Emerald Mine II (Kingsoft), irregular game out of the three?

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RAP
Posts: 317
Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 6:44 pm

Emerald Mine II (Kingsoft), irregular game out of the three?

Post by RAP »

Yeah, this occurred. While the Rocks'n'Diamonds forums were down, I thought that to pass the time between scenarios, I'd play EMC levels (which I realized 90 percent of them suck, according to Sturgeon's Law). Why not play the original three Emerald Mine games from Kingsoft? Seems doable. Finished the first one (excluding teamwork only levels), and onto the second one. The first few levels were vanilla, just like the first one, until their later levels start to look oddly shaped and disfigured; they were a departure from the first game's level design. Back in my mind, I questioned whether those levels were made by the same people in the first game... The third game is nothing but submitted levels from fans (with no credit to those specific levels, just a list of people; making it impossible to figure out which is which).

I didn't mind at the time, just wanting to burn time and enjoying myself, but as I progressed through the levels, I started to spot some more game mechanic irregularities, such as a shorter time limit and less gems required to collect than the usual. I didn't mind, but it seemed odd that I wasn't challenged as much as EM1. I had to skip Level 44 because due to failure to react and dodge the bugs and yam-yams. It seemed like an anomaly, but I had to fault it on the screen size I'm seeing in Rocks'n'Diamonds, it's 15x15, not the original size (is it 12 by 20?).

The wall that I hit in realization of the game's buggyness is Level 73. It seemed simple enough, it's just a linear diagonal corridor where I collect the gems with no enemies by holding two of the keys. The problem is that it didn't give me enough time to finish this mundane level. I didn't bother playing the rest of the levels in the level after that wall.

I have no idea how that situation happened; did the files got bugged out when it was filedumped? The only way to remedy it is using a hacked version by RuppleWare (with the two problems fixed) which indicates that this is the case judging from the various title screens before playing the levels. The reason I asked is that I'm writing a walkthrough of Emerald Mine II, and even though Rocks'n'Diamonds features a taping system, it would be nice to keep spreading the Emerald Mine legacy just a bit, just like other retro games out there in the internet. I'm still working on the first game, and have to cover the rarely touched teamwork-only levels after working on the other levels.

Did any of you had trouble beating Emerald Mine II when it came out back then?
HerzAusGold
Posts: 362
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 4:41 pm
Location: Germany

Re: Emerald Mine II (Kingsoft), irregular game out of the th

Post by HerzAusGold »

In original version Level 73 have the right number of diamonds.
I think there is an error in conversion.
And the answer is ... 42 !
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