What is the Easiest Manic Miner / Jet Set Willy Clone?

[1bvl109]

Ok, Here's my confession. I never got very far in this games.Yes, yes i know, these aren't even the hardest game this little machine had to offer, but anyway.

Do the experts here have anything to recommand, preferably for the 48k?

Also I never could make up my mind, if this is a game you should play on the keyboard or with a Kempston Competion Pro.

[spider]

I always found them easier via keyboard 'back then' although I only owned a QS stick for a while, I do recall trying JSW with it and could not really get on with it, so keyboard I'd say.

Early, well its difficult to say, there's plenty in 1984 such as Technician Ted, Pyramania, Son-of-Blagger and so on etc etc. Kokotoni Wilf perhaps although its not really left/right/jump , its left/right/fly. It is an interesting take on a platform game though in its own way.

Would you only want machine code games though ? It may well be possible to find some 83 platformer written in Basic or partial basic.

I'd suggest you perhaps only consider 1983 games maybe, that way you sort of cover the "MM era" rather than the JSW one, having said that there might be a multi-room in a similar vein to JSW released in 83 but I cannot immediately think of one.

I'm going to watch this topic with interest however.

EDIT... Re-written most of the post (only a few minutes after initial submission) so it actually made sense!

[Ralf]

Well, they were all generally hard . Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Technician Ted, Monty Mole games... all hard

Chuckie Egg has a much better difficulty level and is a bit Manic Miner Style. But could we call it a clone? Probably not, it's
a brand of its own.

[R-Tape]

Ok, Here's my confession. I never got very far in this games.Yes, yes i know, these aren't even the hardest game this little machine had to offer, but anyway.

Do the experts here have anything to recommand, preferably for the 48k?

Also I never could make up my mind, if this is a game you should play on the keyboard or with a Kempston Competion Pro.

All the old ones are bleedin' rock hard!

IMHO they have to be played with keys, specifically OPZ.

I'd recommend Loony Zoo:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=2925

It's far from easy, but is so simple that you keep wanting to make that little extra step. I think so anyway.

If you were willing to consider modern MODs, and 128k at that, I'd recommend Willy meets the Beatles, it's not very challenging, and it feels like you're walking a story.

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=27310

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Try Phantomas by Dinamic.

Cool graphics and map.

[Morkin]

...Easiest...

....by Dinamic.

[jetsetdanny]

First of all, definitely the keyboard. I don't think joystick is any good for this type of games, because all of them need a certain level of precision (like when making a far jump off the very edge of a platform), and some (the difficult ones) need pixel-perfect precision in some manoeuvres. You won't get that kind of precision with a joystick, I believe.

Secondly, the inverse question: What are the hardest MM/JSW clones? - would be much easier to answer. There would be just a few contenders there is each category (MM and JSW), and there is even a Japanese gentleman out there who is working on a quasi-scientific comparison of the challenges they pose to determine which is the hardest one!

Speaking about MM/JSW clones, I will limit myself to the ones which use the original or modifed game engines (listed on JSW Central).

I generally prefer difficult games, as a challenge. As for the easy ones, since they offer no real playing challenge as such (because they're easy), I particularly appreciate it when they are atmospheric, or - as mentioned above - "feel like you're walking a story", or take you on a journey.

Examples of such games for me would be: in the MM world - "Jet Set Luis: Rumbo a la Costa Blanca" and in the JSW world: "JSW in Paris", or "Bizarre", or "Willy on a Transatlantic Cruise", or "Terry The Turtle". These are just examples, of course, there are many other games which share these characteristics.

Another question is: What level of difficulty (or ease) are we talking about - the 1983/84 one or the 2019 one? What I mean is, when you play games on an emulator, you can save and reload snapshots or use the Rollback feature easily. This is what I always do: I play games recording them in Spin, using Q for left, W for right and Space to jump (with my left hand, although I am right-handed!) and using Insert, Delete and F3 to insert cue points, roll the game back to the last cue point and resume it (with my right hand).

When you play like this, games generally seem easy, because every time you make a mistake, you roll the game back and try again, automatically. Most games seem like a piece of cake when you play like this, and the really difficult ones can be frustrating - if you have to repeat the same manoeuvre fifty times to get it right! - but they are doable.

However, playing even the "easy" ones on real hardware without the help of Rollback or equivalent methods of resuming the game from before you failed would be a totally different story. An Infinite Lives POKE would help, of course, but then it wouldn't protect you from Infinite Death Scenarios which appear in some JSW games, and it wouldn't let you collect some items properly (if you lose a life collecting an item, you couldn't go back and try to collect it again without losing a life).

[Juan F. Ramirez]

...Easiest...

....by Dinamic.

Hehehe!

Talking seriously, the level of difficulty is similar to JSW, neither more or less. I've always found it as the Dinamic version of JSW.

[1bvl109]

Thanks to everyone, especially R-Tape who detected my fishing for consolation and delivered.
Seems I'll have to stray far of the usual MM/JW-Look or look again into conjuring up a NMI-driving-oscillater to slow things down. I see another question raising here, but it should be put somewhere else.

[R-Tape]

Secondly, the inverse question: What are the hardest MM/JSW clones? - would be much easier to answer. There would be just a few contenders there is each category (MM and JSW), and there is even a Japanese gentleman out there who is working on a quasi-scientific comparison of the challenges they pose to determine which is the hardest one!

That's a fantastic link - I love the scientific approach! I didn't know Andrew Cornhill's games before, but I'm not even slightly surprised to see Andrew Broad and Daniel Gromann topping the table of difficulty. Add to that the fact that Andrew Broad's games are psychologically scarring as well!

I generally prefer difficult games, as a challenge. As for the easy ones, since they offer no real playing challenge as such (because they're easy), I particularly appreciate it when they are atmospheric, or - as mentioned above - "feel like you're walking a story", or take you on a journey.

One thing I'd love to see, that I don't think has been done yet, is a platform game that is purely an experience — no baddies that kill, no spikes, no deadly falls (okay maybe deadly falls). It's something I plan to have a bash at myself one day, but I just don't have an idea for a theme yet. I suppose we're wandering away from games and into "art", but I think it could work.

[Ralf]

One thing I'd love to see, that I don't think has been done yet, is a platform game that is purely an experience — no baddies that kill, no spikes, no deadly falls (okay maybe deadly falls). It's something I plan to have a bash at myself one day, but I just don't have an idea for a theme yet. I suppose we're wandering away from games and into "art", but I think it could work.

It's called "walking simulator"
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/walking-simulator

And yes, some people consider it an art, some people don't consider it a game.
It would br curious to see something like that on Spectrum but it definitely needs to be good and original at aestethics.

[R-Tape]

It's called "walking simulator"
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/walking-simulator

And yes, some people consider it an art, some people don't consider it a game.
It would br curious to see something like that on Spectrum but it definitely needs to be good and original at aestethics.

Ah yes, I remember this "genre". Modern games seem to be a mix of strolling and puzzles.

Agreed, on the Speccy, it would definitely need fantastic graphics and an especially interesting theme.

I do recall something that came close to this genre but was never finish or released: "apenao", a Spanish guy that was very active during the CGC a few years back, as a gift to his son, made a compiled BASIC tour of his local town (Seville?). I remember a map view and a zoo. (Actually it would be good to get this into ZXDB if anyone has more info, and even better some files).