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Posted By

Luca
on 2013-02-15
11:05:04
 Rare Maniax Tape Found

ManiaxIt's a Maniax, Maniax on the tape! And it's playing like it's never played as cracked!

We've finally found an original tape for Maniax, the colorful Qix clone released by our beloved Kingsoft in 1988! We've bought for less than a dozen Euros, and promptly dumped into .TAP format. It comes in its original tape suit as you can see in the cassette's picture, but in a deck with copied cover and inlay instructions, just like it should have been a sort of closure offer stuff.
The purchase of this original version has allowed us to understand few data about Maniax:
- some graphic tiles used as bonuses are originally broken in the tape version, this means it wasn't due to a bad cracking consequence;
- even in the original tape the infamous bug which randomly occurs after the 2nd level does happen, consisting both in a non moving main foe and preventing the background graphics to appear when an area is closed;
- the same bug does not generally happen in Maniax (MOS), hence might it the latter be a crack from the disk copy, maybe different from the tape one?

We're still hunting for the disk version of Maniax, even spotted around but at high prices. Who wanna join into the big hunting challenge?

Posted By

Csabo
on 2013-02-15
11:05:04
 Re: Rare Maniax Tape Found

Awesome find, finally we have the original.

I really want to "love" this game, but it's too bad about the bugs (therefore, I only "like" it happy). The bug on LEVEL 02 does seem to happen. I'm a big fan of Jörg Dierks games, but with this one, it seems that some more polishing would have been needed... The flashing of the enemies is a bit annoying for example.

Posted By

Gaia
on 2013-02-15
15:22:43
 Re: Rare Maniax Tape Found

Awesome prey, kudos to the hunter!

As for the bugs, I guess it was a rushed out product for some reason... it was the end of the commercial era after all, I'd even speculate on Jörg being gone already by then and having no one there to fix the bugs...

EDIT: ok, so the last commercial game was Two to One in 1990, that is still a good two years :) Still, it feels like a rushed out product.

Posted By

Luca
on 2013-02-16
02:31:40
 Re: Rare Maniax Tape Found

Moreover, do you try to use in some ways goodies like BOMBS or GUN? Instructions say you should use your fire button to activate'em, but nothing seems to really happen :v

Posted By

MIK
on 2013-02-16
15:31:36
 Re: Rare Maniax Tape Found

Very nice find! happy

Posted By

Degauss
on 2013-02-16
19:30:02
 Re: Rare Maniax Tape Found

Nice find indeed! I remember that game and beeing disappointed as a kid because i expected better graphics (hey, its a 64kb game!)

Posted By

retroscener
on 2013-02-16
23:07:19
 Re: Rare Maniax Tape Found

Always good to find lost gems happy



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