You guys can complain all you want about the music but know this: Manic Miner is the first game to ever have ingame music. So personally, I'd cut it some slack.
Well, the first *spectrum* game with in-game music. Anyhow Manic Miner is one of the best games evvveeerrrrr. The thrill of loading this up on the spectrum, and marvelling at its awesomeness is something those in the know will understand....
1984, playing this game in my parents living room, mesmerized, fascinated, excited, glued to TV screen, just couldn’t get enough! Thanks for posting. It only took me almost 40 years to find it again :)
"With the proceeds of Styx I went on a skiing holiday to Italy with Patrick, the son of a family friend who had the same wacky sense of humour as me. I bought a red notebook in which I drew all the screens for Manic Miner - when I returned home, I spent eight weeks programming the game. I programmed mainly at night because my TRS-80 development machine crashed every time anyone put the kettle on. Nobody had heard of spike suppressors or uninterruptable power supplies. And Patrick? He's now a hypnotherapist in Kingston-Upon-Thames." -- Matthew Smith (game designer, programmer and graphic artist - Manic Miner)
Must've been an awesome feeling to make it to the final screen and complete this. Although, kind of disappointing that it just starts again. I always imagined a film crew would turn up at your door, with two girls showering you with kisses, and a fly past over your house. Since I'm never likely to complete it though, I'll still believe that.... LOVED mm and the memories of playing it with my dad. x
For one of the sequels the developers actually ran a challenge and would award anyone who managed to complete the game a prize. Great, only problem was the game was actually impossible to complete due to a bug, and so when someone did do it (after hacking the game themselves to fix the bug) the developers refused to believe them because they knew it was impossible.
@@MrSniperfox29 It's not like these games were good to begin with since Bobby Is Going Home on Atari 2600 had better controls, ESPECIALLY in terms of jumping as well as better music & graphics.
@@ExtremeWreck Lies, these games (when they worked) were brilliant. And I should hope the 2600 had better graphics than a game released on a Spectrum as the 2600 had three times the ROM the spectrum did at the time.
@@MrSniperfox29 That's just your opinion honestly. I mean, this game is overrated in my eyes. The exploration aspect would've made it a decent game to play if it not for the tedious jumping controls & inconsistent platform collisions. Not to mention the level design is CLEARLY not made for those bad jumping controls in mind. In my eyes, it didn't age well. Now Donkey Kong had the same jumping controls, but the level design was made with that kind of jump in mind, so it made for a better experience. Same for Pitfall on Atari 2600. Octolris wasn't made for those jumping controls in mind, nor Blinky 3, but they gave you a bit of mercy by making it so that there are plenty of health pickups & a lot of space to use for most of the game until you get to near the end of the game. Meanwhile with Manic Miner, it clearly just didn't seem to go right. Not much room for error when it comes to jumping, moving too slow & stiff, plus the platform collisions being inconsistent made for an ultra-hard platformer & NOT for good reasons. I can respect the effort to make the game, but clearly Matthew Smith should've at least considered making the jumping controls a little easier. If the jumping controls(and honestly, the rest of the controls) were to have been improved, including the ability to move mid-air, then it would've been a decent game; not a great game per se, but a fun little game for its time. Sadly though, we never got to see what that version could've been & instead he just took it to the publisher, Bug Byte Software, as it is now. Thankfully, due to Super Mario Bros. releasing about 2 years later, it would mean that this game would NEVER see an official release here in the States, lest it would've gotten VERY & understandably negative reviews.
@@ExtremeWreck Again, you are trying to bring up more powerful consoles so yes, they will be better. Sorry if you weren't very good at the game, but hey, must be an American thing. After all you never got Super Mario Bros 2 (the real one) because they thought it would be too difficult for you.
My all time favourite game ,and how difficult was this game ,come to think of it ,most spectrum games were rock hard . Matthew Smith was only a kid when he created this masterpiece , genius to know his way around a computer at such a young age
It blows my mind that I had this game for so long as a child and played it so much yet never got past Eugene's Lair. I remember playing Manic Miner in the playground at school...everyone had to be a particular baddie and walk back and forth while the hero dodged them. Fun times!
