Why Power Miners is better than Rock Raiders

[mon-o-mat]

Sorry for the necro, but I have to say, now, that the Power Miners theme is nearly as old as Rock Raiders was when it came out, that I still have to agree with the OP. RR is more iconic, has better minifigs but PM is overall better. Ok, maybe excpet the third wave.

[Digger of Bricks]

We are way overdue for a new underground action theme, almost a decade to be exact; and, given how Power Miners was one of Lego's best selling in-house themes until Ninjago debuted, I'm surprised we haven't seen a spiritual successor to it since then! 

But, ten years huh? That is how much time sat in between Rock Raiders (1999) and Power Miners (2009), right? So, perhaps 2019 may give us that successor some time around then... 

Edited June 26, 2018 by Digger of Bricks

[mon-o-mat]

14 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

We are way overdue for a new underground action theme, almost a decade to be exact; and, given how Power Miners was one of Lego's best selling in-house themes until Ninjago debuted, I'm surprised we haven't seen a spiritual successor to it since then! 

But, ten years huh? That is how much time sat in between Rock Raiders (1999) and Power Miners (2009), right? So, perhaps 2019 may give us that successor some time around then... 

Definitley. I mean, which boy doesn't like big maschines(Note: This may not be true for all boys, while being true for some girls too). But with a better setting and minifigs than PM please.

[Digger of Bricks]

5 hours ago, mon-o-mat said:

...But with a better setting and minifigs than PM please.

SPACE.

We need to see an honest-to-goodness Space Miners theme, and not merely in-name-only like Rock Raiders, one that includes oxygen-less environments and therefore helmeted miners and canopied utility vehicles/spacecraft. 

If not that, then I'd probably wish to see a real Steampunk mining theme, one that could be lightly inspired after Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. 

[Aanchir]

21 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

We are way overdue for a new underground action theme, almost a decade to be exact; and, given how Power Miners was one of Lego's best selling in-house themes until Ninjago debuted, I'm surprised we haven't seen a spiritual successor to it since then! 

But, ten years huh? That is how much time sat in between Rock Raiders (1999) and Power Miners (2009), right? So, perhaps 2019 may give us that successor some time around then... 

There's certainly a lot of new parts that have come out since Power Miners that could be well-suited to an underground adventure theme:

• the 2x2x3 drill piece from Nexo Knights
• the 4x4x2 space wheel from Nexo Knights
• the 2x3 rocky "claw" piece from Nexo Knights (and any number of other rocky elements from the second year sets)
• the rock/nugget/ore piece from this year's City Mining sets
• the new saw piece from this year's City Arctic sets.
• the the rubber friction insert pieces from the Fortrex, Boost, etc.
• the rocky armor add-on piece from Hero Factory

And so on.

I do hope if we get another underground theme it has more girls than either Rock Raiders or Power Miners had. I think the lack of female miners was Power Miners' biggest failing.

[Digger of Bricks]

12 hours ago, Aanchir said:

There's certainly a lot of new parts that have come out since Power Miners that could be well-suited to an underground adventure theme:

Well, put into that perspective, I think we may have a pretty strong case for such a revival on the horizon! After all, we really do need some sort of lower-tiered in-house action/adventure theme in today's current product lineup. Besides the underground genre, I'm also hoping to see a return to the Aquazone genre sometime here, perhaps in 2020 ten years after the debut of the last Aquazone theme, Atlantis. 

By the way, what sort of aesthetic, storyline, and/or setting would you yourself hope to see for the next underground theme, whenever it does roll around? 

[mon-o-mat]

12 hours ago, Aanchir said:

There's certainly a lot of new parts that have come out since Power Miners that could be well-suited to an underground adventure theme:

• the 2x2x3 drill piece from Nexo Knights
• the 4x4x2 space wheel from Nexo Knights
• the 2x3 rocky "claw" piece from Nexo Knights (and any number of other rocky elements from the second year sets)
• the rock/nugget/ore piece from this year's City Mining sets
• the new saw piece from this year's City Arctic sets.
• the the rubber friction insert pieces from the Fortrex, Boost, etc.
• the rocky armor add-on piece from Hero Factory

And so on.

I do hope if we get another underground theme it has more girls than either Rock Raiders or Power Miners had. I think the lack of female miners was Power Miners' biggest failing.

Don't forget the new helmets from City. They would be ideal to bring more variety to the minifigs.

