Long story short, The Lower Caverns is an update and expansion of the SAM Coupé conversion of Manic Miner, originally published by Revelation. It's set to be a coverdisk game with an issue of SAM Revival magazine, published by Quazar.
Manic Miner, that most quintessential of platform games, has by now appeared on pretty much every system ever made, whether officially, as some sort of homebrew or at the very least running under a Spectrum emulator. It may not appear on so large a range of hardware as Doom, but it must surely be close (although I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's a version of Manic Miner that's playable on an emulator running within a Doom mod). With few exceptions, each adaptation is the same, familiar game at its core, but takes advantage of a new platform's hardware to deliver something that is the very best version of Manic Miner each system could produce.
...And then there was the SAM Coupé version.
The SAM Coupé got its version of Matthew Smith's seminal ZX Spectrum platformer in 1992, just a couple of years after the machine launched. Published by Revelation, the software arm of SAM Computers Ltd., it featured a total of 60 caverns (the original 20 plus two additional sets of 20 caverns each), to take greater advantage of the vast 256K of RAM available on the minimum-spec SAM. It was subsequently re-released a couple of times, each with an updated title screen and a unique set of expanded caverns.
As one might expect, the game is fast and smooth, but the visuals are probably among the worst on the SAM, where (in my opinion) there's still precious little good to choose from. Even at the time, the graphics looked very basic and, certainly where the platforms and other scenery were concerned, not significantly upgraded from the Spectrum version. It even uses the SAM's default system font for the cavern names and the scrolling message on the title screen. All this could easily be a symptom of the fact that most SAM users – and so those who contributed to Manic Miner – had previously been Spectrum users, and hadn't had sufficient time be become familiar with the full potential of MODE 4... though that seems unlikely, given that both the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga had been around since 1985, and MODE 4 is essentially a lower-resolution version of their standard 16 colour screen modes.
Nevertheless, the SAM version of Manic Miner did well enough in reviews at the time – 88% in Crash, 82% in Your Sinclair and Sinclair User supposedly awarded it 9/10 (I say 'supposedly' because, while this score has been attributed to an SU review, they never printed a review of Manic Miner on the SAM!). It was noted by one journalist, however, that Revelation were “scraping the bottom of the barrel” by publishing a conversion of a game that was already close to ten years old by that time, and at a point where the Spectrum's library of high-profile games – both original and conversions/licensed, both budget and full-price – was still growing healthily. Of course, it wasn't long before the lure of consoles and 16-bit computers put a stop to that, making it all the more strange for Revelation to have looked backward, to Manic Miner, when there had already been a habit amongst publishers to create home computer conversions of arcade games running on vastly more powerful hardware. It's not even as if the SAM hadn't benefited by this trend already - the most notable examples being a couple of Atari/Tengen conversions published by DoMark. To put this into sharper perspective, the SAM version of Manic Miner was published two years after the SAM version of Prince of Persia.
Obviously, given the paucity of games on the SAM, I wouldn't want to outright slate Manic Miner. It's still the same historically groundbreaking game, it still counts as a massive coup for such a well-known game to be converted to the SAM, and it's clear that a lot of enthusiasm went into the conversion. The game runs fluidly, without the flickering, shearing sprites of the Spectrum version, and it certainly offered a soundtrack that took full advantage of the machine's SAA1099 sound chip. The sound effects may be nothing special, but František Fuka's arrangement of The Blue Danube is jolly rather than grating, with gameplay accompanied by a more complete rendition of In The Hall of the Mountain King rather than the short, stuttering refrain of the Spectrum version. It's also one of the precious few games on the SAM that qualifies as more 'action' than 'puzzle'.
Additionally, I should add that, had I been asked to provide graphics for the game back in 1992, there's a good chance it wouldn't have looked much better. It certainly wouldn't have looked anywhere near as good as it does now, with the benefit of 30 years of additional experience. Back then, I still wasn't making the most of MODE 4 in my own stuff, and my palette choices tended to be either little different from the ZX Spectrum, or limited by forcing in at least three shades of a colour rather than optimised with 'transitional' colours that could act as a mid-ground for two or more colour gradients.
