A China Miner Christmas
difficult platform game for Commodore 64, 2023
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Background
Miner Wally (I see what they did there...) returns in this Christmas-themed
revamp of the infamously difficult C64 single-screen platformer from 1984.
But a bit of snow and a Santa costume isn't the only thing that's changed,
Wally has now developed his athletic abilities beyond recognition to give you
the player a fighting chance of actually completing a level and hopefully
having a lot more fun along the way.....
What's different?
The entire game has been re-written from the ground up complete with 'modern'
controls and physics together with fairer collision detection to allow your
character to nimbly traverse around the screen in a more contemporary
fashion, whilst retaining the THIRTY fiendish level designs from the original
that 99.99% of players never managed to reach, due to the bizarre control
scheme and need for split-second timing.
While a certain level of experimentation and practice is still required to
progress far in the game, you've now at least a chance to get out of sticky
situations with some good old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reactions!
Another major change is that you no longer die when falling from a platform,
and because this means the slides are no longer necessary to complete levels,
additional extra lives are placed on them to incentivise their use. And
because a time bonus is also awarded for completing a level before the snow
piles up completely, earning further extra lives for each 1,250 points scored
is also easier.
Finally, when you pick up items and then lose a life, they remain collected
meaning you don't have to re-play the entire level from scratch.
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Some useful keyboard shortcuts
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[PAUSE] - stop/continue game
[F9] - quick load game state
[F12] - quick save game state (still stored after leaving the site)
[F11] - toggle fullscreen mode
[ScrollLock] - quick switch control ports
[PageDown] - make a screenshot (320x200)