Reviews

Another game which I never quite though was as good as its reputation. Not quite sure why on this one - I played it lots, but never really got in to it. Maybe it's just the frustration of having to do the first 13 levels all over again because you died on the 14th (or whatever). That said, it's still very playable.

Superlative platform game, not only one of the best of its genre on the Spectrum but the best on any 8-bit platform.

One of my first spectrum games
and i played it a lot since then.
i still love it to this day.
this is one of the best platformers
and a lot of games were inspired by this game.

What can i say MANIC MINER.
its the one Everyone gets excited about when mentioned.as every 80's child knows
ABSOLOUTLEY ICONIC in its own right
and was the best way to waste time
You know that ya can poke in at line 30 i think? if you stop the tape just after the loading screen And then D.BREAK IT.THEN TYPE IN LINE NUMBER AND POKE ADDRESS.THEN START TAPE TO CONT.TO LOAD.
does anyone recall the exact POKE?for this everlasting lives/any screen.CHEAT!

It's got some great level design, a wicked sense of humour and where other games just haven't stood the test of time it's aged very gracefully thanks to the emphasis on playability.

Looking back though, this really pushed the envelope when it was first released. A lot of good Spectrum games were still written in BASIC at the time and even the machine code efforts were mostly clones of arcade machines with just a few different levels. A game with twenty unique screens, as opposed to randomly generated ones, seemed enormous at the time.

If there's a downside, it's that it can be very unforgiving. Even the Central Cavern isn't that easy to get through for a novice, but once you've cracked it there'll be no stopping you until you've seen the Final Barrier.

An iconic game and deservedly so.

Zx has many more platformers, many of them is better than this.

But manic miner is unique, it's a part of spectrum's subculture, it has e-groups, countless remakes, addons and it brings back nostalgia every time.

I remember my friends playing this endlessly. I was an Elite player trading over the space, but when I return to earth, damn water closets was impossible to jump over. They still are.

If it wasn't manic miner it could only get 2 point from me, but this is manic miner, a classic.

Manic miner - a game that will forever be entwined with the zx spectrum . It made an overnight hero / success out of the author Matthew Smith , a somewhat wacky monty python fan who could produce quality games for the black wonder !

Starting in the central cavern you have to collect each of the several glowing items on each level , then and only then will you make your way to the exit , tot up your score via the amount of oxygen left and progress to the next mindbending level , 20 of them in all and i must confess that without cheating 6031769 i would not have seen them all , i started to crash and burn everytime i got as far as the the kong level.

The game itself now seems fairly simple , just left / right and jump , but therein lies the addictiveness and playability , it drags you back (even after 25 years of playing) for just one more go , its fun to play , the graphics are well animated , varied and very smooth , its wickedly designed as well and has stood the test of time superbly.

Youv'e probably played it and know what im waffling on about , but if you haven't - fire up the speccy or emulator and waste a few hours enjoying a classic game.

There are a handful of games that absolutely define the Spectrum and Matthew Smith wrote two of them: Jet Set Willy and the year before, this game, Manic Miner.

There are a multitude of reasons why MM is a classic of the 8-bit era and I'm not going to bore you with them! One fact remains though: MM is still a supremely playable platform game, and anyone looking into why the Spectrum is so beloved of Specchums merely has to hunt this game out and give it five minutes.

It is IMO a much better game than its sequel and I'm ashamed to admit that in 25 years I have never completed it - curse you The Warehouse!

Magazine Reviews: http://zxspectrumreviews.co.uk/search.aspx?wosid=0003012

A classic of design and imagination, Manic Miner was the game that I searched for online 22 years after playing it for the last time on the real hardware and in so doing rediscovered the Spectrum via emulation.
A conceptually simple, beautiful, captivating game that has charm as well as boundless playability.

A classic fusion of simplicity, humour and addictive playability.

Manic Miner is the quintessential Spectrum game; an arcade experience with immediate goals, progressive difficulty, colorful, simple controls and instructions that can be laid out in one paragraph.

