Commodore PET Gold Mining Game??

July 26, 2005 2:55 PM

Okay.. this (believe it or not) is the question that caused me to pay the $5 and join mefi... Does anyone remember the Commodore PET? Our high school (back in 1983'ish) had 3 of these things and the best thing about them was this gold mining game. You'd move your little ascii (actually, PETSCII I think) guy around and you'd run into a solid block to mine it for gold. You might find gold.. or nothing.. or even a spring that would flood the whole cave. Does anyone remember this game? Did someone ever re-do it for Palm or PocketPC? I'd even settle for finding it on a PET emulator if such a thing existed.
posted by spifl to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

It sounds similar to MinerVGA for DOS (scroll down a bit), which has a java version, too.

Maybe close enough until someone digs up the Commodore version?
posted by QIbHom at 3:17 PM on July 26, 2005

Response by poster: Wow! You're good, QIbHom!

From the doc file of MinerVGA for DOS:
"The game was originally implemented on a Commodore Pet computer in the late 70's as a text only style game"

That seems to be it! No joy on the java version link however.. ah well, maybe it's just temporarily down.

Thanks for the link!
posted by spifl at 3:32 PM on July 26, 2005

Java link works for me, spifl, using the latest stable version of Foxfire under Windows. It is, however, in Czech, which I can't read.

Didn't think to check the docs (shame on me!).

My mother was so hooked on this game. When I found her a DOS bridge game, too, it took about a week to get her over her fear of computers.

Glad to be of assistance.
posted by QIbHom at 3:47 PM on July 26, 2005

Java version works fine for me; of course, I keep dying, and it's in a language I definitely don't speak.

Perhaps I'm dying because I don't understand "Našels zlaté pruty!"?
posted by metaculpa at 3:47 PM on July 26, 2005

Maybe you're nostalgic for *just* that game, but perhaps you'll also enjoy kMoria, a Moria (roguelike) port?

I originally bought my palm to read ebooks - basically the only thing I use it for now if kMoria and for taking notes.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 8:31 PM on July 26, 2005

Of course you remember that the most similar arcade game to this was Dig Dug, which was actually apparently based on the earlier, forgotten Digger. There's also the roughly similar Boulder Dash series.

Good Lord, there's a Boulder Dash clone database.

I also played a "space" or "Mars" miner game in this genre with my nephew last year -- I think it was online, but I can't find it now.
posted by dhartung at 12:33 AM on July 27, 2005

Oh, this is embarassing. 15 years later, and I still can't figure out how to turn the diamond into a ring for Mimi.

Wish he'd released the source code!
posted by QIbHom at 3:53 PM on July 28, 2005

About a year ago, for about a week or two, I was completely addicted to Motherload, which is similar although obviously more advanced. Click at your own risk, it's like Tetris in that you can never really beat it ...

[and I spent most of 1991 playing Tetris]

[oh, I stumbled across this old thread by searching -- nobody will ever see this comment :) ]
posted by intermod at 9:59 PM on December 2, 2005