Of the plethora of Manic Miner clones and derivatives out there, I would rate Maglaxians as rather good. OK, so it appears to be lacking the outright creative rush that became what we know and admire as the peerless original, but it gets one thing right - playability.
As in the original, here the gameplay is good with smooth animation and pleasingly responsive controls. The level layout is suitably clever, meaning you have to be careful where you are jumping from (or to), lest you fall foul of landing on the wrong part of a one way conveyer belt, or stuck underneath a solid, impenetrable platform with a guardian sprite closing in on you.
On loading the game, you will be greeted with a "Maglaxians 128" message which may potentially be confusing since as far as I know this is purely a 48K game. When you learn however that this game has 128 rooms, then it makes sense that the "128" is almost certainly referring to this fact. Consequently, you start the game with what might first appear to be an overly-generous 23 lives but makes perfect sense, given the size of the game. Also, the player character can fall from a great height here and will surprisingly survive, unlike in MM.
The version currently in the WoS archive may be hacked, as it offers a "Trainer mode" on loading. I really don't know if the original version had this feature, but normally this is the sort of thing found in hacked titles in my experience. Naturally, the trainer mode is optional.
This game lacks a few things that Manic Miner has. Notably, the Maglaxians levels are not shown in a revealing "slide show" whilst the game is not being played. Also, the individual rooms have no names, only a number. Even though this game is Czech, I would still have liked to see some humourous room names (after all they could always be translated). With 128 rooms to name though, it would no doubt have eaten a bit of RAM! Finally, looking at the Maglaxians map of all levels, I can't see any sort of equivalent to the unique "Eugene's Lair" or "Solar Power Generator" rooms, which added extra variety to the original MM game.
My final gripe is the keyboard layout, Q=left, W=right and CAPS-SHIFT=jump. This wouldn't be my first choice (as I'm not left-handed). There's also no apparent define keys option and Kempston doesn't work either. So I'd have to get some sort of keystick option going, or POKE the game if I started a serious campaign to complete it.
Despite the various issues, it is a good Manic Miner type effort and has to be commended for crucially getting the playability right and for the large number of rooms. Clearly a lot of work must have gone into the development of the game itself and the level design.
