Emerald Mine 2
| Developer: N/A | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Kingsoft | Sound: |
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| Year: 1988 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Boulder Dash | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 2 simultaneous | Rating: |
6/10 | |
(To avoid any confusion, the number is officially written in Roman numerals. My neurosis My syntactical charter prescribes using Arabic numerals to standardise game titles.)
To the visitor who asked me why I wasn’t talking about Emerald Mine 2, first of all, thanks for the gift! It came back to me, this game is cursed. It’s simply too difficult to get working on an emulator. The fault, I think, lies with an elaborate copy protection system, followed by a change in the “game engine” that I’ll mention below.
It came on two floppy disks, and neither of them allowed you to launch the game directly. You had to perform a convoluted procedure after formatting a blank disk … which I haven’t managed to reproduce on an emulator. My expertise is limited to inserting disks and hammering on the keyboard whilst waiting for things to load (and it stops at the first error window).
Inept but stubborn, I spent entire evenings trying all the versions available on the Internet, and I want to share my findings with you (it will cost me less than psychotherapy).
- To begin with, none of the versions circulating on the main emulation websites (including Emerald Web) work for me.
- There is a modified disk titled “Emerald Mine II (1988) (Kingsoft) [h DJL]” designed to launch the game automatically. Unfortunately, it crashes irreparably in certain places (when picking up a red key, particularly at level 6), making a large portion of the levels impossible to complete.
- I found another copy on Internet Archive that gives us 35 seconds to collect 255 emeralds in the first cave, which is strictly impossible (the maximum would be 6 per second, running without stopping in front of an uninterrupted line of emeralds). According to Martijn’s page, this would come from a change in the programme generation, which interprets the “time limit” data differently (it’s divided by two). Once again, unplayable.
- The Emerald Mines compilation on CD32 suffers from the same problem, showing they didn’t even test the first cave. An example of the couldn’t-care-less attitude common to everything released on this console. Look no further for the reason behind its commercial failure.
- The “Emerald Mine II (1988) (Kingsoft) (Disk 1 of 2) [h VF]” version, which, as luck would have it, works very well, only gives access to the first cave, and it’s completely different… This time, it’s the usual problem with games that include a level editor (like Crack), people use them and modify the originals.
- The one downloadable from Amiga Sector One (from which the screenshot on Hall of Light originates) is also modified. The levels are identical to the (amateur, created with the editor, I presume) game Boulderdash 2 “by Lazer”, also called Laser Mine 2. I still recommend it to you, but it’s not Emerald Mine 2.
The only version I managed to get working is called “EmeraldMineII.ipf” and I had to pair it with a “game disk” kindly provided by FreeMediaKids!. I’m attaching both files together at the bottom of this page, along with brief instructions.
If you’re using two (virtual) floppy drives:
- Insert “EmeraldMineII.ipf” into DF0 and “playfielddisk.adf” into DF1 (both unprotected).
- Double-click on “Emerald Mine II” then on “Play”.
And with a single drive:
- Launch the “EmeraldMineII.ipf” disk (unprotected).
- Double-click on “EM2” then on “Play”.
- The title screen appears, press “fire” (joystick button), wait a bit.
- When a red screen appears, change the disk to “playfielddisk.adf”.
- Left-click and it starts.
I strongly advise against using the emulator’s internal save feature. This causes corruption in subsequent levels, crashes or unusual bugs, such as monsters that multiply with each movement, invading all the empty space. An interesting experience…
Want to know what I think of the game now? You’ll notice from the title screen (identical to the previous game) that the developers didn’t exactly strain themselves. The levels seemed rushed and irritating to me: large unused areas, invisible walls from the start, and a large number of caves require immediate action (the very first one places you next to a lit stick of dynamite…). Others drop boulders on your head as soon as you begin. To be honest, I remember using the same trick when I played around with the editor (see Dazeldash). Still, the twentieth time you die in less than a second gets tiresome.
And to top it all off … level 73 is impossible to complete (it requires collecting more diamonds than it contains).
I recommend skipping this game and trying Emerald Mine 3 Professional instead. Note that all subsequent titles with the name Emerald Mine followed by a number higher than 2, are collections of amateur levels (of better quality, oftentimes). In fact, fans didn’t wait for Emerald Mine 2 to design caves. The reference editor, distributed by No One Inc. (more complete and free of copy protection), is called Emerald Mine Tools.
It was after writing this page that I discovered the software Rocks ‘n’ Diamonds has included, since late 2020, most of the known Emerald Mine variants on Amiga, with a level of faithfulness approaching perfection (same graphics and virtually the same game engine). This is obviously the solution of choice for trying Emerald Mine 2 without tearing your hair out. I regret not having known this earlier…
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