This took 45 mins to load on the Commodore 64! Sometimes it wouldn't load so you had to adjust the tape player volume and try again! Totally loved it, spent hours playing it 😄
This was the era before Speccy ganes became film or coin-op conversion rip off based. The early games had character and quirkiness along with originality. The music and sound effects in this game are really special; the completion sound for each level is brilliant and I have never heard anything like it before or since. The whole game is just pure class and one of a kind. Long live the Sinclair ZX Spectrum!
True. The last years were a bit ridiculous with the Z80 trying to replicate what was done by coin ops with twin 68000's and custom hardware. The speccy managed some impressive things in its time, but there's no way that £120 quids worth of 8 year old digital beer mat can keep up with that.
Yeah and every time you get to the new level you have hardly any lives available to learn the new level followed by a huge journey to get back there once those lives are gone.
This is the first game I played on my ZX Spectrum. I only ever got to the 16th level playing as normal. I completed the game using the unlimited lives 'poke'. Even with unlimited lives I died loads of time on the solar power generator (it kept taking all my air off me with the beam). Really classic game.
There's something about nostalgia. I ditched a PS4 and went back to a 90s original PlayStation. Now, I am considering going back again to the Speccy. Manic Miner, what a great game. One of my favourites.
Thanks for sharing the playthrough. Such nostalgia, even though I played it on a different system (Amstrad CPC464). I remember the first 5 levels in this video, so that's probably how far I originally got in the game. However, for some reason, I also remember the Solar Power Generator, but I don't know why. My friend owned the Amstrad, so it was probably him that got that far in the game. I definitely remember seeing the light beam bouncing around :-)
Roblox take a back seat this was 1983@ and 38 years later nothing is better or harder than this great game I wore my cassette player out playing these games lol.
Game was so hard! From memory i don't think i got past the phones. Nice to see the final result. On Jet Set Willy i was happy to find a new room after several hundred plays. The game objective never mattered. lol.
it's nice that it had an ending screen of sorts. the last level is very deluxe. most games of that era didn't bother giving you any sort of ending but that guy made it home!
Gosh! Played with the zx spectrum for years about 2 years and began to repair them in 1986/87 . Loved the late nights playing space raiders. Even to this day I'm trying to understand machine code. Back then I had no one to teach me.
as a kid I thought that main character is a bear with one broken ear ...:) (i didnt understand english title then) now, 30 years later, I see he is a miner with the lamp on his helmet ... ;)
Quality, I actually completed this year's ago, and funny how it all springs Back.. I challenged my son who was 13 at the time to play it (this was 2 years ago) he struggled like mad, and he's a ps5 "gamer" haha... He got so annoyed 😂
What ii wouldn't give to have this back in my life again. One of the best games brought out for the Spectrum. The hours if fun I used to have on this!!!!!
My perhaps favorite was POKEd version of Kokotoni Wilf. It's somewhat similar to Manic Miner, only much better overall - I liked that it has several successive styles of environments (ages), so it wasn't boring after a while for me :)
WHOEVER YOU ARE, THANK YOU. Uffffff. reminded me of those daysssss. Everytime I hear the the Blue Danube, I think of Manic Miner. Why did I always think it was Manic "Minor"? haha!
Love your walkthroughs man. You've covered almost every game from my childhood. Manic Miner was one of the first I remember playing. I couldn't beat it but my older sister did. There's one game I would love to see you complete: Moonlight Madness, which was incredibly hard and only appears in a few short TH-cam vids, most of which are low res with annoying commentary, and nobody makes it very far. Come on RZX Archive, make my day!
This was the first game I ever played. I'm 15 but my dad showed me this game and I still love it to this day, even if it really didn't age well and is very flawed. Never got past the 13th level but I may try again one day
In fairness, if people are here in 2020 playing and talking about a game coded in 1983, I'd say it aged pretty well. And JSW might be flawed but I don't think this has any? Only that it's b*****d difficult!
Привет ! в эту игру я c братом играли в 1989 году-мне тогда 13 лет было брату 10 лет. Мой дядька работал в НЭтИ-Новосибирский экспериментальный институт. Они там эти спектрумы делали на продажу. И дядька мне одну подогнал. Помню как микросхемы РУ-5 обнуляли ультрафиолетом с разбитой колбой лампы ДРЛ. Потом прошивали на них прошивку Sinclair research l t d. Я от таких видео телепортируюсь в прошлое и вспоминаю былые времена. Спасибо !
