The excellent Amstrad CPC version of Manic Miner was first released by Software Projects in 1984.
It is very close to the ZX Spectrum original in almost every respect, barring the fact that the colours are slightly less vivid and the play window is slightly smaller. Oh, and the last level is different – like an expanded (and more difficult) version of the last screen in the Speccy original.
BBC Manic Miner was released by Software Projects in 1984.
Compared to the Spectrum original it is slow and flickery, and isn’t quite as colourful, although it plays pretty much identically so isn’t too bad.
I would love to say that the 1990 Amiga conversion of Manic Miner is perfect, but it isn’t.
Matthew Smith‘s famous Manic Miner was released for the SAM Coupé in 1992 by Revelation Software. I’m not sure if it’s an official conversion or not.
Actually, there are two versions of Manic Miner that I’ve found for the SAM Coupé. One contains levels that are different to the original (except for the first level), and the other contains three different versions of Manic Miner, including the original levels (three sets of 20 levels, totalling 60).
Manic Miner on the Commodore 64 is very close to the ZX Spectrum original, which is fine in my book although at the time I remember magazine critics not liking it because it looked like a Spectrum game. Which I always thought was ridiculous…
LISTS: as decided by The King of Grabs, in order of greatness:
These are just an opinion, but please do feel free to comment with your opinions. Unless you’re a comment spammer. In which case: do feel free to f*ck off…
Bally Midway‘s classic Spy Hunter is a brilliant overhead race game with guns and bumping cars and speed boats and chasing helicopters, and general high-speed excitement. It is such a good game that it has been converted to pretty much every gaming system known to man.
Here’s our rundown of the top 10 Spy Hunter conversions…
1. Nintendo Entertainment System < Probably the most fun
2. Atari 800 << Better than most
3. Commodore 64 <<< Entertaining
4. ZX Spectrum <<<< A fun conversion
5. ColecoVision <<<<< Pretty good
6. Amstrad CPC <<<<<< Reasonable
7. Atari 2600 <<<<<<< Basic
8. BBC Micro <<<<<<<< Forgettable
9. Apple II <<<<<<<< Rubbish
10. PC MS-DOS <<<<<<<<< Utterly terrible
And, of course, not forgetting the utterly brilliant arcade original.
More: Spy Hunter on Wikipedia
Bally Midway‘s classic Spy Hunter is a thrilling overhead racing game that set arcades alight back in 1983.
Gateway To Apshai is sometimes described as a Roguelike RPG, but it doesn’t have randomly generated dungeons – they’re set, in number order, and there are a lot of them.
Game designer Stephen J. Crow made some seminal games for the ZX Spectrum, starting with Laser Snaker in 1983 and Factory Breakout in 1984 for Poppy Soft.
Steve Crow‘s second game, Factory Breakout, was published by Poppy Soft in 1984.
The King of Grabs 