Manic Miner | Code Like It's 198x

Manic Miner is a single-screen platform game for the 48K ZX Spectrum, written by Matthew Smith and published by Bug-Byte in the summer of 1983. Miner Willy works his way through twenty caverns. In each one he collects every flashing key, then gets back to the exit portal before his air runs out. One touch from an enemy kills him. The caverns have names — Central Cavern, The Cold Room, Eugene’s Lair, Attack of the Mutant Telephones, The Final Barrier — and each has its own layout, enemies and trick.

It was a hit almost at once. By December 1983 Personal Computer Games was reporting that “within a few weeks of release, Manic Miner was the best-selling computer game in the country”. The music is a large part of why people remember it: Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King plays on the Spectrum’s beeper for as long as Willy is alive.

Spend time with the jumps, the caverns and the people behind them in our Manic Miner study.

On sale by the summer of 1983

Computer and Video Games mentioned the game in two successive issues, and the notices do not agree. The July 1983 issue has it “in the shops now at £5.95”. The August 1983 issue calls it “a sixteen screen climbing game for the Sinclair Spectrum due out shortly”, which “will run on the 16 or 48k Spectrum and will be in the shops in July at £5.95”.

The game that shipped had twenty caverns and needed 48K, so the August notice was describing either an earlier plan or wrong pre-release information. The magazines’ copy dates make any single “out now” a weak release date. The review that fixes the specification is Mike Gerrard’s in Personal Computer News for 11-17 August 1983. Its information box gives 48K Spectrum, £5.95, cassette, machine code, “Other versions None”, and the publisher as Bug-Byte, Mulberry House, Canning Place, Liverpool. The game was on sale and being reviewed by mid-August 1983, not in November as is sometimes said.

By the December 1983/January 1984 issue of Personal Computer Games it stood at number 10 in the magazine’s Top 75 chart.

Origins

Smith was a Liverpool-area teenager who had started programming on a Tandy computer his parents gave him for Christmas. He only got a Spectrum in April 1983. By then he was working with Bug-Byte, and he wrote Styx for them first. Personal Computer News reviewed Styx in the same issue as Manic Miner and found it thin: “once you’ve done it a few times there’s nothing much left.”

Smith told Personal Computer Games in 1984 that the idea came from Alan Maton, who “suggested the idea of a figure tunnelling down”. Smith turned it upside down, so that Willy climbs towards the surface. The first name they thought of was Miner 49’er, until they found someone else had got there first. Smith wrote the game in eight weeks, keeping odd hours: up in the evening, working until lunchtime, a few hours’ sleep, then back to the computer. He wrote it on a Tandy Model 4 with a 5 megabyte hard disk and transferred it to the Spectrum, since both machines use the Z80 processor. He drew the graphics himself on graph paper.

The split with Bug-Byte

At the turn of 1984 Smith left Bug-Byte and set up Software Projects with Alan and Soo Maton. Alan Maton had also come from Bug-Byte, where Personal Computer Games said he had risen “from despatch rider to marketing manager in a matter of months”. He was not Bug-Byte’s owner or managing director. Tony Baden, a Bug-Byte director, was still speaking for the company after Smith left.

Sinclair User explained why the game could go with Smith: Bug-Byte “held a licence to produce Manic Miner but not the copyright”. Software Projects reissued it “in a slightly modified form”. The move did the game no harm. By CRASH’s reader-voted Hotline chart for March 1984, Manic Miner was at number one, up from 23 the month before, and credited to Software Projects.

The twenty caverns

Each cavern is one screen, shown whole, with no scrolling. It holds platforms, conveyor belts, floors that crumble as Willy walks over them, enemies moving on fixed paths, keys, and the portal. Personal Computer News described the rhythm of play: when the last key is taken, “the portal leading into the next cave will start flashing and Willy must make his way back to that”. Conveyor belts carry Willy along whether he likes it or not, so “you have to know well in advance exactly where you’re going to jump next”. Crumbling platforms give you only one chance to jump from them.

Reviewers liked the jokes as much as the jumping. Personal Computer Games listed penguins, mutant telephones, a Kong Beast and “ferocious toilets in Eugene’s Lair”.

The beeper music

The game has two tunes. The title screen plays a beeper version of Strauss’s The Blue Danube over an animated piano keyboard whose keys move in time. Personal Computer News called it “simply the best title screen I’ve ever seen, with the waving palm trees of sultry Surbiton behind a piano keyboard whose keys are moving up and down to the tune”. Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King then plays through the game itself. PCN noted that “if the constant playing of Hall of the Mountain King starts to annoy you the writer has thoughtfully provided an on-off switch”.

