One of the best games ever written for the ZX Spectrum. I was hooked on it the day I first played it nearly twenty years ago. The game starts off easily enough. The first five levels are fairly easily played and conquered. From them on though things are not that easy. For the longest time I was stuck at level fourteen. But then once I got over the hump things were smooth sailing again.
Overall I thought the graphics were amazing. Of course by today's standards the graphics are mundane, but judged by the standard of the mid eighties the graphics were fantastic.
The motion of the characters is smooth and the transition from one level to the next is fast and smooth too. I don’t think I found a single bug in the game.
The game story itself plays out well too. The levels themselves are quite independent. Except when you take air from one level into the next one. Hence the incentive to finish each level as fast as possible. However this gets progressively harder as you move up the levels. One of the most annoying things about this (and other sinclair zx spectrum games) is that you cannot save it. So for instance if you were to die in level X the only way to start again is to load the game
again and go back to level one and go through all the levels again. But this is a technology limitation given the sinclair zx spectrum did not have a hard drive.
Overall the game is a very easy to learn. The keyboard controls can be a bit difficult to master. However once you the hang of it there really is no difficulty. All you need are three keys, one to go left, the other to right, and the third to jump up. Once you master the controls it’s just a question getting used to the speed of each level. As you go up a level not only is it hard to navigate, but sometimes the obstacles move and the speed increases with the level. The first time I realised this was when I was at Eugene's lair, kept getting killed by the roving Eugene.
Overall I would rate this game 9/10. In terms of graphics and playability I would rate Combat Lynx and Daley Thompson's Decathalon higher. But Manic Miner would certainly be one game I would take with me to a deserted island if I was allowed to carry a computer with me.
