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History of Manic Miner

Manic Miner, released by Bug-Byte in 1983, is a platform game, which was originally written for the ZX Spectrum.

In the game, the player controls a miner character named Willy, who must wander into the caverns to collect valuable flashing objects while avoiding various creatures and enemies, and coordinating jumps and falls.

There are 20 levels in the game, with their difficulty gradually increasing, and a limited number of lives for the player, which can be gained additionally every 10 000 points or after completing the game.

The stand-out features Manic Miner were truly exceptional for the time; they included excellent playability, colorful graphics, sound effects, and in-game music, which required a lot of CPU attention at that time and was thought to be impossible. The desired effect was achieved by constantly alternating CPU time between the music and game, and resulted in a distinctive stuttery rhythm.

Due to its great execution, Manic Miner quickly became one of the most popular and most mentionable games of the time. It was the winner of the Golden Joystick Award in 1983, and was placed third in the "Game of the Year" competition of the same year. Manic Miner was placed high on the top 100 lists of various selections.

It was ported to a large amount of different platforms and had several different versions which featured slightly different elements.

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