Nintendo: My games are very hard. ZX Spectrum: Hold my cup of tea. There were some games I finished when I was a kid, but most of them are so hard I struggled to finish the first level. I couldn't finish the second or third level of Manic Miner. Now I'm a grown man, tried to play it again, I struggled to finish any level and the fourth one is requiring lots of timing and precision. It's very hard with only two lives and instantaneously death in a world that looks like something made by the Monty Python. And there were other games like that, for instance, Dynamite Dan. Now I saw more than 20 minutes of gameplay with crazy levels. Implementing the game in Assembly probably wasn't easy for a kid, especially taking into account the innovations. The in-game music in a ZX Spectrum game was one of them.
Played this on Tesla's PMD-85 computer, black-and-white. I was like 9yo, and i was sooo addicted to it, it was like the best game ever. And then a family frend showed me straight into Prince of Persia. Now that was a revelation, to say at least!
If you type '6031769' whilst the game is playing, a boot appears where the spare lives are. You can then hold down 6 and a combination of other keys to get to levels you aren't that good at so you can practice them. You won't get the fish and dagger at the end if you do this though. This hack works with the Fuse emulator for Mac as well. I wish they made 'em like this again! The ZX Spectrum was the equivalent of today's Raspberry Pi, I suppose.
Playing this game again now on Antstream Arcade on the XBox. It has highscores for Manic Miner and even some challenges, which I think is awesome. I played that game in Germany as one of the first games I ever played on the ZX Spectrum. At the moment I'm only getting to the Warehouse again, so I have to do more runs for training. But I'm already afraid of the Solar Power Generator so thanks for this guide to prepare me! Back in those days I still remember having a parade of Miner Willies at the bottom after playing several runs after each other. I'm not sure I can still do this nowadays, but I'll try it!
Geez, I used to play this game for hours on end on my C64 back in the late 80s when I was around 7y.o., never made it past The Menagerie but loved it anyway!
Was an expert at getting to the Warehouse with all lives plus extras intact, then losing the lot. Got past it once, and if I got past Amoebatrons' Revenge, I didn't get past the Solar Generator. #35YearsStillNotDoneIt
Christmas day my dad and me thought my rubber keyed spectrum was broke despite having the audio leads plugged in there was no iconic lines on screen or sound to indicate a game was loading tape played but no sound. Then my parents went for a night out I got it out box again to find my dad hadn't pushed the audio lead in far enough 1 click an bingo a game loaded I was so chuffed so was my dad when he got back in. Manic miner and horrace goes skiing was the 2 originals games i had that xmas day also 2 cassettes full of copied games my dads mate did for him. Id never of completed manic miner had it not been for a Poke command inserted after the Load "" line that went round school. Even aged 20+ some 7 yr later around 1990/92 me and my mates endless nights with a pot of tea playing such master pieces as wacky darts, football manager, ATV, Weelie, block busters, Chuckie Egg, Grand National...Declathlon and many more till 4am then up for work 7 lol priceless times.
02:11 I remember as a child I used to find the repeating pattern left in the sunken floor of the top level really satisfying. I thought it looked like ducks in flight. Weird ha
Legend era, people would spend hours in family home with friends playing this, not like today. People get bored if not outside in massive drunk dramas etc, younger generations especially
just had a retro day at Museum of science and inductry in manchester today - ended up playing this game most of the day - although had to call it a day at skylab landing bay...i do the "processing plant" a different way from you - seems more efficient when you do the middle bit to go to the left from the middle rather than the right hand side.
The speccyversion from this game is much better then the C64-port. I never understood the hype around this game. `cause I just knowed the C64-version. After plaing the Speccy version I understand why people liked this game so much. Really nice game :)
Looking back, I realized that this game may have been the inspiration to a Codemasters game called "Boomerang Kid" that I came across as an unlicensed NES title, more so in its approach to the platforming, and the object of the game being to collect the keys and get to the exit.
some talented programmers from York UK made a version of manic miner called Mini Miner back in the day. the only person I can remember was an amazing programmer called Fred. He worked out how to get the background colour at the side of the screen to match the on screen display by timing the raster interrupt and redraw of the display using z80 assembly language. it wasn't released through some crap from who owned the rights to it. software projects wanted too much money so they said sod off. anyway Fred if your out there I got into programming cause of you.
