Matthew Smith talks us through every level of his classic platformer

Sat at the very desk where it was written, Matthew Smith watches Miner Willy leap through all 20 screens of his Spectrum masterpiece. Paul Drury holds the ashtray and takes notes

Central Cavern: "This was the test screen, the first of everything."

Central Cavern
“This was the test screen, the first of everything,” begins Matt. “The collapsing floors, conveyor belts, the jumps, the colour clash. Using two colours in the bricks of the solid platforms and then when you jump up on to the first platform, that’s all testing for colour clash. It has one of all the difficult jumps in, too.” How was difficulty determined, we ask. “From the end of the conveyor belt to the higher platform counts as a difficult jump… but I put in a safety net. I plotted it out on graph paper: two pixels and then a parabolic, acceleration down until you hit terminal velocity, at about four pixels a frame, then you started falling straight down. I’d do all the testing and see where you’d land.” And what about the clockwork baddie on the conveyor belt? “Oh, just something I’d drawn. There’s a bit of Yellow Submarine in him – that’s where the mouth in the belly came from. The original sketches I did had water instead of conveyor belts. There were going to be streams of water and I was thinking about making it impossible to go backwards. That would make it more of a puzzle – working out how to get somewhere without going upstream – but by the time I started coding, they’d become conveyor belts.”

The Cold Room
Matt stares intently at the ‘keys’ on this level. “They’re snowshoes. Well, tennis rackets.” He then starts tapping the screen before we gently remind him it isn’t a touchscreen. “Mmm, oh, right. I was just thinking about tweaking a pixel. I’m not sure if it would be better light or dark. I must have tried it both ways back then.” Ever the perfectionist. And what about the shuffling birdies? “Everyone knows penguins are fully signed up members of the funny animals union.” As Willy slowly descends the ‘chimney’, Matt chirps up, “For disintegrating platforms, I used the video memory of the Spectrum. It was the first machine I had with a bit mapped screen.” We note that the Cold Room level is considerably easier than the previous one. “Oh, I didn’t do the screens in order. No, I did the first screen first and then I think I made some attempt to sort the rest out and give a graduated gameplay. That’s why the first screen is disproportionately hard, because it wasn’t part of that scheme.”

The Menagerie
Matt scans the collection of creatures on screen. “Here we’ve got spiders, emus, well, ducks or something. Yeah, they’re flying! Well, their feet are coming off the ground. They’re having a go! Hang on; there are only two kinds of animal in there. That’s a bit lame. There should be at least three before you call it a menagerie!” Matt’s French may be questionable, but we wonder if the birds do signify another sort of love, that of a man for his footy team? “Yeah, you could see it as a tribute to Liverpool FC. They’re not far off being liver birds and I’m definitely a red shirt.”

The Cold Room: "They’re snowshoes. Well, tennis rackets."

… continued