The world's most-read Scottish politics website

Wings Over Scotland


New old times

Posted on January 01, 2020 by

As alert readers will know by now, there’s nothing I like more than preserving weird old videogame stuff that’s in danger of being lost to posterity, unless perhaps it’s seeing games ported to strange formats they were never designed to run on, years or even decades after those formats ceased to be current.

So man, what a stroke of luck!

 

What’s all this, then?

I’ll make this short, because WordPress has just forced an indescribably awful and compulsory new text editor on users and I want to murder everyone involved. Pac Manic Miner Man, as the name hints and the screen makes explicit, is a remarkable hack of the Speccy platforming classic by veteran coder Jim Bagley which enables it to run on arcade Pac-Man hardware.

 

Unfortunately Jim’s old website bit the dust long ago, and everyone who covered the release back in late 2012 lazily linked to the site for the files rather than storing local copies, which means it’s now all but impossible to find, even in the unlikely event that you were to understand the incomprehensible nerdery required to then actually build the ROMset for the game.

But after several hours I tracked a copy down, so here it is. If you pop that file into the ROMs directory of the HBMAME emulator (or any number of other special versions of MAME), you’ll be playing a fun arcade port of Manic Miner, with all the levels but lots of little timing and spacing changes that make it a whole new version to learn.

(Inexplicably it defaults to using Right on the second joystick or G on the keyboard for jump, so you’ll probably want to tweak that in the emulator controls.)

 

If you want to run it in Retropie, incidentally – which is how I do 90% of my gaming these days – you’ll need to rename the file pacman.zip and pop it in a separate folder in your arcade ROMs directory (otherwise it’ll overwrite your normal Pac-Man ROM). Other than that it works as standard.

(Here’s a fake arcade flyer I made to use in the Retropie frontend.)

 

But that’s not the end. In a beautiful twist, Speccy boffin Simon Owen then ported Pac Manic Miner Man BACK onto the Speccy (in monochrome because the graphics had to be resized), to be run through his astonishing Pac-Man emulator for the +2A and +3, as previously seen here.

(Press 3 to add a credit and 1 to start. 6, 7 and 0 are the controls.)

 

Sadly, he only did it as a proof of concept, which means it only works properly up to Eugene’s Lair. (You can play the later levels, but the sprites mess up and change all the patterns and it makes it super-hard. Personally I still quite enjoyed playing it, using save states to try to get through it out of sheer cussedness.)

But it’s still fun, and since building the tape file requires another load of techy faffing, we’ve uploaded the ready-to-go version (kindly supplied by one of the fine folk at the Spectrum Computing Forums) here for use in whatever Spectrum emulator the kids think is coolest these days.

I’m hoping to get the Speccy retroport properly finished one day – I’ve offered to do the necessary sprite redrawing if Simon will then put it all into the game – but for now Pac Manic Miner Man has been thoroughly saved from the dustbin of history, so enjoy it. If that’s the sort of thing you like, obv.

Comment - please read this page for comment rules. HTML tags like <i> and <b> are permitted. Use paragraph breaks in long comments. DO NOT SIGN YOUR COMMENTS, either with a name or a slogan. If your comment does not appear immediately, DO NOT REPOST IT. Ignore these rules and I WILL KILL YOU WITH HAMMERS.


  • About

    Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.