The Spectrum’s speaker is driven by one bit of the ULA’s output port, $FE. It has no sound chip to play a tune by itself, so the processor has to toggle that bit at the right moments, sharing its time with the game. See beeper music for how that works. Modern accounts often describe Manic Miner as the first Spectrum game with continuous in-game music. The 1983 and 1984 reviews quoted here praise the music but do not make that claim.

Three magazines, three composers

Reviewers could not agree on what the title tune was. Personal Computer News heard it as “more or less” Waldteufel’s The Skater’s Waltz. Personal Computer Games heard “a bit of Tchaikovsky”. PC Zone, looking back in 2001, called it “a twisted metallic version of the Blue Danube”, which is right.

A single square-wave channel, played in the gaps between game logic, carries melody and very little else: no harmony, no change of tone colour, no sustained notes. Professional reviewers who liked the music still could not name it. The achievement was real all the same. Manic Miner showed that a Spectrum could keep a recognisable tune going underneath a game.

Reception

CRASH did not score Manic Miner. The magazine’s first issue appeared in February 1984, about six months after the game, and it covered Manic Miner in issue 2’s round-up of platform games. The round-up said: “This is the best platform game around, in fact it’s probably the best arcade game for the Spectrum.” On the technical side, “it seems incredible that Bug-Byte managed to pack so much animated detail into one 48K program”.

Personal Computer News ended its review: “Manic Miner is original and amusing as well as hard to master, and I haven’t enjoyed a game so much since I first encountered Donkey Kong.” Personal Computer Games made it its Screen Star and closed with one word: “Superb.”

The price was £5.95 in PCN, in CRASH and in mail-order advertisements. The first issue of Your Spectrum (January 1984) listed it at £7.95, the only source to do so.

Eugene’s Lair

The joke in Eugene’s Lair needs the company history. Personal Computer Games explained it in brackets, as if everyone knew: “Eugene Evans left Bug-Byte for Liverpool rivals, Imagine.” Evans had programmed for Bug-Byte before moving to Imagine. Smith named a cavern after him in a game Bug-Byte published.

Then Smith left Bug-Byte too. In March 1984, while readers waited for Jet Set Willy, CRASH told him: “come on Matthew, get off your Eugene’s Lair and back to the surface!”

Ports

Personal Computer News recorded “Other versions None” in August 1983, so for its first months Manic Miner was a Spectrum-only game. By spring 1984 Computer and Video Games was charting a Software Projects version for the Commodore 64. Versions followed for the BBC Micro, Dragon 32, Amstrad CPC and MSX, and the game has been reissued many times since.

Sources

Personal Computer News, 11-17 August 1983, p. 48: reviews of Manic Miner and Styx by Mike Gerrard, with the information box, the title-screen and on-off-switch quotes, The Skater’s Waltz, and the Donkey Kong verdict.
Computer and Video Games, issue 21 (July 1983), news pages: “in the shops now at £5.95”. Issue 22 (August 1983), news pages: “a sixteen screen climbing game … due out shortly”, “16 or 48k”, “in the shops in July at £5.95”.
Personal Computer Games, issue 2 (December 1983/January 1984), p. 97: Screen Star review (“within a few weeks of release”, “a bit of Tchaikovsky”, the Eugene Evans aside, “Superb.”); the same issue’s Top 75 chart has Manic Miner at number 10.
Personal Computer Games, issue 3 (February 1984), p. 3: “Smith leaves Bug-Byte” news item on Software Projects, Alan and Soo Maton, “from despatch rider to marketing manager”, and the modified reissue.
Personal Computer Games, issue 4 (March 1984), pp. 29-31: Peter Conner’s profile of Smith (the Tandy, April 1983, Styx, eight weeks, Tandy Model 4, graph paper, Alan Maton’s idea, Miner 49’er).
Sinclair User, issue 23 (February 1984), news pages: Bug-Byte “held a licence to produce Manic Miner but not the copyright”; Tony Baden as Bug-Byte director.
CRASH, issue 2 (March 1984): the platform-games round-up, the Hotline chart (1, up from 23, Software Projects), and “get off your Eugene’s Lair”.
Your Spectrum, issue 1 (January 1984), p. 55: Manic Miner listed at £7.95.
PC Zone, issue 107 (October 2001): “a twisted metallic version of the Blue Danube”, “20 simple yet infuriatingly designed levels”.
Ports: Computer and Video Games, issue 30 (April 1984), chart (Commodore 64, Software Projects); Acorn User, January 1985, chart (BBC Micro, £8.95); Dragon User, November 1984 (Dragon, £7.95); Amstrad Computer User, March 1985 (Amstrad CPC); Amstrad Semanal, 7 April 1987 (MSX).
Cavern names, keys, air supply and portal: the game itself (Bug-Byte, 1983).