 

[obsidianheart]

Actually, there was that Space Miner Collectible Minifig, remember? I thought he was a sign of things to come with that helmet with the built-in lamp on top. But then nothing appeared.

[Digger of Bricks]

6 hours ago, obsidianheart said:

Actually, there was that Space Miner Collectible Minifig, remember? I thought he was a sign of things to come with that helmet with the built-in lamp on top. But then nothing appeared.

Sometimes certain CMFs have served as forerunners for an upcoming line in the past it seems (I guess the S7 Galaxy Patrol CMF come to mind as a forerunner to Galaxy Squad), but that's never the case for the most part. It was an interesting helmet mold though, one that I'm surprised we haven't seen show up elsewhere. 

But yes, those are pretty much the type of miners I'd wish to see populate a Space Miners theme, suggesting a lack of oxygen to directly communicate that it's a Space theme.

[mon-o-mat]

On 6/28/2018 at 1:36 PM, Digger of Bricks said:

Sometimes certain CMFs have served as forerunners for an upcoming line in the past it seems (I guess the S7 Galaxy Patrol CMF come to mind as a forerunner to Galaxy Squad), but that's never the case for the most part. It was an interesting helmet mold though, one that I'm surprised we haven't seen show up elsewhere. 

But yes, those are pretty much the type of miners I'd wish to see populate a Space Miners theme, suggesting a lack of oxygen to directly communicate that it's a Space theme.

You mean like Mars Mission? But with less fighting against aliens?

Btw, Did TLC actually expect that Power Miners would be so succesfull? Because I have the feeling it is one of those theme complexes, marketing doesn't really like.

[Digger of Bricks]

12 hours ago, mon-o-mat said:

You mean like Mars Mission? But with less fighting against aliens?

More like Power Miners, with rougher, tougher looking land vehicles for both mining and hauling. On the other hand, I think that the overall aesthetic of Mars Mission was a bit too sleek to be thought of as a mining theme upon first impressions, so I'm saying that I'd wish to see a space miners theme that combines the gruffer, heavier look of Power Miners with suggested amenities to support its characters on an oxygen-less planet.

[mon-o-mat]

After Aanchirs post on Brickset about how he would love different biomes for Power Miners (https://brickset.com/article/44648/random-set-of-the-day-mine-mech), and since I thought it would have been  cool too, I decided to play around with LDD:

 

[Digger of Bricks]

On 6/25/2018 at 10:14 PM, Digger of Bricks said:

We are way overdue for a new underground action theme, almost a decade to be exact; and, given how Power Miners was one of Lego's best selling in-house themes until Ninjago debuted, I'm surprised we haven't seen a spiritual successor to it since then! 

But, ten years huh? That is how much time sat in between Rock Raiders (1999) and Power Miners (2009), right? So, perhaps 2019 may give us that successor some time around then... 

Welp, 2019's about here and gone, so much for a new underground action theme ten years after Power Miners... 

[The Island Chronicles]

Rock Raiders was waaaayyyyy better than Power Miners. Rock Raiders actually had a sensible backstory. Power Miners was just there for fan service. They should bring Rock Raiders back. 

Edited July 13, 2019 by pooda

[Digger of Bricks]

7 minutes ago, pooda said:

Rock Raiders was waaaayyyyy better than Power Miners. Rock Raiders actually had a sensible backstory. Power Miners was just there for fan service. They should bring Rock Raiders back. 

Why not something all-new, rather than just bringing back one-or-the-other? 

[TeriXeri]

My only experience with rock monsters were Nexo Knight's stone wave, technically the Lava monsters were stone monsters as well, but that's mostly depicted on the larger monsters and builds, but minifigs like Moltor, Flama, Whipparella minifigs certainly helped with the stone/lava theme.

I know the use of purple/medium blue has been criticized but they can always adjust that for more earthy tones or lava/icy tones instead of purple. (unless it's like an Amethyst crystal monster, and even then it'd be transparent purple)

And while I never had any Rock Raider or Power Miner sets, I feel Minifigs and Brick-Built monsters can work well as a LEGO toy instead of big-figs if they ever make another rock creature fantasy theme.

Even if it ups the parts counts with brick-built monsters, it allows more customization and LEGO has added a lot more smaller movable parts since 1999/2009. Especially on the hinges/joints and curved/angled/snot parts department.

For me Insectoids (1998-1999) sets were a lot more interesting when Rock Raiders was around, and I can't say much about Power Miners as I wasn't into LEGO during the 2000s at all so I only learned about the theme years after it retired.