Of course it was also highly addictive and fun to play. Manic Miner ranks among my favorite games of all times and its simple drawn character, an icon I will never forget.

The objective of the game is simple. Collect all the objects on the screen and move to the now blinking cage-like door to proceed to the next level. Watch your air supply represented by an horizontal white bar and make sure you finish before it runs out.

The game was however fiendishly difficult. Despite being all about timed actions and pixel-precise jumps, even with the help of my notes it took me forever to finish it. You are only given 3 lives and the loss of one means you'll have to start over on that screen. The game can become frustrating. But that was widely accepted back then and Manic Miner was a favorite among many who would spend hours and hours playing the game and taking their notes on how to better finish each room.

A timeless classic. A game that paved the way for many of the platform we have seen in new generation consoles. If you haven't played this game yet...where have you been? Go and play it now, you won't be disappointed.

The original platform game (at least it was for me) and probably most recognizable icone of the zx spectrum.
A classic.

Manic Miner is a very simple game. Move left or right, jump, collect the objects, jump over the nasties, and reach the exit for the level when all the items are collected, before running out of air.

It is, also without a doubt, one of the best games for any computer.

Why? Technically, it's rather simple - it doesn't push the Spectrum or any other machine to the limit. It has been said that it's also not exactly an outstanding model of Spectrum games programming, in fact, a bit of the opposite. The game play itself is rather simple. The graphics are simple. From an objective point of view, you could say Manic Miner is a bit overrated.

But Manic Miner is a game that is greater than the sum of its parts. There is something undefinable that makes me come back to this game time and time again, despite it being decades old. It's not just Matthew Smith's humourous touches to the game, nor just the varied levels. There is something Just Right about Manic Miner - something perfect about its playability - and it's very hard to define why this is so. In many games, having to make pixel-perfect jumps makes the game tedious. But in Manic Miner, it's part of the magic.

The technical shortcomings of Manic Miner don't matter either - if these were to be fixed, it wouldn't actually make for a better game. Manic Miner can be enjoyed for what it is, and often attempts at enhancement will burst the magic.

Awesome game, and still very playable today. The benchmark for all platform games, with perfectly balanced gameplay, great graphics, progressively harder levels, and a maddening tune that gets into your head. Brill!

Wow! What a fantastic game this was.

You're mission was to guide Miner Willy through 20 Caverns collecting long lost treasure guarded by the cavern's robots!

This game has everything. Top gameplay, playability, complete addictiveness and lovely colourful graphics. Even to this day (and by coincidence right now!) I have a Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy top on which I got of Ebay!

I spent hours and hours playing this when I was younger and did manage to complete it without cheating a few times!

The idea of the game basically is to collect the flashing treasure (eg. keys) and once you have all the objects in the cavern to collect, the exit will flash. There is an air supply in each cavern and each level was and still is a joy to play.

An absolute classic. If you've never played it, download it or buy a Spectrum of Ebay and buy it! It's a real retro classic.

Thanks to Matthew Smith the creator for making my days in the 80's so fantastic with this game!

A classic among classics !! Matthew Smith was a true visionary and a genius.

So many good qualities to remark: playability, charm, iconic main character, pioneer of platform games, humor, excentricity, queer atmosphere, simplicity ... nothing less than brilliant to my eyes !!!

One of the best games I have had the pleasure of playing and finishing without cheating. A jewel of a game. A true legend !! A masterpiece of a videogame !!

Valoration? 10 out of 5 for this priceless piece of art.

Manic Miner is one of the reasons why the 80´s were so magical. ;D

In my opinion Manic Miner is the BEST GAME OF ALL TIMES. FULL STOP.

