Manic Miner: Part 1

Manic Miner
By Stephen Ward
Based on a game by Matthew Smith

"What'll it be?" The barman asked the owner of the yellow helmet slouched in front of him at the bar.
"The usual," the yellow helmet replied, "anything that makes me feel an ounce less pathetic than I truly am."
"Oh dear," the barman sighed and poured him a beer, "another cave-in?"
"Worse," said the helmet, "and I don't wanna talk about it."
The barman finished pouring and placed the pint in front of the helmet. It lifted up to reveal the face of Miner Willy, Loser.
That's not my opinion mind, those are his own words. Sure, there was a time when our dear Willy loved his life of digging in the ground, hunting for treasure and adventure, while every other guy in town became sucessful lawyers and businessmen. All of them stuck up in their high towers of glass, making their money by sueing those who had it, never knowing the thrill of finding pirate treasure, or a secret lost tomb full of priceless artifacts.
The trouble was that in 10 years of searching, neither had Willy.
10 years of digging in the ground with his trusty pickaxe, hoping that with each foot of earth he moved he was just that much closer to finding his fortune... Nope, Nada, Zippo...
He took the glass and downed half of it in a few gulps and his head returned to rest on the bar. This had been happening a lot recently and the barman said as much to Willy.
"i just don't see the point anymore," said Willy, looking up squinting at the barman. "I can't take much more of it."
"of what? Mining?"
"No, no," replied Willy, shaking his head, "I still love mining, very relaxing."
"Then what then?"
"This." and with that the door to the bar opened and in came three well dressed men, top hats and tails, each with a girl on one arm, also well dressed and giggling. Willy braced himself for what was to come.
"Hey! Willy!" the first one said, slapping Willy on the back rather hard.
"Hey Roger... Guys..." said Willy quietly as they surrounded him. All three had been in his class at school. They hadn't changed a bit.
"Heard you had a bit of bother today, Wil," Roger grinned cruelly, winking at his girl.
"Yeah..." Willy replied again just as quietly.
"Something about a burst water pipe wasn't it?" Roger and his associates were laughing loudly, "you musta gotten very wet"
"Yeah, perhaps i shoulda stayed up there to drown in my sorrows rather than bother walking all the way down here." said Willy.
A look of disapointment momentarilly crossed Rogers face as he was about to make the same joke, but they were quickly back laughing as they moved off to the corner of the bar with a bottle of the most expensive drink in the place... Each.
"I see what you mean," said the barman, collecting Willys glass that he had quickly downed and went out back leaving Willy to dwell on life, i.e. Sleep.

A few hours later the barman shook him awake, "come on Willy, closing time."
Willy lifted his head and grunted, rubbing his eyes. As he did this he realised that something had stuck to his hand where he had been resting. It was a piece of paper.
"Where did this come from?"
"i dunno, what is it?"
Willy woke up properly when he realised what it was. "It's a map!"
"oh yes? where to?" said the barman, turning to Willy, but Willy wasn't there.

Now any normal person would have waited till morning, preferably with a good breakfast inside him before going off into the night following some map he found in a bar. But this was Miner Willy, some called him the Manic Miner, cos when he caught the wiff of adventure he had to go then and there.
The map seemed to show a map of his home town Surbiton and surrounding mountains, along with a big "X". This "X" excited Willy no end, he'd never had a bona-fide treasure map before, perhaps this could be it, no more hitting water pipes, no more embarrassment and no more losing girlfriends to lawyers in top hats. Soon he could be one of the Jet Set, with a massive house and more girls than you could shake a stick at. Whistling "if i were a rich man" he treked off into the mountains, pickaxe on one shoulder, his knapsac on the other, off to excitement, adventure and really wild things.

The map seemed to lead to a small cave in the lower mountians, not far from the water pipe incident. Willy didn't let the memory of the pipe get him down cos he was supercharged with spirit. He flicked on his helmet-mounted flashlight and went deep into the cave. At the far end there was a large "X" on the ground, this didn't seem odd to Willy, he just felt that finally someone was giving him a break.
He set to work, whistling loudly as the pickaxe thudded into the ground, churning up the ground deeper and deeper. After about five feet, he suddenly had a very bad feeling. The same feeling he had whenever there was a cave-in or any other catastrophe. The trouble is he always got the feeling when it was way too late.
"Oh bugger," Willy breathed as the floor opened up beneath him and he fell into the deep depths of the earth.

"Dark."
Willy moaned when he stirred. He felt around him to try to work out where he was.
"Rock."
This wasn't much of a surprise to Willy as he had just fallen down a deep dark hole in the mountains.
"Darkness."
Willy suddenly realised that in order to see where he was it did help to open his eyes.
"Arrg!! Bright light!!!"
He shut his eyes again. Slowly, with a lot of blinking, he got used to the light and was able to see where he was.
"Big."
His brain obviously wasn't quite with it yet. He took a deep breath.
"Very big."
The extra oxygen to his brain was working. He took a few more breaths.
"Unusually large and bright cavern."
Yup. Working again. He was indeed inside a unusually large and bright cavern. The ceiling was about 100ft above him, how the hell he fell that far without being killed he had no idea.
The cavern had several tunnels leading off at various angles, presumably to other caverns and looking up Willy realised that there were platforms above him leading who knows where.

