DoctorSpuds Reviews Things - Mines of Minos (Commavid)

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We’re back with Commavid today but which game to choose? Mines of Minos… Why? It has the best box art, and it’s unique, and well… It’s fun (Also CaptainBreakout recommended it, so yeah I gotta do it now). Mines of Minos is not a graphically impressive game, Commavid games rarely are they tend to make it up with fun and interesting gameplay. If you want a game to compare the graphics to Entombed by U.S. Games is almost a dead ringer. Enemy design is quite good, they’re large and fairly detailed, and there are several variations as the game goes on. At first glance you’d be forgiven for assuming that all you do in this game is run up and down the single maze collecting dots and bringing them back to the bottom to collect points and extra lives, this is not the case. This game is huge, and far deeper gameplay-wise than I thought possible, and you would never know it if you didn’t read the manual. There are five levels to the maze, each containing more difficult monsters than the last, if you just blitz the game and go straight to level five immediately you’ll find that you are far outclassed and your bombs are ineffective, your power level isn’t high enough. To increase your power level you must score 1000 points, and every subsequent thousand will increase your level by one, Mines of Minos is like a very basic RPG. The longer you spend in each maze the harder the enemies become, getting faster and faster until they just ignore the walls entirely. The method you use to deal with enemies is also unique among 2600 games in that you don’t just shoot them. You drop time bombs and you have to hope that the enemies will walk over them, in the early difficulty this isn’t a problem since the enemies are fairly stupid but later on they’ll start to use alternate routes so you’ll have to start getting smart with your placements. This isn’t just a game about enemy avoidance, that would get boring, you have to collect flashing dots and return them to the center of the top or bottommost passageway, collect three of them and you get an extra robot, basically an extra life. This is an excellent way to force the player out of their comfort zone and make them play the game, I’m sure if the player started off with three or five lives they’d just spend most of their time in the corner bombing enemies until they can safely go to the next level. The game never lets the player get comfortable, and unlike with most games on the 2600, instead of having the game go on forever eventually having the difficulty plateau, Mines of Minos actually has an ending. On the fifth level there are three stationary robots, you must make your way to them and ram them. I’ve never beaten the game, I’ve never even gotten close but I think that this would be an excellent game to spend a lazy afternoon beating. There are several helpful difficulty variations; I would personally recommend either games five or seven for a slightly easier trip. Unfortunately this is the point where we come to the price and Mines of Minos is not a cheap game, like most Commavid games. There are currently no boxed NTSC copies but if you want the game loose you’re looking at 60 dollars for the cheapest copy, and 130 dollars for the most expensive one. There is a loose copy with the manual for 80 so that might be a better deal if you eventually want to get the box or get a reproduction. Yeah this game is going to the Collector’s Zone, no matter how good the game is I can’t really justify spending 60+ dollars on one, I’d recommend you get a Harmony Cart or an UNO Cart and just play it using one of those.

Basic gameplay


If you want to see somebody beat the game then I'd recommend watching this one

http://atariage.com/forums/blog/729/entry-15810-mines-of-minos-commavid/