We may never know the full version of events surrounding this notorious Ocean Software game, but legendary Spectrum programmer Jonathan Smith was almost certainly involved. It does bear a few of his hallmarks, but is a ridiculously simple and quite boring shoot ’em up.
Continue reading Street Hawk: Subscriber Edition, ZX Spectrum
Jonathan Smith followed-up his superb multi-event sport game Hyper Sports with this – another multi-event sports game! Except this time: an officially-licensed Daley Thompson sports game.
A beautiful conversion of the cult Konami arcade game, Mikie, programmed by Jonathan Smith and published by Imagine Software in 1985.
Universal‘s 1982 arcade game Mr. Do! is an iconic, early digging game, with chasing monsters and falling apples, and plenty of cute, Japanese surrealism.
Another game I have fond memories of buying and enjoying back in 1984, Melbourne House‘s classic ZX Spectrum platform game: Sir Lancelot.
Considering that it was squeezed into only 16K of RAM (yes, it even ran on 16K Spectrums) it is a remarkable achievement.
LISTS: as decided by The King of Grabs, in order of greatness:
1. XBox 360
2. Game Boy Advance
3. MSX
4. Commodore 64
5. Amstrad CPC
6. SAM Coupé
7. Amiga
8. BBC Micro
9. Oric
10. Dragon 32
Of course, nothing beats the ZX Spectrum original.
See also:
Manic Miner in the Lost Levels – a homebrew download for the Nintendo DS
All hail to Miner Willy and to Matthew Smith.
The original Manic Miner, emulated perfectly on XBox 360 by Elite Systems in 2012, plus with historical background notes, “Winter Mode”, scan lines on or off, pixel filtering, cheat mode, and more.
More on The King of Grabs: 10 Best Manic Miner Conversions
More: Manic Miner on Wikipedia
The Tangerine Oric version of Manic Miner was first released in 1985 and is a reasonable attempt at the game, but certainly nothing special.
Jester Interactive‘s 2002 remake of Manic Miner must surely rate as the best version of Manic Miner available (excepting maybe the Spectrum original), although it might play too quickly for some.
The MSX version of Manic Miner was produced by Software Projects in 1984. It’s a rare British MSX title, written by Cameron Else. It’s also fast and beautifully playable.
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