Miner 2049er is a platform game developed by Big Five Software and published in December 1982 for the Atari 8-bit computers. The player controls Mountie Bounty Bob through multiple levels of a mine, with the goal of traversing all of the platforms in each level all while avoiding enemies and within a set amount of time. Miner 2049er was widely ported, being released on a total of 22 different systems. Video magazine's editors commented on the game's popularity in January 1984, declaring it "the most widely played home electronic game of all time" and that "no home-arcade title has had the impact" that Miner 2049er had.

Programmer Bill Hogue blended ideas from popular arcade games, specifically Pac-Man (1980) and Donkey Kong (1981). It was the first game he developed for the Atari 8-bit computers. His previous games were monochromatic, and Hogue was excited at the opportunity to make the games in color for the system and wanted to surpass Donkey Kong. The resulting game has ten stages, most of them with unique gameplay elements. Big Five Software developed a custom 16 kilobyte ROM cartridge for the game compared to the standard 8 kilobyte cart for the Atari computers.

The game received positive press throughout 1983, appearing on best-of lists, with video game critics complimenting its colorful graphics, game design, and originality. After a cancelled attempt at a spin-off, the sequel Bounty Bob Strikes Back! was released in 1985, after which Big 5 closed its doors and Hogue stopped writing games. Richard Stanton, in his book A Brief History of Video Games (2015), said that Miner 2049er was generally forgotten in the wake of Super Mario Bros. (1985).

Miner 2049er features a Mountie named Bounty Bob who has been chasing a wanted criminal into a series of uranium mines. The object of the game is to complete all levels of the mine. To complete a stage, Bob must survey the mine by moving left and right across every part of the floor of each level. Each screen must be fully traversed within a set time indicated at the top of the screen to progress to the next level. Levels feature different hazards such as gaps in platforms and radioactive waste to be avoided and slow moving platforms such as lifts. Other modes of transportation rapidly move Bob across the stage. These include transporters that warp Bob to different numbered doors, a cannon that must be powered by collecting TNT, interconnected slides which force Bob down a path. The original Atari computer and Atari 5200 versions of the game have ten different levels. This was changed in some ports: the Atari 2600 cartridge had three, the ColecoVision version has eleven, while the TI-99/4A port has eight.

The player has a set amount of five lives indicated at the top of the screen. The player loses them by interacting with mutant enemies, falling from certain heights off a platform, and running out of time in a level. If Bob collects prospecting gear, such as candles and drills, the mutants turn green momentarily, making them vulnerable to Bob's touch. Points are awarded for collecting prospecting gear, eliminating enemies and the remaining time at the end of a level. After the game is over, the player can add their name to a high score list if they scored high enough. The high score is not saved after the cartridge is removed from the computer.

Miner 2049er was programmed by Bill Hogue of Big Five Software of Van Nuys, California. The company officially formed in 1980 and made computer games that were sold through mail order for the TRS-80 line of computers. Big Five Software's games were primarily clones of popular arcade games prior to Miner 2049er.

After finding that the TRS-80 game market was in decline, the team refocused their attention to making games for the Atari 400 and 800 computer line. As the TRS-80 had graphics that were monochrome and described by Hogue as "limited", The game was Hogue's first published game for Atari computers. His team chose to develop for the line, as they felt it was the best combination of graphics and sound and that their cartridge games could not as easily be pirated. The graphics and audio in the game are credited to Curtis A. Mikolyski, Jeff Konyu, Kelly Bakst, and Hogue. It was the group's first color computer game. Hogue said he was obsessed with the advanced color capabilities of the Atari computers, which allowed for 15 different colors on the screen at any one time. A black-and-white version was developed for TRS-80 computers, but it was never released. The game was released on a 16-kilobyte ROM cartridge—a large amount of storage at the time, with other games for the Atari 400 and 800 computers such as Star Raiders (1980) and Missile Command (1981) requiring only 8-kilobyte ROMs. The group designed their own circuit boards to store the game at this size. The game was written in assembly language on an Atari computer.

The gameplay for Miner 2049er was developed first, followed later by the mining theme and narrative. Like their previous games, Big Five Software looked to arcade games for inspiration. Hogue recalled that the team really liked the climbing-aspects of Donkey Kong (1981) and believed they could improve on the gameplay formula. Hogue wanted to blend together the elements he found fun from different arcade games; specifically, the climbing from Donkey Kong and both traversing the entire screen and enemies who can be made vulnerable from Pac-Man (1980). He recollected that "I was never very good at Pac-Man, so I'm not sure why I borrowed any elements from the game." The mutant enemies were also inspired by Pac-Man, with Hogue discussing he used the arcade games ability to grab items to make enemies vulnerable to defeat for a short period of time. In Miner 2049er, Hogue described the level design "a somewhat tedious process" with all of the platforms that the player can step on being hard-coded, allowing level design to be tweaked by adjusting coordinates in the code. Other traversal methods such as the cannons and transporters were made as an iterative process, and that none of those gameplay mechanics were thought of ahead of time.