The Willy Miner Series #zxspectrum #zxspectrum #retrogaming #retrogame #retrogames #gaming #computergame #retrogamer

Miner Willy is the protagonist in a series of platform games mainly for the ZX Spectrum, MSX, Amstrad CPC and the Commodore 64 home computers. I remember playing Manic Miner on my friends ZX Spectrum way back in 1983 for the first time as a 13 year old kid. I have to say I was immediately impressed with the sound, music and colourful graphics. I thought the way in which that little fella moved and jumped across the screen was just brilliant at the time.

So I thought it would be good to do a short video on the history of the Miner Willy series.

The first two games - Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy were written by Matthew Smith during the early 1980s. Top bloke and a bit of legend in his own right really.

The Willy saga was supposed to be a trilogy and a third game in the series was planned, Miner Willy Meets The Taxman but this was never to be. The game originally involved Willy trying to find his way through a maze of inland revenue offices in order to pay his income tax (probably capital gains too, given all that gold he found).

Another game in the series, The Perils of Willy, was released solely for the VIC-20. It's basically a cut-down version of Manic Miner.
There was also a upgraded version for the ZX Spectrum. We will be checking out both of those out.

Andre's Night Off was then published as a type-in listing in the June 1984's issue of Computer & Video Games.[4] This was also written by Matthew Smith. It was pretty rubbish though and we will have a look at that too.

Jet Set Willy II was then released in 1985 and was developed by Derrick P. Rowson and Steve Wetherill rather than Matthew Smith. It's really an expansion of the original game, rather than an entirely new one.

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