8-bit question for the British---mimo, carmel_andrews, and others

[littleman jack]

Being an American in my late 30's and having read Retro Gamer Magazine for quite a long time now (I started with the issues that came with a disc), it appears that the three most popular games in England during the 8-bit era were Jet Set Willy, Manic Miner, and Elite. Is this true?

 

And having never played any of them back in the day, I have another question. It seems like the first two resemble Miner 2049er and Montezuma's Revenge, while the third resembles Star Raiders. Is this a fair assessment?

 

Thanks for any answers.

[BSA Starfire]

Hiya,

 

Well both Jet Set Willy and Manic miner are platform games. Niether really have the feel of 2049'er or montezumas however. Both are very surreal in subject matter and require a very considered and accurate play style, planning how to get the items and making pixel perfect jumps and movements. Both these games were programmed on the Sinclair Spectrum by Matthew Smith who became something of a software superstar over here in a similar way to David "Pifall" Crane over there in the USA.

Elite has very little resembalance to Star Raiders, It is an open world space simulator. You start the game docked in a space station with a basic starship and 100 credits, you may buy various cargos to trade for profit in other star systems for profit, each planet of which there are a huge number has it's own economy and political status, this alters the planets wants for items and there values and also how dangerous the sytem will be when you get there, space pripates are one of the threats. You may upgrade your ship with weapons, engines and larger cargo bays etc. You also recieve a rating as you progress in the game on your combat performance & also a legal status depending on your actions. This alters how the local police & othertrader ships will act towards you. Aliens are also encountered in what is called witch space, a area you sometimes get pulled into during a hyperspace jump. Other neat features are the missions you get from the military, using fuel scoops to harvest plama from the suns surface, Mineing lasers used to collect minerals from asteroids and probably a ton of stuff I have forgotten. The graphics are wire frame Vector and very smooth & the game is absolutly huge, it doesn't have an end but years would be required to see it all I would guess.

It was originally proggrammed on the BBC model B by David Braben & Ian Bell. Later conversions exist for the Spectrum(good version), C64(poor framerate) and others. 16 bit versions exist for the ST/Amiga etc I belive a version was also released for the Nintendo NES much later, how the controls are mapped to the little gamepad I have no idea. I'm sure other versions exist.

This link will take you to Ian Bell(original authors) web site.

http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/

 

Download and play on a emulator(BBC version I would reccomend)

Read the flight manual(you'll need it for reference at times & read Robert Holdstocks Novella the dark wheel that sets the scene(it was originally packed in with the game).

Have fun, it's probably the best 8-bit game ever to exist.

 

PS. Can't be bothered to fix all the spelling errors in this post as it's too early in the morning, so there!

[Mayhem]

Not most popular, but they were certainly were in there during the early days of home computing. Matthew Smith openly admits that Manic Miner was inspired by Miner 2049er but aside from having to collect items on the platforms and avoid nasties, they are set up as completely different games. Getting about the screens in Manic Miner without dying is as much challenge as collecting the items in themselves. JSW was an expansion of this by linking 60 odd rooms together and letting the player figure out how to transverse the whole lot in one go. Elite? Well that's just Elite.

 

Other popular titles would include Impossible Mission, Beach-Head and the Games series coming from the US, stuff by Jeff Minter (marmite games ahoy though), Lords of Midnight/Doomdark's Revenge, most stuff by Ultimate, the Last Ninja trilogy... and that's a tiny percentage of what I could name. As disk drives had a hard time taking off here, most games were on tape so RPGs and the ilk were not that prevalent or popular here until the late 80s.

[littleman jack]

Hello. Thanks for the answers! Elite sounds quite amazing.

[oracle_jedi]

Hello. Thanks for the answers! Elite sounds quite amazing.

 

It is.

 

What is even more amazing is that there is no Atari 8-bit version.

 

There are versions for the C-64 and Spectrum, the Apple II, the BBC Micro (and Electron) - and even a couple of home-brew ports to the Commodore Plus/4.

 

Someone did port a lot of the game to the 8-bit and produced a running demo - but it does not go past the title screens.

