MineStorm was published in 1982 for the Vectrex game system. It is an Asteroids-type game that was released alongside the Vectrex system.
The publisher and developer of MineStorm is General Consumer Electric .
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The gameplay is similar to that of Atari's Asteroids. The game begins with a large enemy ship dropping minds onto the field as the game's ominous jingle plays and moves from the top to the bottom of the screen, where it disappears. The player's ship starts in the middle of the field with 5 lives and numerous mines start popping up. The player must eliminate all of the mines in order to progress to the next mine field. All of the mines can be destroyed with one shot, or hit with the player's ship, costing the player a life. There are 4 types of mines:
Floating Mines - "Dumb" mines that drift through space.
Large: 100 Pts. Medium: 135 Pts. Small: 200 Pts.
Fireball Mines - Mines that hurl a fireball after getting shot. The fireballs can be avoided or shot.
Large: 325 Pts. Medium: 360 Pts. Small: 425 Pts.
Magnetic Mines - Mines that home in on the player's ship.
Large: 500 Pts. Medium: 535 Pts. Small: 600 Pts.
Magnetic Fireball Mines - Combination of Magnetic and Fireball Mines
Large: 750 Pts. Medium: 785 Pts. Small: 850 Pts.
Each mine will appear in three sizes: Large, medium, and small. The player will earn an extra life after clearing 4 fields. If all lives are lost, the game ends.
The original cartridge that came with the Vectrex system had a bug where the game stops at field 13. If a player called GCE (Milton Bradley in the UK) and report this bug, he/she would receive "MineStorm/II", free of charge. Only a few people did this, therefore, making the game extremely rare among collectors. [1]