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| Not long after Miner 2049er, Bill Hogue had
begun work on a sequel titled "Scraper Caper". The game was advertised
extensively in magazines including a large two page advertisement by Big
Five Software.
Microfun also ran several advertisements depicting game packaging for their Colecovision cartridges. In the image below, you can see the package for Scraper Caper on the far left.
This sequel never made it to market and not much is known about the game itself or why it was abandoned.
Microfun released an "unofficial" sequel to Miner 2049er titled "Miner 2049er II". This was basically a Miner 2049er with new levels created by Mike Livesay who was the programmer of both the Apple II and Colecovision versions of Miner 2049er. Microfun had a bad habit of not paying their royalties for the Miner 2049er license and rumour has it that they created Miner II as a way to compensate for the failure of Scraper Caper to be released of which they had invested advertising money. Here is an extract from the Mike Livesay interview about what he had to say about Scraper Caper and Miner 2049er II... "After the Coleco Miner, MicroFun contacted me about doing a sequel to Miner (Miner II). So I went to work designing 10 new levels and programmed an Apple version, using a much improved rendering engine I had developed (everything was software rendered on the Apple - no sprites or polys). Miner 2 used an enhanced version of the engine I wrote for "The Heist". It was the best engine I had written for the system (and the last one)." "I mistakenly assumed that they had the rights. I later found out that MicroFun never had Bill Hogue's approval, nor the legal rights to do a sequel. However, there is a flip side to the story. The rumour going around at the time was that MicroFun had licensed Bill's sequel (Scraper Caper) and paid a large advance. I think their feeling was "Well, we paid for a sequel, so we're doing one.", but this is really speculation on my part. I wasn't privy to their dealings with Big Five. Bill could tell you the real story." "The early demos of Scraper Caper looked awesome, but never really showed much game play - just some cool animation and effects. No one ever really saw a playable level. After that one CES where Bill showed it, I never saw or heard about it since. The demo started out with some cool simulated fireworks, and then had some cool animations of Bounty Bob running across the screen and climbing up a fire ladder. I don't remember much else - there might have been more to it, though." After the failure of "Scraper Caper" to be released, Bill Hogue eventually released in 1985 a new official sequel called "Bounty Bob Strikes Back". By this time, the Miner 2049er bandwagon had lost much of its steam and most versions released were in the UK for several British systems such as the BBC, Amstrad and Sinclair Spectrum. The UK distributor was U.S. Gold. Bill Hogue wrote the Atari 800/5200 and Commodore 64 versions. An Amiga and Epyx Gamegear (Atari Lynx) version was also planned but never eventuated.
This sequel was better than the original Miner 2049er. It featuring 25 new levels which were more challenging than the original. The platform graphics had a 3D'ish look to them and Bounty Bob could now be manoeuvred more in mid air during a jump. Each level had a title and the sound effects improved. The Bounty Bob character remained as the rather chunky looking figure with the funny walk as in the original Miner 2049er.
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