[lilalurl]

The only version there is (at least on Planetemu) is labeled beta.

In-game, although your projectiles can kill enemies, nothing can interact with your ship (enemy projectiles, lava ball, pikes).

So my guess is that collision detection with the ship had not been implemented and as a consequence collision with the miners does not work and therefore the miner can't be rescued.

Although very unlikely, it could be that it used a specific collision technique not emulated (at least not in Kega Fusion).
If you have another version than the beta one, I would not mind having a try at it.

Edit (since this was used as an argument during a discussion for the EMPL voting process): with more info about the game, given the rom header and having played further into it, the ship being invincible to enemy fire (at least as far as I have played) is very likely to be a design choice rather than some collision detection missing/not working. For instance, there are several times when you have to try and get out with a very good timing because there are enemy shootings (some with homing missiles) around and only a limited number of places to land on.