 

I still hope one day to fly a Cobra Mk III on my 1200XL.

[littleman jack]

Are there Atari 8-bit ports of Manic Miner or Jet Set Willy?

[oracle_jedi]

Are there Atari 8-bit ports of Manic Miner or Jet Set Willy?

 

There is both an official Jet Set Willy from 1984 which is ok, and a new conversion of Jet Set Willy done in 2007 by very talented developers in Poland.

 

I think the same guys who did the awesome conversion of Jet Pac ( Jet Boy ) - but I might be wrong.

 

The 2007 version is better IMHO, the graphics and gameplay are identical to how i remember the Sinclair version - but it retains the Rob Hubbard music of the official release.

 

I don't think Manic Miner has been converted.... yet :-)

[carmel_andrews]

Boy i remember Manic Miner and JSW playing them in a shop display both in stevenage (just north of london) and weekends when i came back home to london...when i had the JSW game on the A8 (Tape version) I thought it was ok, though i prefer the Polish later version (i think it was done by XXL)...I don't ever remember there being a similar game to Star Raiders for the Speccy, Apparently the game Codename Matt 2 (or was it 3) was a space exploration game in a similar vein to SR (but without the Star Trek element to it) only star raiders game to find it's way to non atari format's was SRII ported over by Activision/electric dreams

 

I think, but can't be too sure ...that Databyte (who had UK licences with certain US software companies) converted Montezuma's revenge, like i said though i can't remember if they did a spectrum version

[carmel_andrews]

Boy i remember Manic Miner and JSW playing them in a shop display both in stevenage (just north of london) and weekends when i came back home to london...when i had the JSW game on the A8 (Tape version) I thought it was ok, though i prefer the Polish later version (i think it was done by XXL)...I don't ever remember there being a similar game to Star Raiders for the Speccy, Apparently the game Codename Matt 2 (or was it 3) was a space exploration game in a similar vein to SR (but without the Star Trek element to it) only star raiders game to find it's way to non atari format's was SRII ported over by Activision/electric dreams

 

I think, but can't be too sure ...that Databyte (who had UK licences with certain US software companies) converted Montezuma's revenge, like i said though i can't remember if they did a spectrum version

[oracle_jedi]

Boy i remember Manic Miner and JSW playing them in a shop display both in stevenage (just north of london) and weekends when i came back home to london...when i had the JSW game on the A8 (Tape version) I thought it was ok, though i prefer the Polish later version (i think it was done by XXL)...I don't ever remember there being a similar game to Star Raiders for the Speccy, Apparently the game Codename Matt 2 (or was it 3) was a space exploration game in a similar vein to SR (but without the Star Trek element to it) only star raiders game to find it's way to non atari format's was SRII ported over by Activision/electric dreams

 

I think, but can't be too sure ...that Databyte (who had UK licences with certain US software companies) converted Montezuma's revenge, like i said though i can't remember if they did a spectrum version

 

 

Timegate by Quicksilver on the Spectrum was similar to Star Raiders.

[carmel_andrews]

Boy i remember Manic Miner and JSW playing them in a shop display both in stevenage (just north of london) and weekends when i came back home to london...when i had the JSW game on the A8 (Tape version) I thought it was ok, though i prefer the Polish later version (i think it was done by XXL)...I don't ever remember there being a similar game to Star Raiders for the Speccy, Apparently the game Codename Matt 2 (or was it 3) was a space exploration game in a similar vein to SR (but without the Star Trek element to it) only star raiders game to find it's way to non atari format's was SRII ported over by Activision/electric dreams

 

I think, but can't be too sure ...that Databyte (who had UK licences with certain US software companies) converted Montezuma's revenge, like i said though i can't remember if they did a spectrum version

 

 

Timegate by Quicksilver on the Spectrum was similar to Star Raiders.

 

 

 

 

 

Though i briefly owned a speccy (well after buying my 800xl) I wasn't really into buying many speccy games (though the speccy games library is vast compared to the a8)...Ironically i actually owned much more A8 games then speccy games