco Arcade Golf), we would have had time for it. But to put it up against the best contemporary mobile titles, including
Neenya Ninja,
Splinter Cell and
Open Season, simply reveals just how badly it has aged. Avoid.
Joined:
Feb 2009
Post count:
1
Mike:
Sorry, Dude....obviously you just don't get it when it comes to classic games.
First, Miner 2049er was never an arcade game. (If you're gonna trash the classics at least do your homework.) Originally programmed for the Atari 800 computer it ended up on virtually every other platform on the market through the 1980's. I had the Atari 5200 version and at the time (1982) it was like nothing I had played at home. It blew me away.
Believe it or not, youngling, there are those of us who were actually there when games like Miner 2049er came out and can attest to what a great game it was - and still is. No, it isn't going to compare to anything on the PS3 or XBox 360, but it never was meant to. Instead what it offers nowadays is a little bit of game time where the player is just meant to rack up some points and have a challenge or two doing it. No deep plot here (although the instructions tried to give it one) - just pure vintage gaming goodness. To today's gamer this game might seem strange for its lack of ability to save the game or the fact that it has no ending, per se, but that isn't a flaw. It was the state of the technology at the time. And Miner 2049'er was worlds ahead of a lot of its competition at the time. I still play it, having copies on my Atari 5200 and my Atari 800 computer. And it's still fun.
Anyone who DIDN'T grow up with Sonic or Mario doesn't necessarily think that those kinds of games ( in particular most of the Ninja, kickboxing or Karate crap that ended up on the Sega home machines) are much to get excited about. If you like 'em, great. Go for it, as the '80's instructed us to do. But don't trash the classics 'cause you weren't there and can't relate to it.
And seriously, Dude..."a public flogging"? How far back in video game history are you going? Hey, maybe you can tell us how terrible video games were in the caveman days...you're such a history expert. Um, you totally missed the mark on your analogies in this "review".
RK
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