Manic Miner spawned many a clone back in its day, but eventually it began to dry up, until remakes on the PC began to have their day. Ste Pattullo however felt there was still room for another Manic Miner clone, and began work on the simply titled "Platform Mania".
The game was first heard about by those who paid particular attention to the text on Limbo 2, one of Ste’s previous games on the Commodore Disk User covermount. Platform Mania was to be coming soon, but was never heard of again.
For some time, GTW has been aware of the game and had attempted to contact Ste with no results sadly. However, Ste himself got in touch by pure chance after doing a search on the net, and prompty posted us a load of his work on a few old C64 disks. On there was the long lost Platform Mania and what remained of it.
Already we have described the game as a Manic Miner clone, and that it is, with multi-colour based graphics and interesting little sprites. You essentially control a pink blob that you must get to collect various little objects on a single screen, then proceed to the exit.
The game is in it’s fairly early stages, and is quite bugged at the moment. Platform jumping is not 100% accurate, and there seems to be a few features not working, such as an interesting 2 player mode, which is quite intriguing (We will ask Ste more about this feature soon to find out how this would have worked in the game). Also there seems to be some graphic corruption in places, but otherwise the game is playable and working. You can complete the various levels which are present (We believe there are around 10 in total). When you die, thats it… you will have to reset the game… Lives and restart points had not been coded into the game at this stage.
Separate from the game was the title screen, but unlinked. Thanks to Jazzcat, we also offer a single file fixed version which has the title screen. Press space to go into the game.
It is not quite known yet why the game was never finished or released. We are guessing that the joining with Digital Magic might have helped shelve this project, and by the time Ste came back, the C64 had died out. Confirmation on this soon.
Although you should not expect a full game which will keep you burning the midnight oil, it is great to see this lost work and preserve it for people to see. Check it out and take a look and wonder "What if", just like with many of the other titles we’ve covered so far…
Good early start of a Manic Miner clone… unfortunately never quite made it…
Contributions: Ste Pattullo, Andrew Fisher, Jazzcat
