An officially endorsed box set of Manic Miner creator Matthew Smith’s ZX Spectrum games is coming
The Matthew Smith Collection includes new cassettes of his games
A new box set featuring the work of acclaimed ZX Spectrum programmer Matthew Smith is in the works.
The Matthew Smith Collection launched a Kickstarter campaign on Sunday and has already nearly doubled its target in its first day alone.
The set, which has is being produced with Smith’s permission, is being created by Pixel Jockey, which specialises in making ZX Spectrum products including re-releases of game cassettes.
It will coat £39 (plus shipping) and will contain newly created cassettes containing Smith’s three games – Styx, Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy – and will come with an illustrated box to house them in.
A number of additional bonuses are available to those who wish to add them to their order, including the first ever cassette release of Andre’s Night Off, which Smith submitted to CVG magazine as a type-in game (where players would manually enter the code on their own Spectrum computers).
Other add-ons include the 200-page book Matthew Smith: Mining for Success, an enable badge set and a limited edition signed artwork set.
This will consist of entirely new commissioned artwork created by Trevor Storey, whose work regularly featured on the covers of ZZAP and Crash magazines.
Matthew Smith programmed Styx in 1983, at the age of 17. The game was published by Bug-Byte Software, which had signed him up to a three-game deal.
The second of these games, Manic Miner, was an enormous commercial success, putting pressure on Smith to deliver with its sequel, Jet Set Willy.
Smith once described making Jet Set Willy as “hell, seven shades of Hell”, and was unable to finish his next game, The Mega Tree (also known as Willy Meets The Taxman), or another titled Attack of the Mutant Zombie Flesh Eating Chickens From Mars.
He left the games industry shortly afterwards and became something of a recluse, with websites dedicated to trying to find where he was, until in 1999 he returned to the industry to work at now-defunct UK studio Runecraft.