    Stats: 6,807 Posts, 1,224,660 Comments

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • Categories

  • Tags

  • Recent Comments

    • Geri on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Read the detail. Scotland is awarded refugees but not an increase in cash to pay for them. That extra money…Aug 20, 19:49
    • GM on Conspiracies For Dummies: “A bbc journalist broke the convention of not revealing the identity of a complainer in court. They also gave a…Aug 20, 19:42
    • GM on Conspiracies For Dummies: “See gordon dangerfield below for a proper explanation.Aug 20, 19:27
    • GM on Conspiracies For Dummies: “If the die was not well and truly cast during the Sturgeon era then the rigged process that elected her…Aug 20, 19:26
    • GM on Conspiracies For Dummies: “It started off with the complaints procedure, Alex fought it. It became a civil case in court. If you recall…Aug 20, 19:13
    • Skip_NC on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Has someone stolen Iain McWhirter’s identity?Aug 20, 19:11
    • robertkknight on Conspiracies For Dummies: “You need to address that question to their London paymasters.Aug 20, 18:59
    • Hatey McHateface on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Racists are everywhere these days: https://unherd.com/newsroom/scotland-is-feeling-the-cost-of-liberal-asylum-policies/Aug 20, 18:58
    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Conspiracies For Dummies: “By (Scottish Solicitor Advocate) Gordon Dangerfield (12 Aug 2021) – LIZ LLOYD’S INTERFERENCE IN THE SALMOND INVESTIGATION: WHAT IT MEANS…Aug 20, 18:42
    • Geri on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Yes & I’m sure even the lawyers advised her there was nothing of any substance & nothing to see here…Aug 20, 18:23
    • Arthur Martin on Conspiracies For Dummies: “What did Leslie Evans and Liz Lloyd stand to gain from Alex Salmond being incarcerated?Aug 20, 18:22
    • Hatey McHateface on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Mills and Boon … only without the sex. We are talking about Scots after all. 50 shades of oatmeal.Aug 20, 18:20
    • James on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Why did she jail Craig Murray? I expect both questions have the same answer.Aug 20, 18:19
    • Hatey McHateface on Conspiracies For Dummies: ““Greatest Leader we have ever had” Naw. That was Yousaf. At least, alert readers could be forgiven for jumping to…Aug 20, 18:17
    • Hatey McHateface on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Quick Barbs. Start pushing the idea we should gift it tae poot! Ye’ll get a double bonus fer that.Aug 20, 18:10
    • Callum on Conspiracies For Dummies: “It was always Sturgeon at the heart of the conspiracy – guilty as hell – but extremely worrying was that…Aug 20, 18:02
    • twathater on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Alex Salmond in his love for Scotland announced that there were things that should have been aired and exposed but…Aug 20, 18:00
    • James on Conspiracies For Dummies: “That right, aye?Aug 20, 17:57
    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Whatever the literary merits of FRANKLY in total, that screenshot double-spread above (beginning with the words “been wrong. Leslie had…Aug 20, 17:54
    • Ronnie on Conspiracies For Dummies: “One bit I still don’t understand, given that the Judge heard all the evidence and points that you have highlighted,…Aug 20, 17:53
    • duncanio on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Mills and Boon … only without the love.Aug 20, 17:43
    • Stuart on Conspiracies For Dummies: “As seen over on the Daily Telegraph. “JK Rowling has accused the liberal arts of “the most craven, bootlicking capitulation…Aug 20, 17:36
    • Geri on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Jeez, there goes comfy slippers failing to keep up as usual. It’s okay, Dreary, she’s gone now. No need to…Aug 20, 17:31
    • Hatey McHateface on The illiterate solicitor: “@ James says: 20 August, 2025 at 12:22 pm “That’s “Reform” for you, Marie. Half wits, bigots and racists.” BBC…Aug 20, 17:22
    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Conspiracies For Dummies: ““Out, damned spot!”Aug 20, 17:20
    • Hatey McHateface on The illiterate solicitor: “@Barbs says: 20 August, 2025 at 10:50 am “fuck off” Spare a thought for those unfortunates who go through life…Aug 20, 17:19
    • Ian on Conspiracies For Dummies: “As soon as Salmond was publicly named, Sturgeon had done all the damage she needed to, regardless of the outcome.…Aug 20, 17:00
    • Anton Decadent on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Thank you for fighting for his name and laying out what was done to him. Over on X it is…Aug 20, 16:56
    • panda paws on Conspiracies For Dummies: ““via the sinister Moorov Doctrine” It’s not normally sinister. Serious sexual assaults don’t usually have witnesses, they are the very…Aug 20, 16:56
    • Young Lochinvar on Conspiracies For Dummies: “Forrest..Aug 20, 16:37
  • A tall tale



↑ Top