Ultimate Guide: Manic Miner
It’s rather astonishing that we’ve never given this Spectrum classic the Ultimate Guide treatment
It’s the legendary platform game that instigated a whole genre and introduced the world to wonders such as Eugene’s Lair and The Central Cavern. Revered by a whole generation of Spectrum gamers, this is the ultimate guide to the pixel perfect legend that is Manic Miner
First published in 1983, Matthew Smith’s Manic Miner was a smashhit sensation. Devised within eight weeks by this precocious teenager in his bedroom, the talented coder would soon also assume a mythical status among Spectrum owners. The legend of both Matthew Smith and Miner Willy begins here.
And it starts with a story as odd as some of its graphics. While prospecting for treasure in the wilds of Surbiton, Willy discovers an ancient mineshaft. Unable to resist the urge to explore, the valiant miner is soon delving deep into these strange caves, inhabited by the automatons left over from a superior civilisation, lost in time. With their masters destroyed by war, these robots continue to mine valuable minerals. Struck by the beautiful glowing treasures that lay in each cavern, Willy realises that this is his opportunity for fame and fortune, should he be able to dodge the deadly occupants of this ancient underground realm. These hazards take on the form of poisonous flowers, spiders, slime and, naturally, the aforementioned robots, busy gathering precious metals and deadly to the touch. If Willy is to claim his prize and escape these mines, he must evade them all. Fortunately, this miner has an athletic jump and a considerable air supply for each cave.
Each screen has a number of flashing keys strewn around. Some are picked up easily, while others perch awkwardly, guarded by the peculiar robots – or as the cassette inlay boldly explains “MANIC MINING ROBOTS”. Once Willy has collected all the keys to a particular level, the exit door pulsates, and he can make his escape to the next room.
The keys vary according to the idiosyncrasies of the screen that Willy finds himself in: snowshoes feature in the Cold Room, while ten pence pieces and peeled bananas are the collectibles in the Mutant Telephones and Kong levels respectively. Each item nets Willy 100 points, while completing a level gives him a bonus, calculated by how much air he has remaining. For every 10,000 points, there’s a very welcome extra life.
“It was like a dream come true to work on Manic Miner STEVE AMSTRAD WETHERILL CODER
The individual 20 screens form another character in Manic Miner. From the Central Cavern, complete with its lone Yellow
Submarine-inspired robot, to its author’s homage to arcade games such as Donkey Kong
(Miner Willy Meets The Kong Beast) and Pacman (Processing Plant), there are references behind most of the offbeat denizens. In fact, with levels such as Endorian Forest, The Bank, Abandoned Uranium Works and Eugene’s
Lair all displaying some sort of nod to the Eighties, Manic Miner can easily be viewed as a unique snapshot of a decade that gave us blockbuster movies, nuclear paranoia and yuppies. And everyone remembers the first time they encountered those Skylabs, crashing down perilously close to Miner Willy’s head, or the Solar Power Generator with its air-sapping beam randomly stabbing at our hero.
In addition to the levels, the lost mine’s inhabitants became forged in Spectrum lore, a tribute to the imagination of the game’s creator. The bespectacled and rotund Eugene springs up and down his lair; penguins shuffle backwards and forwards in the Cold Room; and Pac-men, now with legs, bounce around the Processing Plant, eager to munch on anyone foolish enough to get near. Even the static enemies, spiders, slime, spikes and plants are plotted deviously, and often require perfect jumping in order to pass by unscathed. In the successful commercial years of the ZX Spectrum that followed, there were many tough games – yet few could match the ferocious challenge of
Manic Miner’s rigorous screens.
And on top of this problematic perch stands the Solar Power Generator. “It’s sort of complicated… but it’s not a particularly hard level,” noted Matthew innocently in Retro
Gamer’s Making Of Manic Miner back in issue 48. Containing much of the infamous pixelperfect jumping that permeates the game, this penultimate screen also sends a random beam of light at right angles which rapidly diminishes the miner’s air supply. Together with Skylab Landing Bay, it remains one of the most challenging pieces of gaming ever. As befits its classic status, Manic Miner was released several times throughout the Eighties. Firstly, there’s the original Bug-byte version, which came in two different cassette inlays. In the first, a chubby Miner Willy is running away from a robotic hand, clutching a ladder and some gleaming treasure. For the Liverpool company’s second release, the cover is much altered, depicting a bearded, god-like Willy holding a lantern and looking aghast at a bony hand before him. Later in the same year, when Matthew formed his own company, Software Projects, Manic Miner was released for a third time, this time with a wonderfully abstract Roger Tissyman inlay. Gone was
Willy himself, save for his trailing boot, as a bulbous telephone – no doubt inspired by Attack Of The Mutant Telephones – chases
after him, its incongruous tongue salivating over the company’s triangular logo. Finally, in 1989, Mastertronic issued this now-venerable marvel on its Mastertronic Added Dimension label, Roger Tissyman’s cover topped with a new logo and budget price. Despite two changes in physical appearance and publisher, the game itself remained consistent, with the only notable alterations being some alternate amoebatrons, the Software Projects logo appearing in the Warehouse and a cheeky little ghost replacing a bush in the Processing Plant.
Manic Miner gained effusive reviews upon release. Under the strapline of “Penguins Make Life Perilous!” multi-format magazine C&VG declared the Spectrum game full of “humour, horror and wholesome addiction” before scoring it a solid nine out of ten. Personal
Computer News went a step further, awarding Willy’s first adventure a perfect score of five out of five. “The graphics and sound are both superb,” concluded reviewer Mike Gerrard. “And I haven’t enjoyed a game so much since I first encountered Donkey Kong.”
Awards followed, most notably the C&VG
Golden Joystick for best Arcade Style game, and the game’s author became an overnight celebrity. Having left Bug-byte to form his own company, Software Projects, with Alan Maton, Matthew was soon busy working on the next dramatic episode in Miner Willy’s life,
Jet Set Willy. Yet while that huge and open world game also has its legions of fans, for many, it’s the noble first explorative adventure of our fearless potholer that remains the most celebrated of his adventures.
While not the most original of videogames – Manic Miner owes a debt to the Atari game Miner 2049er – the verve and eccentricities of Matthew Smith’s game helped cement its position as an illustrious standard-bearer for the ZX Spectrum. Each screen is a well-designed madness, but a test that can be planned for and overcome by a careful and cunning gamer. While subsequent games eclipsed it in terms of technical achievement, in 1983, Manic Miner presented a number of tricks and gameplay elements that were virtually unknown at the time. From the opening scene in the Central Cavern, accompanied by the chinking bars of In The Hall Of The
Mountain King, through to the sun-drenched Final Barrier, it remains the ultimate test of a gamer’s reflexes and patience, and a true 8-bit superstar.
“Matthew would show up at the office occasionally, although he didn’t have much input on this port” STEVE WETHERILL