About
Manic Miner is a 1983 ZX Spectrum platform game by Matthew Smith, the first in the Miner Willy series and one of the most influential platform games of its era, inspired by 1982's Miner 2049er. Manic Miner 2021 is an improved BBC Micro build of Manic Miner, created after fully disassembling an earlier byte-for-byte BBC port, then optimizing it for speed and memory and fixing it to match the original ZX Spectrum version more closely. It adds flicker-free player movement, a corrected jump arc, an improved air bar, expanded music, a visible high score, a "GAME OVER" screen, and compatibility with the BBC Master.
How it differs from the original
Compared to the earlier, more literal BBC Micro port, this version restores details that had drifted from the ZX Spectrum original - correct falling and air-depletion speeds, matching level graphics and exits (including a previously missing telephone box exit), and more faithful level layouts - while also improving on both older versions with better collision detection (octagonal hit-boxes instead of simple boxes) and non-blocking, flicker-free sprite drawing.
Getting started
The build is distributed as a BBC Micro disk image that can be run in a BBC Micro emulator or on real hardware, including the BBC Master.
History
The project follows the author's own earlier complete disassembly of the original BBC Micro Manic Miner port, which motivated a pass of speed and memory optimizations, followed by extensive fixes to bring the game closer to Matthew Smith's original ZX Spectrum design.