Developers Kingsoft Platform of origin Amiga Latest release Emerald Mines CD
1994 | Publishers Kingsoft First release Emerald Mine
1987 | |
Genres Scrolling tile-based puzzle game | ||
Emerald Mine is a computer game series by Kingsoft.
Contents
Emerald Mine
In Emerald Mine, the player must collect a minimum count of gems in a labyrinth and reach the then-opened gate. Gems, stones, bombs and drips are subject to a vertical gravitation. Furthermore, elements exist which guide the movement of the player like different wall types, and a number of enemies, some of which seek out the player. There are also further elements, like the dynamite which may be exploded at a chosen place, and the doors, for whose passing the matching key must be collected. Hence, it is an extended Boulder Dash clone. Solving a level grants access to the next one, and there is a separate highscore list for each level. In the two player game, both players play in the same labyrinth screen, and every four levels there is a level especially designed for player cooperation. The game consists of 80 one-player levels, of which 60 are also used in the two-player mode, and of 20 extra levels for the two-player mode.
Emerald Mine was released in 1987 for the Amiga and converted in 1988 for the Commodore 64.
Emerald Mine 2
In 1988, Kingsoft published Emerald Mine 2 with 100 new levels. A leveleditor was included which triggered the creation of several thousand levels by players.
Emerald Mine 3 Professional
In 1990, Kingsoft published a selection of levels created by players.
Emerald Mines CD
In 1994, Almathera published a collection of 14160 levels (177 series of 80) on CD. Since there was hardly any nonvolatile memory in the basic configuration of the Amiga CD32 and thus the game progress could not be saved, the game mode had to be changed for every eighth level of a series to be selectable.
Miscellaneous
Emerald Mine became well known on the Amiga, because it was the first versatile labyrinth collection game, and had excellent graphics for its time. The Dutch Emerald Mine Club had been founded, which also carried out extensions of the Emerald Mine program. The open source game Emerald Mine for X11 is a port of this extended Emerald Mine to Unix, Windows, and DOS. It is completely compatible with the original Emerald Mine. It includes an archive of over 50,000 playable levels. The freeware game Rocks'n'Diamonds has a similar archive of levels, and includes an obsolete copy of Emerald Mine for X11 to play them.