Willy began to explore, the glow of his lamp not really needed here, though where the light was coming from was anybody's guess. He was about to try exploring the tunnels that led off from this central cavern when something caught his eye. He climbed up part of the cave wall and pulled himself up onto one of the platforms that ringed the cavern.
He brushed himself down and comfirmed what he has seen. He reached up and took down an object from a small alcove in the wall. It was in the shape of a large key but, and this is what gave him the tingle that had kept him going these last few years, it was made of gold. Not only that but it was covered in diamonds.
"Woah." Willy breathed as the light from his flashlight made it sparkle. After a few minutes he put it in his knapsac and continued to look around. There was no telling what other gems were just laying around in this place.
He continued along the platform, it led out from the wall out high over the floor of the cavern. Willy tried not to look down as he worked his way along. Luckily something caught his eye instead, it was another key on the floor ahead of him. It was on a small ledge jutting out from the side of the platform.
Willy stepped forward, eager to collect this next gem, then suddenly realised that this part of the platform was somekind of conveyer belt. He nearly lost his balance as the floor began to move beneath him, but he quickly composed himself and knelt down, snatching the key as he past.
"Yeah!" He grinned, examining the new key, it seemed to be even better than the first. He began whistling "If i were a rich man" again.
Suddenly the lights went out.
There was a thud.
The conveyer belt trembled.
A very loud mechanical noise began. Willy looked around trying to see what it was. The noise was coming from the direction that the belt was moving him. It sounded like an angry steam engine, and as Willy peered into the gloom he realised that was a pretty good description. It was large, loud and has quite alarming apendages. Various drills and blades were moving up and down as the mechanical monster moved towards him.
Willy made quite a loud, girlie scream and began running away. Of course the conveyer belt made this impossible, the monster was gaining on him as he just ran on the spot. Another scream and he panicked, he lept up into the air and over the head of the monster. He landed back on the belt and grinned, not quite sure what had happened but safer than he was acouple of seconds ago.
This didn't last long. The monster turned as it reached the end of the belt and headed back towards Willy. Willy ran the other way, realising he had run out of platform.
"Oh Crap!" he gasped as he looked between the metal beast coming for him quickly, and the 40 foot drop that the belt kept edging him towards.
He took a few steps towards the monster, then ran as fast as he could towards the gap. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth and lept.
"Yeeeeeeaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhh- OW!"
He landed, heavily on the other side of the gap, he had reached the opposite platform. He just sat and gasped his breath back, tring to absorb the past few seconds. The fact that he had just jumped over 6 foot into the air, Twice, puzzled him the most. He could just make out the metal monster, or whatever it was, repeating it's back and forth motion across the conveyer belt. The lights were still out so Willy set his torch to full strength and continued round the platform as it ringed the cavern.

During the next few minutes, Willy collected a few more keys, avoided a few, nasty-looking plants, and discovered the hard way that some of these platforms weren't very stable. The floor collapsed a few times nearly dropping our hero right on top of the monsterous machine that he had avoided before. But he finally got back to the cavern floor, convinced he had cleared out all the valuable gems.
Willy didn't know what this place was, or how he was gonna get out, but he did know that there must be more booty to collect down those tunnels and he didn't want to waste time. So set on this mission he didn't really notice when the first room he went through appeared to be inhabitated by large, clockwork penguins. and the next by bizzare turkey robots. They were just things to avoid to him now, he jumped and ran, grabbing the glittering objects, each one worth a small fortune.

Returning to the central cavern, Willy decided to count his earnings so far. He'd collected about 10 of these diamond studded things. He peered at them through his eyeglass, they were definatly real gems, and the gold had that sheen that only gold could ever have.
"HELP!!" The voice made Willy jump, it echoed around the cavern. It seemed to have come from one of the tunnels he had not yet explored. "HEEEEELP!!!" It sounded like a girl. He went to investigate.
The cavern he entered had a nasty green glow to it. Barrels of god-knows-what littered the floor and various platforms and a pair of mutated seals were milling around on the far side.
As Willy got closer he realised why the seals were sticking to the far side, a few feet above them, dangling from the edge of a platform was the source of the screams. She spotted Willy.
"Get me out of here!!!!" She yelled, the seals seemed to be hitting their vicious looking beach balls at the platform causing it to collapse slowly. Willy climbed and lept from platform to platform until he got to the one she was dangling from. She was dressed in standard Miner gear not unlike himself, helmet and overalls. He held out his hand and pulled her up onto the platform.
"Are you ok?" he asked.
"What took you so long?" She yelled, "I was yelling for ages!"
The platform continued to collapse beneath them so they both jumped to the next one.
"Well I... Umm..." Stuttered Willy, unsure of why this stranger was having a go at him.
She looked at him, as if suddenly remembering who he was and checked herself. "I'm sorry," She gave him a warm smile and held out her hand, "I'm Benny. And you must be Miner Willy. An honour to meet you, i'm a big fan of yours."
Willy smiled, quickly taken in by this strange persons praise. Willy wasn't the brighest button on the shirt and didn't notice Bennys apparent interest in the contents of his knapsac.
As they collected the items in this cavern, more keys this time, Benny explained how she came to be here. Apparently she had followed Willy in order to perhaps get an autograph. Instead she had found herself in this strange cave complex and went off to explore.
"It was a little unnerving with this lower gravity down here, no wonder i misjudged that jump and was left to the mercy of those seals."
"Low gravity?" Willy asked.
"Yeah," Benny sighed, "Haven't you noticed that you can jump over 6 feet in the air down here?"
"Oh!" gasped Willy, "That..."
"Basically because we're so far underground we're closer to the center of gravity of the planet..." She trailed off when she spotted Willys look of incomprahention. "It's Magic..." She finished.
They returned to the central cavern, there was one more tunnel to explore and Willy went straight towards it.

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This story is based on a 1983 game written for the ZX Spectrum by Matthew Smith and has recently been reborn on the PC, GBA and the new generation of mobile phones.

I wrote this about a year ago and recently have tried to continue it. I've put this beginning up because i really need some feed back and encouragement. I've been doubtful of a lot of my abilities recently, not just in writing, so any comments would be greatly apprecieted... and to anybody who's played the game, how the hell do i decribe Eugene's lair?!?!?!