I loved this game I got it at Oxfam for 50p I liked it for two reasons one it loaded fast two I played it for ages! I couldn't wait to get back from school to play it!
Wait what? After the final screen it just loops back to the start again? I played this like a million times back in the day and I could never make it past the 4th screen so I never got to see what happens when you finally beat game.
I tried this game at a gaming museum and did surprisingly horrible. On my best effort I only made it to level two. On my first try I didn't even know you were not allowed to touch anything except for the keys.
This game is a lot harder than it looks here. Games back then were brutal. Because they were linear. You die then you have to start over. From the beginning..
i did the 20 levels in the 80's but i did put in the 'peek & poke cheat' for not losing all your lives & going back to level 1 but just to the level you were playing still took 24 hours non stop coz you couldn't save the game as you can with games today. btw amazing game play.
my dad used to load this for me from tape to my zx spectrum for like 40 mins and i used to play if for ages. i was 5 L O L so many memories. i play that on my 12 core xeon and i tear up lol
I remember walking through three times in a row until I got bored finally. Well - after many hours of training. The pixel precice and reproducible movements, responsiveness of the spectrum keys make it superior until today.
You guys can complain all you want about the music but know this: Manic Miner is the first game to ever have ingame music. So personally, I'd cut it some slack.
Well, the first *spectrum* game with in-game music. Anyhow Manic Miner is one of the best games evvveeerrrrr. The thrill of loading this up on the spectrum, and marvelling at its awesomeness is something those in the know will understand....
It also helps that the sound is very even and percussive giving it an ambient quality, like nature sounds or car engines.
Thank you it was a big accomplishment and no one even remembered it :(
Manic miner wasn't closest to the first game to have in game music
@@Jackthecritic It was the first one with in-game music on the speccy.
Wow! That brings back so many memories. I think I only got as fair as Eugene's Lair!
Same here. coincided with my first girlfriend.😊
1984, playing this game in my parents living room, mesmerized, fascinated, excited, glued to TV screen, just couldn’t get enough! Thanks for posting. It only took me almost 40 years to find it again :)
Yeah me to. I was 6 at that moment.
"With the proceeds of Styx I went on a skiing holiday to Italy with Patrick, the son
of a family friend who had the same wacky sense of humour as me. I bought a
red notebook in which I drew all the screens for Manic Miner - when I returned
home, I spent eight weeks programming the game. I programmed mainly at
night because my TRS-80 development machine crashed every time anyone put
the kettle on. Nobody had heard of spike suppressors or uninterruptable power
supplies. And Patrick? He's now a hypnotherapist in Kingston-Upon-Thames."
-- Matthew Smith (game designer, programmer and graphic artist - Manic Miner)
Must've been an awesome feeling to make it to the final screen and complete this.
Although, kind of disappointing that it just starts again. I always imagined a film crew would turn up at your door, with two girls showering you with kisses, and a fly past over your house.
Since I'm never likely to complete it though, I'll still believe that....
LOVED mm and the memories of playing it with my dad. x
For one of the sequels the developers actually ran a challenge and would award anyone who managed to complete the game a prize. Great, only problem was the game was actually impossible to complete due to a bug, and so when someone did do it (after hacking the game themselves to fix the bug) the developers refused to believe them because they knew it was impossible.
@@MrSniperfox29 It's not like these games were good to begin with since Bobby Is Going Home on Atari 2600 had better controls, ESPECIALLY in terms of jumping as well as better music & graphics.
@@ExtremeWreck Lies, these games (when they worked) were brilliant. And I should hope the 2600 had better graphics than a game released on a Spectrum as the 2600 had three times the ROM the spectrum did at the time.
@@MrSniperfox29 That's just your opinion honestly. I mean, this game is overrated in my eyes. The exploration aspect would've made it a decent game to play if it not for the tedious jumping controls & inconsistent platform collisions. Not to mention the level design is CLEARLY not made for those bad jumping controls in mind. In my eyes, it didn't age well.
Now Donkey Kong had the same jumping controls, but the level design was made with that kind of jump in mind, so it made for a better experience. Same for Pitfall on Atari 2600. Octolris wasn't made for those jumping controls in mind, nor Blinky 3, but they gave you a bit of mercy by making it so that there are plenty of health pickups & a lot of space to use for most of the game until you get to near the end of the game.