Edited July 13, 2019 by TeriXeri

[Lyichir]

1 hour ago, pooda said:

Rock Raiders was waaaayyyyy better than Power Miners. Rock Raiders actually had a sensible backstory. Power Miners was just there for fan service. They should bring Rock Raiders back. 

Not sure what you mean by "fanservice".

Not every theme is reliant on a "sensible" backstory. In fact, more traditional themes like City, Pirates, Castle, and Space often do perfectly well without any sort of highly involved lore. Power Miners had what it needed: enough of a story frame to contextualize the set designs and the conflict therein. And the sets are where it truly excelled, far moreso than the overly simplified late '90s builds of Rock Raiders. Power Miners sets, in contrast, had an emphasis on functionality that is almost unparalleled even years later.

And for that matter, I think you could even argue that in the realm of characterization, Power Miners lore might be even better than Rock Raiders. While it didn't have an opening videogame cutscene to define the backstory, what it did have was character bios that gave the characters (both the humans and the monsters) personalities rather than just roles defined by their designated specialties in the game.

[mon-o-mat]

2 hours ago, Lyichir said:

Not sure what you mean by "fanservice".

Not every theme is reliant on a "sensible" backstory. In fact, more traditional themes like City, Pirates, Castle, and Space often do perfectly well without any sort of highly involved lore. Power Miners had what it needed: enough of a story frame to contextualize the set designs and the conflict therein. And the sets are where it truly excelled, far moreso than the overly simplified late '90s builds of Rock Raiders. Power Miners sets, in contrast, had an emphasis on functionality that is almost unparalleled even years later.

And for that matter, I think you could even argue that in the realm of characterization, Power Miners lore might be even better than Rock Raiders. While it didn't have an opening videogame cutscene to define the backstory, what it did have was character bios that gave the characters (both the humans and the monsters) personalities rather than just roles defined by their designated specialties in the game.

To be fair, the backstory of RockRaiders was somehow better than the PowerMiners one. Not that the overall concept of this kinda "The Day Earth Stood Still" vibe was bad, but for one point, I never got if it was the chrystals that created the earthquakes or the monsters. And what was the end goal? Total genocide of rockmonsters? Collecting chrystals? Eventually they got to lava-level, but why and what did they do there?

[The Island Chronicles]

6 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

Why not something all-new, rather than just bringing back one-or-the-other? 

We could do that too. 

[Aanchir]

3 hours ago, mon-o-mat said:

To be fair, the backstory of RockRaiders was somehow better than the PowerMiners one. Not that the overall concept of this kinda "The Day Earth Stood Still" vibe was bad, but for one point, I never got if it was the chrystals that created the earthquakes or the monsters. And what was the end goal? Total genocide of rockmonsters? Collecting chrystals? Eventually they got to lava-level, but why and what did they do there? 

In answer to some of your questions, the earthquakes were caused by the Rock Monsters eating and digesting the energy crystals. The Power Miners had gone underground to investigate the cause of the earthquakes and stop them. They ended up deciding to capture some of the Rock Monsters for study while also gathering up as many crystals as possible to keep the monsters from eating them.

Nothing in the story ever suggested that they ever stooped to genocide or anything like that — frankly, the theme had much less violence than Rock Raiders, who actually destroyed attacking monsters in the video game that the theme's main story was told through. Power Miners, by comparison, was mostly a game of cat and mouse, with the rock monsters trying to snatch back the crystals taken by the miners or sabotage the miners' mission, and the miners in turn trying to fend off or capture attacking rock monsters and keep them away from the crystals.

Both themes' rock monsters had a similar territorial behavior and possessive attitude towards the energy crystals. However, Power Miners started out with smaller monsters who were mostly gremlin-like pranksters and saboteurs. As the Power Miners continued to dig, they encountered larger, more vicious monsters, and eventually their drilling woke up the Rock Monsters' leader, the Crystal King. The battle with the Crystal King trapped the miners in the lava caverns even deeper underground, which were populated by fiery lava monsters. But the overall objective didn't change aside from the miners now needing to use water and heatproof suits and vehicles to keep the monsters at bay.

All in all, neither theme has a particularly complex plot… the miners in each simply continuing to pursue the same objective — retrieving enough crystals to power the LMS Explorer in Rock Raiders' case, or retrieving the crystals to keep the monsters from eating them in the Power Miners' case — for the duration of their respective storylines.

