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

10. Manic Miner: The Hobbit

Author: Andrew Broad

Publisher: Broadsoft

Year: 2000

Reissued: 2005

Language: English

Manic Miner: The Hobbit was released by Andrew Broad as part of a box set, together with Jet Set Willy: The Lord of the Rings. It is based on J.R.R. Tolkien's classic novel The Hobbit. The player plays as Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit who is persuaded by Gandalf the Wizard to go on an adventure with a group of dwarves to win back the treasure stolen from them by Smaug the Dragon.

Andrew noticed that The Hobbit maps quite nicely to MM, as the former has 19 chapters and the latter has 20 rooms. Consequently, there is a room in the game for each chapter in the book (in the same order), plus a bonus room to bring the number up to 20.

Manic Miner: The Hobbit was released in January 2000. Afterwards the game was reissued three more times (twice due to changes in the text documents which accompany it and a third time due to changes in the other parts of the box set); the last release was in February 2005. The TAP file remained completely unchanged since the original release, though.

The game was released in two versions: Hard and Easy.

Number of rooms: 20

Highest documented score:

Hard Version

- upon reaching the swordfish sign: 21,121 points;

- upon first re-entry into the first cavern: 22,769 points.

Easy Version

- upon reaching the swordfish sign: 39,498 points;

- upon first re-entry into the first cavern: 41,147 points.

Download links

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

Official release	ZIP of the official release (reissue) of the game

Direct game download	Game files of both Hard and Easy version of the game 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 walkthroughs of both versions of the game showing the highest documented scores

RZX Archive	RZX walkthroughs of both versions of the game on the RZX Archive (showing scores which are inferior to the best publicly available recordings)