Meanwhile with Manic Miner, it clearly just didn't seem to go right. Not much room for error when it comes to jumping, moving too slow & stiff, plus the platform collisions being inconsistent made for an ultra-hard platformer & NOT for good reasons. I can respect the effort to make the game, but clearly Matthew Smith should've at least considered making the jumping controls a little easier. If the jumping controls(and honestly, the rest of the controls) were to have been improved, including the ability to move mid-air, then it would've been a decent game; not a great game per se, but a fun little game for its time. Sadly though, we never got to see what that version could've been & instead he just took it to the publisher, Bug Byte Software, as it is now.
Thankfully, due to Super Mario Bros. releasing about 2 years later, it would mean that this game would NEVER see an official release here in the States, lest it would've gotten VERY & understandably negative reviews.
@@ExtremeWreck Again, you are trying to bring up more powerful consoles so yes, they will be better.
Sorry if you weren't very good at the game, but hey, must be an American thing.
After all you never got Super Mario Bros 2 (the real one) because they thought it would be too difficult for you.
This is a fantastic game from the golden age of British videogaming.
do you like these type of games i play also gba ds sega ens snes gbc and other games in emulator i love platformers and you
My all time favourite game ,and how difficult was this game ,come to think of it ,most spectrum games were rock hard . Matthew Smith was only a kid when he created this masterpiece , genius to know his way around a computer at such a young age
Ah yes, the toilets in Eugene's Lair were always a source of amusement for young minds back in the 80's.
I grew up with these games... Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg, Dizzy etc. A real blast from the past!
21:20 This manoeuvre got my palms sweating! Just very skilful playing throughout. Respect!
Oh my god this brings back memories. Even though this game released ages before I was born I still played it.
Only 23 minutes to complete the game? I've been trying well over 23 years and not even half way through!
Ha ha ive been trying for years and only beat ugene once
I only ever did it with the POKE 😁
It blows my mind that I had this game for so long as a child and played it so much yet never got past Eugene's Lair. I remember playing Manic Miner in the playground at school...everyone had to be a particular baddie and walk back and forth while the hero dodged them. Fun times!
Same, never seen past eugenes lair ha
I made it past Eugenes Lair once, a combination of surprise and panic meant I lost my single remaining life straight away.
Great to see this. Completed this when I was 9. I'm 43 now and still remember the moves. Skylab landing bay was always my nemesis!
Congrats, I'm 44 and I never got past level 6, I think.
the trick is to wait for the skylab to crash onto the next one and then jump onto it - just patience
For a brief moment, I suddely went back to 1984 while watching this!!
I spent entire afternoons playing with this.
Me too, jet set willie, chuckie egg too.
me too !
@PeckyThePigeon 1) I have never been useful to society in the first place 2) Your turn will come.
mornings and nights :-)
Afternoons, days...
This took 45 mins to load on the Commodore 64! Sometimes it wouldn't load so you had to adjust the tape player volume and try again! Totally loved it, spent hours playing it 😄
This was the era before Speccy ganes became film or coin-op conversion rip off based. The early games had character and quirkiness along with originality. The music and sound effects in this game are really special; the completion sound for each level is brilliant and I have never heard anything like it before or since. The whole game is just pure class and one of a kind. Long live the Sinclair ZX Spectrum!
True. The last years were a bit ridiculous with the Z80 trying to replicate what was done by coin ops with twin 68000's and custom hardware. The speccy managed some impressive things in its time, but there's no way that £120 quids worth of 8 year old digital beer mat can keep up with that.
Took me years in the 80's to get to level 17!! This is how hard games were back in the day! Great memories!
Yeah and every time you get to the new level you have hardly any lives available to learn the new level followed by a huge journey to get back there once those lives are gone.
There's a different between hard games like Contra on NES & just downright terrible shovelware like this.
This is the first game I played on my ZX Spectrum. I only ever got to the 16th level playing as normal. I completed the game using the unlimited lives 'poke'. Even with unlimited lives I died loads of time on the solar power generator (it kept taking all my air off me with the beam). Really classic game.
how i get extra lives? thank you
i'm up to that level now
Every time Miner Willy jumped, it was like ASMR. For many British people, Willy was our first platformer mascot.
Matthew Smith.... what a bloody genius.....
