Dragon 32/64 0:26
ZX Spectrum 1:09
Commodore 16 2:16
Amstrad CPC 3:17
BBC Micro 4:27
Commodore 64 5:48
MSX 6:55
Neo Geo Pocket 8:09
Oric 1 9:12
SAM Coupé 10:24
Amiga 11:24
DOS 12:32
Windows 13:22
Gameboy Advance 14:23
Description Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_Miner
Manic Miner is a platform game originally written for the ZX Spectrum by Matthew Smith and released by Bug-Byte in 1983 (later re-released by Software Projects). It is the first game in the Miner Willy series and among the pioneers of the platform game genre. The game itself was inspired by the Atari 800 game Miner 2049er. It has since been ported to numerous home computers and video game consoles.
Gameplay
At the time, its stand-out features included in-game music and sound effects, excellent playability, and colourful graphics, which were well designed for the graphical limitations of the ZX Spectrum. The Spectrum’s video display allowed the background and foreground colors to be exchanged automatically without software attention and the “animated” load screen appears to swap the words Manic and Miner through clever manipulation of this feature. An homage to this loading screen appeared in one episode of the 2005 British sitcom Nathan Barley.
On the Spectrum this was the first game with in-game music, the playing of which required constant CPU attention and was thought impossible. It was cleverly achieved by constantly alternating CPU time between the music and the game (which accounts for the music’s stuttery rhythm). The in-game music is In the Hall of the Mountain King from Edvard Grieg’s music to Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt. The music that plays during the title screen is an arrangement of An der schönen blauen Donau (popularly known as The Blue Danube), a waltz by Johann Strauß.
Objective
In each of the twenty caverns are several flashing objects, which the player must collect before Willy’s oxygen supply runs out. Once the player has collected the objects in one cavern, they must then go to the now-flashing portal, which will take them to the next cavern. The player must avoid enemies (listed in the cassette inlay) as “…Poisonous Pansies, Spiders, Slime, and Manic Mining Robots…”, which move along predefined paths at constant speeds. Willy can also be killed by falling too far, so players must time the precision of jumps and other movements to prevent such falls or collisions with the enemies.
The game ends when the player has no lives left; extra lives are gained every 10,000 points.
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