1983 Bug-Byte Software (UK)
by Matthew Smith

I always found that guiding Willy through the underground caverns was a tough job, but really rewarding.
Whenever I got frustrated with this game I moved to Jet Set Willy which at least allowed me to wander around for a bit of relaxing. Unfortunately I never got very far in both games.
It's true, Manic Miner is an indisputable Speccy classic.
In 1983 no one had seen a game like this, original, super playable, and very well programmed, even a few years later continued new and interesting.
Manic Miner appeared at the right time, written by the right person and it was impossible to fail.
A real case of popularity, just look at the number of remakes available.
Number 1 classic Spectrum game.

If only it wasn't so damn difficult... 4,5 points

BTW: Level of Kong Beast: keys 9831

What can I say apart from the fact that bizarrely I'd never actually played this game until around 1993, and even then it was on the (by today's standards) primitive yet technically superb speccy emulator for the Atari ST. I'm surprised that almost twenty years have somehow elapsed between me actually playing this on an emulator and writing this review. The game is three times older now than it was when I played it then!

Anyway, completing the game for the first time seemed like a real achievement. Admittedly, I could never have done it without snapshots. But even then, some levels still remained frightfully tricky. Even the first level is initially a conundrum for the uninitiated as most players appear to get stranded on their first attempts.

Playability, excellent. Atmosphere, absorbing. Graphics, legendary. Animation, fluid. Controls, responsive.

All round brilliant fun, and no doubt ground-breaking at the time of its release.

In the early 1980s all I had was "The Perils of Willy" on the VIC-20 which was at that point the greatest game I'd ever played and technically miraculous on that system (with essentially a character-mapped video mode). I remain a fan of it to this day.

But for me, Manic Miner is a whole level above that, with the quirky custom levels like Eugene's Lair, or the Skylab one.. and the greater variety of antagonists. Thanks to the relatively copious RAM of the speccy, just that extra bit of effort was put in to elevate this game to all-time classic status.

Who doesn't remember this, eh?

I just played it for the first time in what must be 25 years and still can't get past Eugenie's Lair (level 4). I mean I played literally for the first time in far too many years and played it like a robot through the first three screens, following the exact same paths, jumping and dodging at the precise same moment I did as a kid, which is just weird really, but my fingers, they just....remembered.

I rated it 4 because, well, it's just too hard damit!

I admit it!

I do NOT like any platform games that are as hard as this one.
Graphics are somewhat acceptable - especially for a game published in 1983.

Playability is in my humble opinion largely influenced by the level of frustration caused by the gameplay.
If pitched right the frustation level is present but only to an extent where you think to youself: "Next time I'll pass this screen!"

Manic Miner and many other games of its kind are just infuriatingly difficult - and repetitive.

Examples of difficulty levels done right?
Try R-Type and Midnight Resistance to see what I mean.

Manic Miner is arguably the most iconic of all spectrum games. It's achieved a sort of mythical status amongst it's many legions of fans but remove the rose tinted glasses and what your left with is a rather dull and tedious platformer. It's not terrible, it's just not very good either.

I certainly didn't find this to be as great as most people do but in all it's still a really good game worth playing.

If a rating was to be awarded for pure nostalgic value, or on the merit of how much of 1983 and 1984 was spent playing this game, it would be 5 out of 5 for sure.
Many of us spent untold hours teaching our fingers level upon level of pixel perfect jumping and timing to progress through this very difficult platformer game. Were we all intrinsically addicted to and in love with this game, with its wacky humour? Hypnotised by the looping brainworm music? Or was it that there was quite a limited choice of other good games at the time? I suspect all of the above.

I refuse to put a 5 on this game.

Good game? Yes, it is
Successful game? Yes it is
It liked many? Yes, but not me.

For me it is a difficult game that might become addictive after many trials and not having another choice of tape to load.

Not in my top 100. But for sure a Spectrum classic!

Brilliant all time classic. Great even by todays standards.

Manic Miner is the Plattform Game for the Spectrum. It came in the precise moment -1983- and quickly stood out.

An excellent playability made up of their 20 ingenious -and difficult- screens, its unforgettable music and (in spite of) its simple UDG graphics.

Matthew Smith definitely made a true iconic Spectrum game starring Miner Willy, a true iconic Spectrum character.