If you watch the whole video ....
you'll still be hearing the music in bed tonight.
One of the best games ever, I absolutely loved this!
There's something about nostalgia. I ditched a PS4 and went back to a 90s original PlayStation. Now, I am considering going back again to the Speccy. Manic Miner, what a great game. One of my favourites.
Playing it right now - ıt's awesome!
As I never did complete this game,,,, that was a pleasure to watch you go through every level. Well done. That was awesome.
Thanks for sharing the playthrough. Such nostalgia, even though I played it on a different system (Amstrad CPC464). I remember the first 5 levels in this video, so that's probably how far I originally got in the game. However, for some reason, I also remember the Solar Power Generator, but I don't know why. My friend owned the Amstrad, so it was probably him that got that far in the game. I definitely remember seeing the light beam bouncing around :-)
I know the music could drive you mad ,but this is good quality sound for the spectrum ,and in the early days of the spectrum as well
Roblox take a back seat this was 1983@ and 38 years later nothing is better or harder than this great game I wore my cassette player out playing these games lol.
Used to love this game. Thanks for transporting me back to my childhood
You're welcome :)
Game was so hard! From memory i don't think i got past the phones. Nice to see the final result. On Jet Set Willy i was happy to find a new room after several hundred plays. The game objective never mattered. lol.
it's nice that it had an ending screen of sorts. the last level is very deluxe. most games of that era didn't bother giving you any sort of ending but that guy made it home!
Gosh! Played with the zx spectrum for years about 2 years and began to repair them in 1986/87 . Loved the late nights playing space raiders. Even to this day I'm trying to understand machine code. Back then I had no one to teach me.
I can hear "hall of the mountain king" through my autistic ears
Doug Funnie same
me too
Probably because that's what it was supposed to be. 😁 ✌
as a kid I thought that main character is a bear with one broken ear ...:) (i didnt understand english title then) now, 30 years later, I see he is a miner with the lamp on his helmet ... ;)
Wow!!!! 30 years later I’m only now realising it was a lamp!!!! Thanks
Thank you so much!! Made me remember 30 years ago! Nostalgic.
ALX MonT You're welcome :)
Excellent!!! Yes ALX i remember this game, so nice to see it moore than 30 years later. Thanks RZX Archive for the video.
After 30 years i can see how to escape. Very good video RZX Archive congratulations.
Played id with friends from my class. There were 15 people in my tiny room waiting for their turn. No one complained about anything.
They say that everyone who played this game can still hear the music today even when there not playing...
The memories! The nostalgia! I CAN'T HANDLE IT!
Still stuck on level 17 after 30 years, and the kids are crying about how hard flappy bird is. They don't know how good they have it
Man ,do i love your pic :) I agree, it's hard as f*** :)
This is just as hard as flappy bird but complain all you want I guess
Better than me, I only got to level 8.
Heres 15 levels
Quality, I actually completed this year's ago, and funny how it all springs Back.. I challenged my son who was 13 at the time to play it (this was 2 years ago) he struggled like mad, and he's a ps5 "gamer" haha... He got so annoyed 😂
bad controls do not make a hard game, bad controls make a bad game :p
My history teacher put this on for 5 minutes
What ii wouldn't give to have this back in my life again. One of the best games brought out for the Spectrum. The hours if fun I used to have on this!!!!!
My perhaps favorite was POKEd version of Kokotoni Wilf. It's somewhat similar to Manic Miner, only much better overall - I liked that it has several successive styles of environments (ages), so it wasn't boring after a while for me :)
WHOEVER YOU ARE, THANK YOU. Uffffff. reminded me of those daysssss. Everytime I hear the the Blue Danube, I think of Manic Miner. Why did I always think it was Manic "Minor"? haha!
Love your walkthroughs man. You've covered almost every game from my childhood. Manic Miner was one of the first I remember playing. I couldn't beat it but my older sister did. There's one game I would love to see you complete: Moonlight Madness, which was incredibly hard and only appears in a few short TH-cam vids, most of which are low res with annoying commentary, and nobody makes it very far. Come on RZX Archive, make my day!
Looks so simple now but for months, this was my life.
This was the first game I ever played. I'm 15 but my dad showed me this game and I still love it to this day, even if it really didn't age well and is very flawed. Never got past the 13th level but I may try again one day
In fairness, if people are here in 2020 playing and talking about a game coded in 1983, I'd say it aged pretty well. And JSW might be flawed but I don't think this has any? Only that it's b*****d difficult!
