I don’t know why I find this game so addictive. It makes no sense if you stop to think about it. I mean, mining for gold by shooting a mechanical claw into the ground and using a winch to pull up whatever it grabs? That would be silly even without the gophers that sometimes carry diamonds in their teeth. And the barrels of TNT that explode when you touch them (who buried those, and why?). But for some reason the game is fun, so I keep playing.
UPDATE: There’s also Gold Miner Special Edition, which seems to be exactly the same game with fancier graphics.