Mine Shaft

The Good
The gameplay is standard arcade fare; you can shoot to protect yourself against the mine robots while trying to collect the gems and reach the exit. This is easy to pick up and learn.

The Bad
The mines that you have to navigate are generated completely randomly, which would normally be a good thing because you'd never play the same mine twice. But a particularly nasty behavior of the mine creation process can create some very tight diagonal passages, which are incredibly hard to navigate through because the game doesn't process diagonal controls. The bad guys can navigate these tunnels effortlessly, of course. This is unfair.

The Bottom Line
Use this game as a demonstration of how cartridge games work on the PCjr, but otherwise avoid it.

The Good
* Familiar gameplay

I can count the number of games where I run around a playfield collecting something (eg: Mr. Do!) so it didn't take me a long time for me to learn how to play Mine Shaft. You even have the choice of gathering all the gems or kill the robots. Instead of the game taking you to the next automatically, you have to enter a door that will take you there. To not get stopped from robots, I would rather kill them first.

* Lives Aplenty

Unlike many arcade games that were released at the same time, Mine Shaft awards you with one extra life when you complete each level, instead of it having you to get a certain score. This is ideal for players who are new to the game. If the same players are able to complete a level without losing a life, then there would be no shortage of lives.

The Bad
* Awkward controls

Most arcade games at the time used the IJKM combination, which moves your character Up, Left, Right, Down respectively; and anyone who has played these games with the keyboard felt comfortable playing them. The [M] key moves your character down. However, Sierra mapped the down key to [K] meaning that your fingers are going to be in a strange position. I found it very hard to control my character, especially when navigating diagonal passages.

The title screen only appears once per session, meaning that when the current game ends, the demo is just shown. This means that you can't change how you control the game, and you have to exit and then re-run the game and choose the controls from there.

The Bottom Line
I thought that Mine Shaft plays to a PD game that I had on my Commodore 64 where you mine for gold and then take a certain amount to the bank. But instead, what we have here is Sierra copying games of the time, therefore lacking any original concept.

This is a good game, although not quite as good as the previous arcade games the company has done. The object is to go around the maze, getting the gems while avoiding or killing the robots. The controls are awkward, so as Gravel said in his review, use a joystick to control your character.

The Good
Mine Shaft was the only PCjr cartridge I own. The goal is to take gems by avoid ennemies through ten levels. I suggest you to play with a joystick instead using a keyboard. Some ennemies can be destroyed by shooting them. Only one ennemy is invincible to your shots. I can play 20 minutes to Mine shaft.

The Bad
Using a keyboard to play is not good because you'll use I, J, K and L keys to move the shaft.

The Bottom Line
If you like Pacman, you may want to try it... with a good joystick.