Subj : Re: Manic Miner review, by Shaun Bebbington.
To   : Shaun Bebbington
From : ArcadeAge
Date : Sat Apr 21 2018 11:44:40

On Saturday, April 21, 2018 at 10:25:47 AM UTC+2, Shaun Bebbington wrote:
> For anyone who grew up with an 8-bit personal computer in the 1980s, you 
would have almost certainly known about the Miner Willy games, created by 
Matthew Smith. These games, Manic Miner, and Jet Set Willy I and II, are 
considered classics on the 
Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and one way or another, these were ported across to the 
more popular micros of the day. There was even an unofficial version for 
Sinclair ZX81 which sported high resolution graphics, and it's actually pretty 
good too. The poor 
Commodore VIC-20, however, was left out, and whilst Perils of Willy was okay 
for younger children and a reasonable effort all considered, it wasn't a patch 
of any of the Willy games for more powerful 8-bits such as the Speccy.
> 
> Fast forward to February 2018 and Kweepa has developed Manic Miner for the 
VIC-20 + 16K. For those who don't know, Kweepa is a rather prolific developer 
in what has become known as the 'home brew' scene. And I know from personal 
experience that even 
his crap games aren't that bad.
> 
> As a professional developer myself (albeit in the PHP world), and a former 
writer, and Commodore user/fan, I know when someone has put a lot of care and 
attention into something. And Kweepa's version of Manic Miner is outstanding on 
this level. There 
are a few differences with this VIC-20 version and the original Speccy classic, 
which I think is down to having fewer pixels to play with; for instance, it 
took me a while to get through the Central Cavern (level one) unscathed which I 
would usually get 
through first time. The conveyor belts work slightly differently that the 
original too, but as for everything else, it's as close to perfect as you could 
get or want. The graphics are really smooth, and unlike Perils of Willy 
mentioned above, this doesn'
t just look like a Miner Willy game, it feels like, and is, just that.
> 
> Kweepa has developed some of the best post-commercial VIC-20 games that I've 
seen. And this is one of them. This isn't just for Manic Miner fans either. If 
you enjoy 2D linear platform games, you will love this. It's brilliant.
> 
> Graphics: 9/10
> Sound: 8/10
> Playability: 9/10
> Overall: 9/10
> 
> Links:
> 
> http://sleepingelephant.com/denial -> see the "VIC-20 Software Releases of 
2018" topics in the "Announcements" board of the forums there.
> 
> http://www.kweepa.org/step/vic20/miner-20180201b.zip -> direct download

Fans of Edvard Grieg or Monty Python will be delighted to hear or see one thing 
or other that seems familiar. Btw., if you don't own a VIC-20 (I don't) and 
like me don't succeed immediately trying to get the game running in VICE, 
here's what I did:
- Create an empty D64 file (I used x64, but this should work with the VIC-20 
emulator as well)
- use Starcommander in DOSBOX to copy (F5) the PRG to the D64 image
- enable an additional 16K of RAM in the emulator
- enable emulation of a 1541
- autostart/mount the D64 to run the game

Many thanks to Shaun Bebbington for bringing this newsgroup back to life!

Chris

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