Matthew Smith is a genius and a pioneer. Similar age to me but he was making these games while I was barely able to play them...
Привет ! в эту игру я c братом играли в 1989 году-мне тогда 13 лет было брату 10 лет. Мой дядька работал в НЭтИ-Новосибирский экспериментальный институт. Они там эти спектрумы делали на продажу. И дядька мне одну подогнал. Помню как микросхемы РУ-5 обнуляли ультрафиолетом с разбитой колбой лампы ДРЛ. Потом прошивали на них прошивку Sinclair research l t d. Я от таких видео телепортируюсь в прошлое и вспоминаю былые времена. Спасибо !
Nintendo: My games are very hard.
ZX Spectrum: Hold my cup of tea.
There were some games I finished when I was a kid, but most of them are so hard I struggled to finish the first level.
I couldn't finish the second or third level of Manic Miner.
Now I'm a grown man, tried to play it again, I struggled to finish any level and the fourth one is requiring lots of timing and precision.
It's very hard with only two lives and instantaneously death in a world that looks like something made by the Monty Python.
And there were other games like that, for instance, Dynamite Dan.
Now I saw more than 20 minutes of gameplay with crazy levels.
Implementing the game in Assembly probably wasn't easy for a kid, especially taking into account the innovations. The in-game music in a ZX Spectrum game was one of them.
Takes me back 30 years.....those were the days..... Nice post :o)
Played this on Tesla's PMD-85 computer, black-and-white. I was like 9yo, and i was sooo addicted to it, it was like the best game ever. And then a family frend showed me straight into Prince of Persia. Now that was a revelation, to say at least!
Finally I see this game completed! I think level seventeen was as far as I managed. Loved this game.
Hours playing this, then out on my BMX before watching The Dukes of Hazard. I loved the 80s
If you type '6031769' whilst the game is playing, a boot appears where the spare lives are. You can then hold down 6 and a combination of other keys to get to levels you aren't that good at so you can practice them. You won't get the fish and dagger at the end if you do this though. This hack works with the Fuse emulator for Mac as well.
I wish they made 'em like this again! The ZX Spectrum was the equivalent of today's Raspberry Pi, I suppose.
Epic, straight back to 1983..
It feels so weird hearing the audio with headphones. Especially at 2x speed.
Wow, crazy how the memories of the game come back 😂
Another great memory, I think my mate made it to the last level but not sure he ever completed it. Again thanks for letting see it finished😃
Playing this game again now on Antstream Arcade on the XBox. It has highscores for Manic Miner and even some challenges, which I think is awesome. I played that game in Germany as one of the first games I ever played on the ZX Spectrum. At the moment I'm only getting to the Warehouse again, so I have to do more runs for training. But I'm already afraid of the Solar Power Generator so thanks for this guide to prepare me! Back in those days I still remember having a parade of Miner Willies at the bottom after playing several runs after each other. I'm not sure I can still do this nowadays, but I'll try it!
Geez, I used to play this game for hours on end on my C64 back in the late 80s when I was around 7y.o., never made it past The Menagerie but loved it anyway!
Ahh this brings back soo many memories as a child
I made it to the penultimate room yesterday, slowly getting there!
I'd totally forgotten about this game, I don't think i ever got to the amoebatrons!
Was an expert at getting to the Warehouse with all lives plus extras intact, then losing the lot. Got past it once, and if I got past Amoebatrons' Revenge, I didn't get past the Solar Generator. #35YearsStillNotDoneIt
I can now die with the end of that game securely behind me! Thanks
Wow, you are seriously awesome on this game
I love the jump sound effect so much
Christmas day my dad and me thought my rubber keyed spectrum was broke despite having the audio leads plugged in there was no iconic lines on screen or sound to indicate a game was loading tape played but no sound. Then my parents went for a night out I got it out box again to find my dad hadn't pushed the audio lead in far enough 1 click an bingo a game loaded I was so chuffed so was my dad when he got back in. Manic miner and horrace goes skiing was the 2 originals games i had that xmas day also 2 cassettes full of copied games my dads mate did for him. Id never of completed manic miner had it not been for a Poke command inserted after the Load "" line that went round school. Even aged 20+ some 7 yr later around 1990/92 me and my mates endless nights with a pot of tea playing such master pieces as wacky darts, football manager, ATV, Weelie, block busters, Chuckie Egg, Grand National...Declathlon and many more till 4am then up for work 7 lol priceless times.
