Games That Weren't^®

1983 Big Five Software

Platforms: Atari 2600, 5200, 400 and 800

Following Miner 2049er, Bounty Bob was now set for the Big City and its fire department, where he must fight a major skyscraper fire in what was to be Scraper Caper. Sadly, the game was never to be.

Way back in 2001, Bill Hogue gave a reply back on a user group about the game:

“Scraper Caper was supposed to be our next game after Miner 2049er. We had a lot of success with Miner and ended up licensing it for just about every computer that existed at the time. This put a lot of pressure on us to come up with something that was incredible and could duplicate Miner’s popularity.”

“Our first cut had Bounty Bob at the base of a high-rise building on fire. He had gotten work as a fireman after finally getting out of the mines. (He had also slimmed down, if I remember!) The concept would have had the player controlling him throughout this building in search of people to rescue or items to save.

We had a large part of it programmed but it never seemed to go anywhere so we abandoned it. We started another totally different game that had Bounty Bob on this 3-D style maze with angry little fireballs after him. I spent a ton of time getting the look right so that Bounty Bob and the little fireballs would move in and out around the playfield correctly. What we ended up producing was a stunning looking screen masking dull game play.

So we finally chose to do what we should have done in the first place: make a really cool sequel to Miner 2049er and put Bounty Bob back in the mine. We had a tremendous amount of fun coming up with all the new levels and contraptions.”

Sadly, Bill also confirmed that nothing of Scraper Caper exists these days – so any chance of finding something of the game could be slim. In an interview with Retro Gamer in 2007, Bill confirmed he had thrown away the disks and tapes containing the game, and later said he felt foolish for the decision to cancel the game, as a lot of work was put into it.

Here is another account from Bill from his own Big Five Software website (captured by Internet Archive):

“After Miner 2049er I worked with Curtis Mikolyski while we attempted to create an even better game than Miner 2049er. It was pretty hard trying to top ourselves.

The licensees of Miner were crying out for another game. We came up with a vertical scrolling game we called “Scraper Caper”. We did a fair amount of work on it. It had Bounty Bob leaving the mine and moving to the big city as a fireman. He’d also lost a little weight!

The game started outside a tall building on fire. A hysterical woman would flag down Bob and give him instructions for going up to her apartment to save something valuable. Bob would salute and then he’d be under your control. You’d go in the automatic door at the base of the building and start exploring.

We even had the artwork done for the game before it was finished. Scott Ross created artwork for ads teasing the public with Bounty Bob’s new occupation (see scans for framed artwork).

That’s the evil Yukon Yohan lurking in the shadows. Notice the donkey with a teardrop in the background! We never finished Scraper Caper because the game just seemed to go nowhere.

So we started on yet another variation. This time Bounty Bob was hopping around on three-dimensional framework with angry fireballs after him. That was probably the most sophisticated game display I had ever created. Getting all the mask priorities correct was pretty challenging.

Alas, that went nowhere as well. Looking back I realize that we were setting our standards too high. We should have released both of those games as they were.

In any case, we pitched both of them and started work on the official sequel to Miner 2049er: Bounty Bob Strikes Back! We gave the mine a bit of a 3D look and added all sorts of new contraptions for Bob to use. I created a complete level editor for Curtis to use. He designed all of the levels this way. It was a big improvement from sketching levels out on graph paper.”

Bill had mentioned in his 2001 reply that there was possibility something of the game was on video tape, and that indeed did surface at one point! Bill surfaced again on Atari Age in 2021, and revealed that Curtis Mikolyski had found a promotional video that had some of the game on show.

Unfortunately the video was made private not too long afterwards, and as a result – many have not been able to see how the game would have looked. Hopefully we can get hold of Curtis to see about accessing the video to obtain some screenshots.

With thanks to Joshua Dove and Ross Sillifant for highlighting, LiqMatrix for highlighting rare advert on Ebay and additional scans, and AtariAge + Archive.org for the scans.

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