Miner 2049er

Miner 2049er
Cover art by Scott Ross depicting Bounty Bob
Developer(s)	Big Five Software
Publisher(s)	Big Five Software
Programmer(s)	Bill Hogue
Platform(s)	Atari 8-bit computer Atari 2600 Atari 5200 ColecoVision IBM PC TI-99/4A Commodore 64 Apple II FM-7 PC-88 Sharp X1 VIC-20 Super Cassette Vision
Release	December 1982 Atari 8-bit December 1982 Atari 2600 May 1983 Atari 5200 July 1983 TI-99/4A October 1983 IBM PC November 1983
Genre(s)	Platform
Mode(s)	Single-player

Miner 2049er is a 1982 platformer game developed and published by Big Five Software in December 1982. It is set in a mine, where the player controls the Mountie Bounty Bob. The player controls 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.

Like his earlier games for Big Five, Programmer Bill Hogue based Miner 2049er on popular arcade games, specifically Pac-Man (1980) and Donkey Kong (1981). It was his first game 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.

Miner 2049er received positive press throughout 1983, appearing on best-of lists, with video game critics complimenting its colorful graphics, game design, and originality. Unlike most games at the time which received one or two ports for different computers and video game consoles, Miner 2049er was released for various home systems, with Kiren Hawken of Retro Gamer stating the game was released on a total of 22 different systems.^[1] 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.^[2]

Several sequels were developed to follow-up, with only Bounty Bob Strikes Back! (1985) being made by Hogue. The game received positive reviews in retrospectives from GameSpy and AllGame, Richard Stanton, in his book A Brief History of Video Games (2015), said that Miner 2049er was generally forgotten in the wake of Super Mario Bros. (1985).