And while a lot of people tend to associate Rock Raiders with a grittier tone due to its more dire survival-driven storyline and darker color palette, the Rock Raiders comics and video game cutscenes in fact had a tone just as goofy and lighthearted as a lot of the Power Miners theme's supporting media.

7 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

Why not something all-new, rather than just bringing back one-or-the-other? 

Truth be told, I wish more AFOLs were more open to this possibility, instead of so many being convinced that the only themes LEGO should bother considering are revivals or updates of old ones. It's frustrating how many instances there are where all the hate directed towards *insert new thing here* boils down to it NOT being *insert old thing here*. Even if what's now considered "old" used to be considered "new" and was rejected in the same fashion at that time.

Edited July 13, 2019 by Aanchir

[Digger of Bricks]

Just now, Aanchir said:

7 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

Why not something all-new, rather than just bringing back one-or-the-other? 

Truth be told, I wish more AFOLs were more open to this possibility, instead of so many being convinced that the only themes LEGO should bother considering are revivals or updates of old ones.

For instance, besides the Space Miners and Vernian ideas I've proposed here earlier, what if the next underground/subterranean action theme took more after @hjmediastudios's old CUUSOO submission in premise? It doesn't always have to be about miners versus rock monsters. 

LEGO Ideas - Hyperborea | Eurobricks - Hyperborea

Quote

An exciting new theme or mini-theme of Lego adventure: Hyperborea! Following the adventures of an expedition sent to explore the newly-discovered hollow world inside Earth, Hyperborea chronicles a variety of eccentric adventurerers in an alternate-history, steampunk world. They face a variety of challenges and mysteries, including the sightless dinosaurs of Lower Hyperborea, and the powerful and mystifying Illuminati, an ancient organization obsessed with building pyramids.

Our intrepid crew, is, for now:

- Dr. Archibald Thunder: A cheerful (but unlucky) archaeologist with a specialty in symbols.
- Sister Helen Potter, a cyborg nun with, quite literally, a heart of gold.
- Lieutenant Jack Hamilton, the disturbingly cheerful head of expedition security.
- Professor Charlotte Raines: An unconventional but effective cryptozoologist.
- Lord Lewis Wotheringham-Smythe XII: A fitfully lucid expert in "unusual occurences."

With an assortment of gadgets, vehicles, and contraptions, Hyperborea promises to be a hit with both AFOLs and kids alike- Clever constructions and durable, playable vehicles and locations fill Hyperborea's endless reaches inside the Earth, with another mystery around every corner, danger in every cavern, and a limitless sense of adventure! Experienced builders in particular will appreciate the Hyperborea theme's focus on fan-favorite types of vehicles, including the mechanical walkers of the Illuminati, the chunky and hard-edged hardsuits, as well as the fantastical sky fighters, of the expedition, the whimsical creations of the native Hyperboreans, and the strange, brick-built playsets that bring the landscape to life.

 

[dr_spock]

I didn't have Rock Raider but Power Miners.  PM was fun and funny.  I recall the designers did several silly YouTube videos for PM back then. Power Miners monsters rocks! 

 

 

[KotZ]

On 7/14/2019 at 3:05 PM, dr_spock said:

I didn't have Rock Raider but Power Miners.  PM was fun and funny.  I recall the designers did several silly YouTube videos for PM back then. Power Miners monsters rocks!

My brother @Capt.JohnPaul loved Power Miners, and yeah I remember some silly videos as well. We had some old Rock Raiders stuff passed down, so I think I lean more towards those as I 'm a bit older.

[Lordofdragonss]

Reminder that Power miners was "City" subtheme while Rock Riders were Space theme :)

Edited July 17, 2019 by Lordofdragonss

[mon-o-mat]

On 7/14/2019 at 12:35 AM, Aanchir said:

Truth be told, I wish more AFOLs were more open to this possibility, instead of so many being convinced that the only themes LEGO should bother considering are revivals or updates of old ones. It's frustrating how many instances there are where all the hate directed towards *insert new thing here* boils down to it NOT being *insert old thing here*. Even if what's now considered "old" used to be considered "new" and was rejected in the same fashion at that time.

Of course most AFOLs will reject new themes. Besides nostalgia it simply means that they can't add new sets to their collection, the new minifigures won't go with the old ones and most of the times the different colours mean, that the new sets won't be good part-donators.