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 based on Matthew Smith's original Manic Miner game engine for the 48K Spectrum.

15. Manic Miner: Neighbours - Allana Truman

Author: Andrew Broad

Publisher: Broadsoft

Year: 2004

Reissued: 2005 (updated documentation)

Language: English

Versions: 2 (standard and easy)

Manic Miner: Neighbours - Allana Truman is a MM game based on the Australian television soap opera Neighbours, focusing on plots involving Andrew Broad's favourite character from the show, Allana Truman. Although she was only a guest character, Allana captivated Andrew with her pretty eyes and an intriguing air of mystique from her electric first appearance in November 2000 (as televised in the UK) to her emotional exit in April 2001 when she embarked on a trip around America with her boyfriend, Lance Wilkinson.

GAME PREMISE: Allana and Lance are sci-fi geeks who met at a Star Trek convention. She challenged him to perform seven labours, all themed around her various interests in sci-fi, aliens etc., to win her as his girlfriend. He succeeded, after many episodes of the anticipation of seeing Allana again. However, he soon discovered that she lived with her mother, a widow who depended heavily on Allana for support. To go to America together, they had to first navigate the challenges of convincing her mother to let go and raise funds for the trip. In Manic Miner: Neighbours - Allana Truman, the player assumes the role of Lance Wilkinson and must complete seven tasks to win Allana and then solve the remaining plot challenges to enable their journey to America.

According to the author, Manic Miner: Neighbours - Allana Truman was written for advanced MM players, featuring rooms intended to be fairly difficult, a challenge to the experts. The gameplay is tougher than in the original MM, requiring both manual dexterity (a need for pixel-perfect and time-frame-perfect accuracy of movement) and lateral thinking. Manic Miner: Neighbours - Allana Truman makes extensive use of various quirky features in the game engine, making knowledge of these features indispensable for progressing through the standard version of the game. The official release ZIP file includes room descriptions with helpful hints on how to complete each room.

The game features several technical modifications compared to the original MM, including the addition of the JSW item-collection sound, playing as a different character in Room 13, a fix for the bug that corrupts Room 7 when falling off the bottom of the screen, the in-game tune playing at half-speed and a change to the Room 19 swordfish routine.

The game was gamma-released in November 2004, in two versions: standard and easy. It was reissued in February 2005 with updated documentation and completely unchanged TAP files.

In May 2019, Andrew Broad received the B. S. Art Prize (a general prize for merit in any area of artistic practice, judged, administered and financed by B. S. Tancham) for Manic Miner: Neighbours - Allana Truman.

Number of rooms: 20

Highest documented score:

Standard version

- upon reaching the swordfish sign: 30,637 points;

- upon first re-entry into the first cavern:31,144 points.

Easy version

- upon reaching the swordfish sign: 34,639 points;

- upon first re-entry into the first cavern: 35,421 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 the standard and easy versions of the game in TAP and TZX format

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 a completion of each versions which is inferior to the best publicly available recording)