HEXdidn't... - A Pixel Art Odyssey

There were already at least a couple of variations on the title screen image in the SAM version of Manic Miner . The first appeared in the original Revelation release of the game, and doesn't look entirely finished. At the top of the screen is a reinterpretation of the view over the ocean from the original Spectrum game, with a curious, charming, childlike quality to it. There are clouds in the sky, an stylised sun with bold 'rays' emanating from it at one side, and the familiar little house on the cliffs at the other. While each set of caverns could be selected by keypress from the title screen, there was no visual indication of the choice made, the player would simply start in “The Central Cavern” , “The Coal Chute” or “In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan?” , based on whether they had pressed a number key before starting... But it also didn't indicate which button to hit to start, presumably because that was noted on the disk inlay. A later version added simple text instruct...

Personally, my biggest gripe with the original version of Manic Miner for the SAM was that most, if not all of the scenery could have been recreated in MODE 2 with barely any alteration or loss of fidelity. Some of the original graphics might even pass for MODE 1 at first glance, since there are 8x8px blocks containing just two colours. Furthermore, since the Willy sprite passes behind the scenery, it wouldn't even have suffered from significant attribute clash in MODE 2. However, to be fair, very few versions of the game really go overboard on the scenery, since it's all just platforms to jump on, walk across and fall through, or walls to impede progress. It could easily be argued that there's no great need for the scenery to look stunning . Most other versions even retain the plain, black background of the Spectrum version and, at the end of the day, a game like Manic Miner isn't about having the whizziest graphics, it's about timing your movement and making ...

Or 'The Full Monty (Python)' It had bugged me, since the very first time I played the original SAM version of Manic Miner , that the iconic 'Boot Crush' game over sequence of the original Spectrum game had been removed. In its place, Miner Willy is unceremoniously disintegrated by a multicolour death beam (per the Solar Beam caverns) from above, without even the flashing background – which would, I'd have thought, be easier to accomplish on the SAM due to its clever palette switching tricks. It looked cheap and lazy, the sound effects were dull, and the sight of Miner Willy crumbling just didn't quite hit the right note. Of course, having been brought up on a steady diet of British absurdist comedy, the 'Boot Crush' felt to me like a nod to Monty Python , making it all the more perfect, and all the more important to ensure it resumed its proper place within the game. (Of course, it was Jet Set Willy that committed to the full Pythonesque attitude, wit...

Manic Miner is not a game know for an elaborate, intricate, stylish or elegantly-designed UI so, on that point alone, the existing SAM version manages to be an improvement on the original. Willy's air supply is represented by a couple of compressed air cylinders on the right rather than a simple bar running most of the width of the screen. Lives are represented by large, cartoonish (and, to me , somewhat creepy) heads rather than copies of the Miner Willy sprite. Score and high score were deemed worthy of their own font – a pleasant, calligraphic font using the shades of grey available in the unique palette applied to the 56 pixel rows at the bottom of the screen. The gradient border feels a little redundant and wasteful, but this panel does (almost) everything the Speccy version did, while looking slightly prettier by making better use of the SAM's graphical capabilities. The lives counter is a bit of a problem, though. The size of the heads is such that a maximum of three ...

When I first received the coder's ZX Spectrum assets for Reckless Rufus , I was pleased to see that he was already using a custom font rather than the Speccy default. There was, admittedly, nothing particularly special about it, and either he or I had replaced it with something completely different very soon after. I don't recall who made the call or when it happened, but the SCREEN$ I have labelled as "2nd draft" has a cuter, curlier font in place for the few text characters the original, basic UI used. Given that the C64 game had such a strong, distinctive typeface ( several, in fact ) I felt it would be worthwhile developing something similar enough, but within the Spectrum's limits.  From the C64 version, the choices were as follows: The title screen uses both an angular sans serif font, and a similar, but irregular font where horizontal and vertical parts are of inconsistent lengths within each character and some corners ar...

One of the many aspects of the original SAM version of Manic Miner that makes it look unfinished (to put it mildly) is its use of the SAM's default system font for the cavern names displayed throughout play, along with much of the text and the scroller on the title screen. The Spectrum version didn't have a custom font either but, pardon my saying so, the Speccy's default font is much prettier than the SAM's: The Spectrum's character set is almost entirely comprised of elegant and uniform 6 x 6 pixel characters centred within its 8 x 8 pixel attribute squares (at least for upper case), while the SAM's is mostly 5 x 7 pixels within the same attribute squares (albeit displaying at effectively 8 x 9 pixels by default when the machine first switches on). This means the gaps between characters are appreciably wider, and the effect is exacerbated on the SAM when you get slim characters like the three pixel wide I in the upper case, or the lower case i , j and l –...

Only a very few hazards in Manic Miner are specifically named, which is why it's always struck me as strange that the portentously-dubbed Kong Beast simply sits at the top of the screen doing his weird little space invader dance on both of the levels in which he appears. He doesn't present much of a hazard, and interacting with him in any way is purely optional. He personifies the classic trade-off between bonus points awarded for a greater quantity of remaining air upon reaching the exit, versus bonus points awarded for spending enough time in either of his caverns to topple him from his perch. In the Spectrum version, the appearance of the Alien Kong Beast (to give him his full and proper moniker) doesn't really align with any of the usual connotations of 'Kong'... He's no bigger than any of the other sprites, he barely looks like a primate of any kind, and he only looks 'alien' because he's coloured green by default. It's also impossible to...