Manic Miner Overview
Manic Miner Free Download for PC is a platform video 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 early titles in 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, high replay value, 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 colours to be exchanged automatically without software attention and the «animated» load screen appears to swap the words Manic and Miner through manipulation of this feature.
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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 achieved by constantly alternating CPU time between the music and the game. This results in 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 The Blue Danube. Manic Miner Download free Full Version.
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 worst of all, 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.
Extra lives are gained every 10,000 points, and the game ends when the player has either no lives left, or completes all twenty caverns and escapes to the open air.
Version differences
There are some differences between the Bug-Byte and Software Projects versions. The scroll-text during the attract mode is different, to reflect the new copyright, and there are also several other changes:
- In Processing Plant, the enemy at the end of the conveyor belt is a bush in the original, whereas the Software Projects one resembles a PacMan ghost.
- In Amoebatrons' Revenge, the original Bug-Byte amoebatrons look like alien octopuses with tentacles hanging down, whereas the Software Projects amoebatrons resemble the Bug-Byte logo — smiling beetles, with little legs up their sides. Manic Miner Game free Download Full Version.
- In The Warehouse, the original game has threshers travelling up and down the vertical slots, rotating about the screen's X-axis. The Software Projects version has 'impossible triangle' sprites (i.e. the Software Projects logo) instead, which rotate about the screen's Z-axis. Manic Miner Free Download Torrent.
- The Bug-Byte cheat code was the numerical sequence «6031769» — based on Matthew Smith's driving licence. In the Software Projects version this changed to «typewriter».
- Internal code changes meant that a new POKE was required for infinite lives.
Reception
Manic Miner was placed at number 25 in the «Your Sinclair official top 100» Spectrum games of all time, and was voted number 6 in the Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time in the same issue.
It was the winner of a Golden Joystick Award for best arcade style game by Computer & video games magazine in the March 1983 edition. Placed third in «Game of the Year 1983» of the same competition. Manic Miner game free Download for PC Full Version
Manic Miner Screenshots