Nevertheless, in 1992, Manic Miner was entirely the wrong game to convince any sceptics that the SAM Coupé was capable of offering something innovative. It might have been great as a launch title, back in 1989, but coming out after MGT's collapse and close and a matter of months before SAMCo's failure, it's the epitome of 'too little, too late' – a theme that plagued the SAM from the very start. On top of that, and while I have no wish to disparage those involved in developing that SAM conversion, I would certainly say that such a well-known, well-loved and otherwise well-executed game deserved to look better in 1992, and that the SAM Coupé is easily capable of delivering a better visual experience.
Shortly before MGT first launched the SAM Coupé, David Baxter, the Development Manager at US Gold, was widely and infamously quoted in the Speccy press, suggesting that it might take a single programmer as little as two weeks to create a SAM conversion of Strider by taking graphics from the Atari ST version and adapting Z80 code from the Spectrum. After all, the Atari ST could have up to 16 colours on screen, and its 320x200 screen resolution was just 64px wider and 8px taller than the SAM's, and many of its games had massive frames around a smaller play window, which could be shrunk or cropped out entirely.
Sadly, that theory was never actually put to the test in a commercial product though, considering the quality of Tiertex's work on most arcade conversions at the time, that may well be a good thing. Contrary to what is most widely reported, even today, every publisher at the time took the same “wait and see” attitude, never committed to supporting the SAM and never put any effort into developing for the SAM. The few big-name games to appear on the SAM were generally presented to the publishers by their creators as faits accomplis, rather than being developed in-house by the publishers' own teams and at their behest. The one (debatable) exception to this appears to have been Snare, from Beyond Belief Software, though that appears to be, effectively, the 128K Spectrum version, running in MODE 1, but with a MODE 4 loading screen. Thalamus also advertised one or two of their games as “SAM Coupé compatible”, but they had to be loaded via a Spectrum emulator.
The SAM version is more colourful than the Spectrum version, but only in very simplistic ways, to the point where its use of Mode 4 – the SAM's best video mode – is largely specious. Most of the platform graphics could easily pass as SAM's MODE 2, which uses 8 x 1 pixel, 2-colour attribute blocks (coincidentally almost identical to screen mode 2 on the MSX). Nothing about the SAM version's visuals even approaches the zenith of what the SAM could deliver under MODE 4... and that's not simply because it's 'only' Manic Miner. The underdeveloped look is common to the majority of early SAM titles, since many were made by individuals or very small teams, much like it was at the very beginning of the Spectrum's gaming scene. Where conversions like Lemmings and Prince of Persia were made with graphics taken from higher-spec machines, Manic Miner is very clearly derived from the Spectrum original, making the most minimal use of MODE 4, and with a handful of wholly new and unique sprites for its additional caverns.
A quick glance at Manic Miner on other systems will show that it tends to still be very plain-looking, even on those machines with substantially higher specs than the old 16/48K ZX Spectrum. The only exception appears to be the Amiga version, published by Software Projects themselves in 1990. That one has one version that appears to have been developed to look like an emulated Spectrum game (albeit without the colour clash), but comes with a completely reworked version – Manic Miner II – in which each cavern has to scroll, due to the use of oversized sprites. Whether this constitutes an improvement is open to debate, but I'd personally suggest that it is not. There was no Atari ST version of Manic Miner until 2018, and the conversion that eventually appeared is hardly a shining example of a 16-bit machine's capabilities since it aimed for fidelity to the original rather than pushing the capabilities of the ST.
Coincidentally also in 2018, and around the time I was getting my SAM Coupé resurrected, an old acquaintance from the SAM scene got in touch with me, with the news that he was planning to brush up his coding skills by making a new remix of Manic Miner. Upon completion, the game was set to be released with a future issue of SAM Revival magazine, and the hope was that it would become the definitive version of Manic Miner for the SAM Coupé. He asked if I'd be interested in providing some new graphics.
The central idea was to replace the existing 40 SAM-exclusive caverns from the most recent version with the 20 caverns from the AppGameKit remix created by Bob McFarlane, plus a selection of caverns that, for whatever reason, hadn't make the cut in the previous SAM versions. He also wanted to reinstate Eugene – Matthew Smith's playful swipe at Eugene Evans, Imagine Software's extensively-promoted, Lotus-renting 1980s coding Wunderkind – who had been left out of the SAM version. The level “Eugene's Lair” had, somewhat infamously, become “The Sugar Factory”, with an Amoebatron sprite (apparently representing Sir Alan and his daring 90s Afro/Beard combo) in place of the cavern's traditional unique hazard.
