«Manic Miner» port released for Atari 8-bit computers | Download
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After six years of work, Terrence "Tezz" Derby published his conversion for Atari 8-bit computers of "Manic Miner", the original ZX Spectrum game (Bug-Byte, 1983).
This is the first game in the “Miner Willy” series, written by Matthew Smith for the Spectrum after having been inspired by the classic platformer “Miner 2049er” (Big Five Software, 1982) by Atari.
The protagonist must travel through 20 caverns to collect keys before he runs out of oxygen and be able to advance to the next level. An easy task if it weren't for the fact that he must dodge various enemies and avoid colliding with objects or falling off platforms.
As Derby recounts in the AtariAge forum, the project dates back to 2010, when he decided to write the port from scratch. "Although there were only a few things to finish"Ultimately I wasn't happy with the outcome and (the game) became something I always put off for another day," he says.
After talking withMariusz "mariusz" Wojcieszekabout his ZX Spectrum conversions and collaborating withthe port of «Saboteur», improved his knowledge of the z80 processor used in ZX Spectrum computers.
After quite a while, "Tezz" took up the project again in early 2016 and decided to completely rewrite the whole thing. So, he started translating the original source code line by line to the Atari 6502. His first result was a black and white version that could run faster than the original - one of the main criticisms of Manic Miner; on top of that, there are around 8kb of free memory left.
He later refined the code to use a standard Atari bitmap layout, rather than an emulated layout. "I'm glad I took the time to redo all the caverns, as I was initially reluctant to take on all the work; however, everything I wasn't happy with has been resolved," he concluded.
It should be noted that this port is compatible with Atari XL/XE computers with 64kb of RAM. The melodies were contributed by renowned musician Michal "Miker" Szpilowski.
Manic Miner for Atari 8-bit computers
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