Miner 2049er (Atari 2600)
Miner 2049er is a platform video game created by Bill Hogue that was released in 1982 by Tigervision. The title "Miner 2049er" evokes a 21st-century take on the California Gold Rush of around 1849, in which the gold miners and prospectors were nicknamed "49ers".
As Bounty Bob, the player's goal is to inspect every section of each mine in search of the evil Yukon Yohan while avoiding the radioactive creatures that inhabit the mine. As Bounty Bob walks over a section of flooring, it fills with color. To complete the level, every section of flooring must be colored.
Effort In TASing
I had got the erge to TAS a game across multiple platforms again. This time, I had started with the Atari 2600 version...only to be followed up with the Commodore 64, and finally the Colecovision version.
This particular version is awful...I mean terrible all the way. It is so painful to TAS this and it ended up being super slow. The mechanics are nasty, with a response time of a snail. I don't have anything to say about this, except I'm glad that I'm done with it.
Version Differences
- Atari 2600 (Tigervision)
- Extremely Slow (The slowest of the 3 submissions)
- Only has 3 Levels, which then repeat over and over.
- Slide levels require that you cover parts of the flooring, that exist on the slide.
- Movement controls are extremely sluggish. I'm not sure of the numbers here, but movement takes around 10 frames to occur.
- Cannon level shares a similar goal with the Commodore 64. The location of ammo must also be "Mining", to complete the round.
- Extremely tight jumping of enemies. Human efforts show a lot of death, surrounding this task.
- Elevator performs instantly. This version has the fastest of the 3.
- Colecovision (Micro Fun)
- Fastest among the 3 submissions
- Has 11 levels. The 11th is a special one created by Micro Fun. (Levels are mostly matched up against the Commodore 64)
- Slide level don't require that you cover part of the flooring, that exist on the slide. This version is well made in my opinion for this mechanic.
- Movement controls are extremely responsive.
- Cannon level is the only one of the three that doesn't require "Mining" of the ammo area to complete the level.
- There is one trick that I don't see human performing. On the "Stomper" level, the platforms that provide you a ride to the opposite can be positions so that you can fall to the bottom and walk over the "Stomper" area. This is the only version where the stop...after you finish using them.
- The elevator is quite different, over the other 2. It actually performs movement from one floor to another. In this version, I creatively use it to jump around on a timely fashion to get the job done quickly. Here, it runs at a speed that's between the Atari and C64.
- Commodore 64 (Big Five Software)
- 2nd faster of the 3 submissions.
- Has 10 levels. (Levels are mostly matched up against the Colecovision)
- Slide level require that you cover parts of the flooring, that exist on the slide. Additionally, this version has extra flooring beyond some slides that don't exist on other versions.
- Movement controls are moderately responsive. This version may run 60 fps visually, but has input lag every other frame.
- Cannon level shares a similar goal with the Atari 2600. The location of ammo must also be "Mining", to complete the round.
- This version has two tricks that are extremely difficult to execute for a human, but possible.
- Elevator performs like a Star Trek transporter. Only issue, is that you have to wait for the elevator to cycle through the floors. Once the floor you want lights up, you can teleport. With such a good game version, this one has the slowest elevator action of the 3.
- Trick 1: It was not intended, but when you traverse down a slide, you can jump off of the slide when the direction changes. This is a frame perfect trick. I've never heard of this from any source, so it would seem that I discovered it.
- Tricks 2: Avoiding the "Stompers" on level 9. On this level, the platforms stop when you are not riding them, and can be reactivated when you jump back on them. If you do so, on the left side of the screen, you can immediately jump to avoid the "Slide" pulling you down to the bottom where the Stompers are. There are a few frames that this trick can be performed within. If successful, you can continue your journey back to the right side, and avoiding any climbing or avoidance of the Stompers.
Human Comparison
DrD2k9: Delayed for adding a 2nd loop to exhaust unique content/difficulty increase.
DrD2k9: It was decided not to add the 2nd loop at this time.
While I was able to find a couple small movement improvements that saved time in the short-term, they didn't pan out in the long-term due to enemy movements being apparently tied to a global timer forcing longer waits for enemies later in the game. For example, I was able to finish the first stage a bit earlier, but the enemy positions at a certain frame count in stage two was identical regardless of starting the stage earlier; therefore my improvement was negated.
While only one more loop of the game would exhaust unique content/difficulty increase, the chosen endpoint after the first loop is a valid endpoint. Thus, I'm accepting this run as it stands with the caveat that someone adding the 2nd loop at some point in the future should obsolete this run even though the total time would be longer.