02:11 I remember as a child I used to find the repeating pattern left in the sunken floor of the top level really satisfying. I thought it looked like ducks in flight. Weird ha
Legend era, people would spend hours in family home with friends playing this, not like today. People get bored if not outside in massive drunk dramas etc, younger generations especially
35 years ago, ill played that on greenscreen amstrad cpc 464,,,and who ever played that here, 100% respect from me.
Played it on my black and white tv in 83 or 84
I always loved 'The Vat' for some reason. I just liked sinking through the crumbling platforms and grabbing the items.
just had a retro day at Museum of science and inductry in manchester today - ended up playing this game most of the day - although had to call it a day at skylab landing bay...i do the "processing plant" a different way from you - seems more efficient when you do the middle bit to go to the left from the middle rather than the right hand side.
The speccyversion from this game is much better then the C64-port.
I never understood the hype around this game. `cause I just knowed the C64-version. After plaing the Speccy version I understand why people liked this game so much. Really nice game :)
Watching this video makes it look so deceptively easy. Well done!
Looking back, I realized that this game may have been the inspiration to a Codemasters game called "Boomerang Kid" that I came across as an unlicensed NES title, more so in its approach to the platforming, and the object of the game being to collect the keys and get to the exit.
Do you know why adult men love these games?
Simple wins fix our broken confidence.
some talented programmers from York UK made a version of manic miner called Mini Miner back in the day. the only person I can remember was an amazing programmer called Fred. He worked out how to get the background colour at the side of the screen to match the on screen display by timing the raster interrupt and redraw of the display using z80 assembly language. it wasn't released through some crap from who owned the rights to it. software projects wanted too much money so they said sod off. anyway Fred if your out there I got into programming cause of you.
I loved this game I got it at Oxfam for 50p I liked it for two reasons one it loaded fast two I played it for ages! I couldn't wait to get back from school to play it!
RZX Archive channel owner recently passed away
Are you sure?
So sad 😢😢
Brilliant upload! Thanks so much. Lost in nostalgia...
Played this at a friend's house back in the day
Could never get past Eugene's layer. Damn fun game.
Wait what? After the final screen it just loops back to the start again? I played this like a million times back in the day and I could never make it past the 4th screen so I never got to see what happens when you finally beat game.
This game comes pre loaded on a game stick i got from TikTok along with other Spectrum ZX games
He puesto el vídeo entero y acaban de pedirme el divorcio.
Madre mía, las horas que metí en su día a este juego.
This and Fruity Frank, playing on my Amstrad 64 circa ‘84. era fond memories
I tried this game at a gaming museum and did surprisingly horrible. On my best effort I only made it to level two. On my first try I didn't even know you were not allowed to touch anything except for the keys.
Wow this soundtrack was really pushing the limits ;)
This game is a lot harder than it looks here. Games back then were brutal. Because they were linear. You die then you have to start over. From the beginning..
Eugene reminds me of my old boss. He never wanted his staff to leave either.
Even just watching this is nail biting! :) How the hell did Matthew Smith test this? It was a hell of a job and he was a genius - probably both.
Unquestionably the best game of all times
i did the 20 levels in the 80's but i did put in the 'peek & poke cheat' for not losing all your lives & going back to level 1 but just to the level you were playing still took 24 hours non stop coz you couldn't save the game as you can with games today. btw amazing game play.
That music is somehow both disgusting and charming at the same time
Got to take your hat off to Mathew Smith who wrote this, I think he was about 16 at the time, absolutely outstanding.
hours of fun i had in the 80's with this...
my dad used to load this for me from tape to my zx spectrum for like 40 mins and i used to play if for ages. i was 5 L O L
so many memories.
i play that on my 12 core xeon and i tear up lol
I remember walking through three times in a row until I got bored finally. Well - after many hours of training. The pixel precice and reproducible movements, responsiveness of the spectrum keys make it superior until today.
Kudos for not cheating; and thanks for the nostalgia trip! 👍🏻
MANIC MINER FOREVER! (great game indeed) ty for the post