We're going back to 1983
It gives me the greatest of pleasure to present Manic Miner for the Atari ST!!! This has been InDev throughout much of the year by my mate Peter Jørgensen. It's a brand-new remake with redesigned graphics and incredibly funky music (sound effects are yet to be completed). Each and every one of the twenty screens is included but there will also be a few surprising extras which I'm excited about. However, we are wickedly keeping these under wraps for the time being!
Please note, this is still a WIP as there are a few niggles to be ironed out. Each level faithfully follows the same playable mechanics of the original but, don't for a second think this means we have a boring ripoff. Willy's adventure has received a cool makeover with beautiful YMT audio and each screen has been designed with painstaking accuracy.
Please note, this is still a WIP as there are a few niggles to be ironed out. Each level faithfully follows the same playable mechanics of the original but, don't for a second think this means we have a boring ripoff. Willy's adventure has received a cool makeover with beautiful YMT audio and each screen has been designed with painstaking accuracy.
During the title intro, press 1, 2, 3 to change the music.Pressing R will display a CPU usage raster for the geeks.In-game, use the cursor keys to walk and he jumps by slapping the spacebar.You can quit and kill Willy anytime by hitting the K key.Need a wee? Just pause the game by hitting the P key.Crazy fools who don't love the thumping music can hit M to mute.
Without cheating, I have reached level 14 - Skylab Landing Bay. However, I have never beaten this terrible screen on either the ZX Spectrum or Atari ST as it's a killer that blows my mind. Let me know how you get on.
Attempting to keep this project quiet from everyone has been tough - but beta testing over the months has been an absolute joy. It's impressive to see how it has transformed into a fully playable game. The final version isn't far off completion, so you know where to come when it's released. This is one of the best Atari ST games released in recent years.
Attempting to keep this project quiet from everyone has been tough - but beta testing over the months has been an absolute joy. It's impressive to see how it has transformed into a fully playable game. The final version isn't far off completion, so you know where to come when it's released. This is one of the best Atari ST games released in recent years.
The latest release is now available to download via the Demozoo website!!
A few words from Peter...
I wrote Manic Miner because I have a friend that was very sad that this platformer didn’t exist for the ST. So I thought that I would make him happy and began drawing the title picture which soon lead me onto designing the intro screen - but I only wanted to make a prant screenshot for April 1st. Sadly, I did not finish in time. But then the idea started to continue on with the programming to see what happens. However, I’ve not made a game in decades because life always got in the way but I wanted to do this remake just to stop my friend from crying. So you could say that this is a Manic Miner AtariCrypt Edition!
My goal was to make the gameplay feel as close to the original as I possibly could but still take advanced of the Atari ST's hardware. Thus, this is a remake rather than a conversion because I have not used a single piece of the original code. I have spent many hours analysing each level, and I’ve used the original sprites and recoloured them but some needed minor changes to work. The map graphics were changed in a big way, to what I think was the idea was behind each level. I played the MSX version so I could see how the game acts and I also think this is close to the Speccy original.
Overall, I'm quite pleased with the results and I hope people enjoy playing Manic Miner :-)