Because I've always been a keen graphic artist, with many pie-in-the-sky projects under my belt, and having been previously attached to several Games-That-Weren't for the SAM, I was happy to join in and work on something that would – eventually – see the light of day... It wasn't going to be rushed, and we wouldn't be working to a deadline, which suited me fine. I did have one condition, though: if we were reinstating Eugene, I wanted the 'Boot Crush' game over screen brought back as well, because the 'death ray' in the existing SAM game was underwhelming, to say the least.
With this tentatively agreed, I commenced my work.
Initially, we had every intention of retaining the title 'Manic Miner', using 'The Lower Caverns' as a subtitle to differentiate this new version from the previous releases back in the 1990s. I even spent some time, during the early stages of development, producing an updated version of the title screen, which included an adaptation of the rock-hewn Manic Miner logo from the inlay to the Software Projects version of the original Spectrum game. However, a few months into development, it transpired that a certain prominent – and somewhat contentious – figure in the retro computing scene was claiming ownership of the trademark on the name, along with the Bug Byte version of the logo, for their own merchandising use. Also around this time, there were a couple of much-publicised instances of heavy-handedness in enforcement of some of their other (claimed) IP rights, so it was quickly decided that we should scrub Manic Miner from the name, and promote the subtitle. Discretion being the better part of valour, and all that.
Just to add a layer – or perhaps that should be stratum – of confusion, Manic Miner: The Lower Caverns was the title of a remixed, promotional version of Manic Miner for the SAM, released in 1995 on issue 61 of FRED diskzine, and featuring just 12 caverns (only 9 of which were new), along with unique music, and some additional graphics. This purports to be a demo for a more complete remix of Manic Miner which never emerged, though some of the unique levels have made their way into this game. It's also worth noting that one of the two sets of extra caverns in the original SAM version of Manic Miner is collectively known as 'The Deeper Caverns', with the final set titled 'Down, Down, Deeper and Down'.
This is all very well, but why Manic Miner in the first place? Why, in 2018, start remixing a game that was considered behind the times when first released on the SAM, about 25 years previously, rather than create something wholly new? If nothing else, why remake Manic Miner rather than moving on to Jet Set Willy?
Well, there's a story to that, as well.
The last ever issue of Your Sinclair magazine, published in August 1993, featured a double-page spread of SAM Coupé game previews, which included Manic Mansion. This was a Jet Set Willy analogue for the SAM, being created as a follow-up to Manic Miner.
Sadly, it was never completed and I gather that, in the years since, the original programmer lost all his code. The Lower Caverns was therefore intended as a means for the new programmer to familiarise himself with what would later be required to make that planned sequel happen, albeit more than a quarter of a century overdue.
Yes, Manic Mansion is back on the cards, and is planned to be bigger and more complicated than The Lower Caverns in almost every way. All the lessons learned from trying to upgrade Manic Miner will hopefully help to ensure that development of Manic Mansion will be as smooth as possible, not least by being built for purpose, from the ground up, taking into account everything we were not able to achieve within the Manic Miner framework.
Manic Mansion will not be the very next project we work on, but we're already planning how the mansion will be navigated and setting aside some of the graphics that aren't necessarily suited to The Lower Caverns for use in its follow-up. There are already several flip-screen platform games on the SAM, but Manic Mansion is shaping up to be pretty ambitious – much more so than a simple conversion of Jet Set Willy with a handful of unique custom rooms. At one point, I suggested renaming it Manic Manor, since that carries much the same meaning, and the fact that it's just two letters different from Manic Miner amused me. However, since the game was first publicised under the name Manic Mansion, however long ago that was, that name is staying.
Aside from a few final tweaks and additions, my work on the graphical side of The Lower Caverns was completed back in November 2023, so this isn't so much a developer diary as a retrospective. It's not written in strict, chronological order, and is intend mainly to cover only my work on the visuals, candidly and very much from my own point of view, though I may end up making reference to such other bits and bobs as seem relevant.
I hope it's as enjoyable to read as it has been to reminisce about the project.
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