JSW Central - Resource Centre for ZX Spectrum games based on Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines

Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines

I. Manic Miner (MM)

Games using Matthew Smith's original Manic Miner game engine for the 48K Spectrum

5. Manic Miner 4

Author: Andrew Broad

Publisher: Broadsoft

Year: 1997

Special Edition: 2003

Language: English

Manic Miner 4 is the first MM game by Andrew Broad. It is written for "advanced Manic Miner players", with the screens "intended to be outstandingly difficult, as a challenge to the experts". The gameplay is much tougher than in the original MM, "featuring some horrendous combinations of nasties which it takes good timing and pixel-perfect jumping to get past!"

The game was gamma-released in September 1997 as a snapshot file. In Februrary 1998, it was re-released as a TAP file, with an added Readme. In November 2002, Manic Miner 4 was re-released with updated documentation (without changes to the game file other than a name change). Finally, the Special Edition was released in August 2003, with edited title-screen graphics, end-game colour attributes, scrolling message and in-game tune (the room data are identical to the original release), and an updated Readme.

When it was released, Manic Miner 4 was the first MM game known to the wider public that could boast to be a complete redefinition of the original MM, with some genuinely new screens (R. D. Foord Software's 1985 Manic Miner No. 2 was probably the earliest such game, but it only received a wider exposure in March 2005, after it was published on TZX Vault). It also includes three rooms from the original MM that were changed when the second edition was issued by Software Projects, following Andrew's idea that "completists only need to get Manic Miner 4 and the first (Bug-Byte) edition of Manic Miner 1".

The Special Edition offers the player a choice of two in-game tunes: a more faithful adaptation than in the original MM of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, and the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony". The choice is POKEd into memory before the game starts and can only be changed after reloading the game.

According to the author, the Special Edition completely supersedes the Original Edition.

Number of rooms: 20

Highest documented score:

- upon reaching the swordfish sign: 36,475 points;

- upon first re-entry into the first cavern: n/a.

(The air counter keeps resetting itself after the player has completed the final cavern, causing a constant increase in the score and making it impossible to re-enter the first cavern.)

Download links

Homepage	Archival version of Andrew Broad's Sinclair ZX Spectrum Download Page

Official release	ZIP of the official release of the Special Edition of the game

Direct game download	Game files of both the Original and Special Editions in TAP and TZX formats

World of Spectrum	The game's page on WoS

Spectrum Computing	The game's page on Spectrum Computing

Speccy Screenshot Maps	The game's map on Speccy Screenshot Maps

JSW Central	RZX walkthrough of the game showing the highest documented score

RZX Archive	RZX walkthrough of the game on the RZX Archive (showing a completion of the game which is inferior to the best publicly available recording)