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Description
One of the strangest things about the SAM Coupé version of Manic Miner was that, while it took advantage of MODE 4 to deliver full-colour graphics without attribute clash, not a single attempt was made by the original graphic artist to replicate one of the most obvious features, common to many other conversions: multiple colour versions of each sprite... And what's most embarrassing, from my point of view, working on this update, is that we were already more than a year into development before it occurred to me to try.

Now, with a palette of just 12 colours available within the game, I wasn't going to be able to offer the full range of the Spectrum original, but I worked out that I could get at least red and 'blue' variants of most of the sprites, with yellow and green being possible for certain sprites because of how they're composed. Additionally, with a few judicious palette swaps in certain caverns, I could give the illusion of even more.

There were some I didn't even try to vary: the Pac-Men, Skylab, and the flaming barrels, for example. Some weren't suited to alternate colour schemes, some required too great a range in their primary colour, and others simply didn't need to be colour switched as they appeared so rarely or because they represent something specific.

For the most part, I'm happy with how these turned out - both my updates to existing sprites and the wholly new ones I designed specifically for this game... But, given half a chance, I'd probably go back and tweak most of them. I just can't help myself.

Description
One of the strangest things about the SAM Coupé version of Manic Miner was that, while it took advantage of MODE 4 to deliver full-colour graphics without attribute clash, not a single attempt was made by the original graphic artist to replicate one of the most obvious features, common to many other conversions: multiple colour versions of each sprite... And what's most embarrassing, from my point of view, working on this update, is that we were already more than a year into development before it occurred to me to try.

Now, with a palette of just 12 colours available within the game, I wasn't going to be able to offer the full range of the Spectrum original, but I worked out that I could get at least red and 'blue' variants of most of the sprites, with yellow and green being possible for certain sprites because of how they're composed. Additionally, with a few judicious palette swaps in certain caverns, I could give the illusion of even more.

There were some I didn't even try to vary: the Pac-Men, Skylab, and the flaming barrels, for example. Some weren't suited to alternate colour schemes, some required too great a range in their primary colour, and others simply didn't need to be colour switched as they appeared so rarely or because they represent something specific.

For the most part, I'm happy with how these turned out - both my updates to existing sprites and the wholly new ones I designed specifically for this game... But, given half a chance, I'd probably go back and tweak most of them. I just can't help myself.