Manic Miner: ZX Spec (SIII)

Manic Miner for the ZX Spectrum (an 8-bit personal home computer released in the UK in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd, which sold in excess of 5 million units worldwide) is one of THE defining games of the 1980s.

Manic Miner: ZX Spectrum is offered as an in-app purchase from within the ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection app. (The in-app is priced at £1.49/€1.59/US$1.99 and includes 5 more ZX Spectrum games).

Manic Miner: ZX Spectrum is also available in this stand-alone form but does not include any other ZX Spectrum games.

Manic Miner: ZX Spectrum is the 100% original ZX Spectrum game, as written by Matthew Smith in 1983 and is brought to you - as an officially licenced product - utilizing our ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection technology.

Featuring:
- portrait and landscape play / display modes
- iDaptive (user-definable, game-specific joystick, keypad & canvass) Controls
- (Google: "Tiny URL 22qh8hl") for more info
- ‘auto save’, on exiting the game
- authentic 'Spectrum' sound

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. 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. 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.

Manic Miner for the ZX Spectrum contains the following 20 rooms:
1. Central Cavern
2. The Cold Room
3. The Menagerie
4. Abandoned Uranium Workings
5. Eugene's Lair
6. Processing Plant
7. The Vat
8. Miner Willy meets the Kong Beast
9. Wacky Amoebatrons
10. The Endorian Forest
11. Attack of the Mutant Telephones
12. Return of the Alien Kong Beast
13. Ore Refinery
14. Skylab Landing Bay
15. The Bank
16. The Sixteenth Cavern
17. The Warehouse
18. Amoebatrons' Revenge
19. Solar Power Generator
20. The Final Barrier

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 backwards and forwards along a predefined length 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 10000 points.

Matthew Smith (born 1966) is a British computer game programmer. He is best known for his games Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy for the ZX Spectrum, released in 1983 and 1984 respectively. Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy are two of the most famous and popular ZX Spectrum games of all time. Matthew created this game when he was 17 ...

About Elite®: Elite Systems Ltd was incorporated in England in 1984.