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Clones of Manic Miner are a dime a dozen on the Spectrum (even this writer made one!), so they must necessarily possess some remarkable quality in order to distinguish themselves from the crowd. Manic Panic is one of these, for various reasons.

First of all, it does not use the original game engine or a derivative of it, which allows it to introduce many new features. For example: sprites now are "masked"; the playing area size can range from a simple "window" to the entire screen; enemies can be as little as 4 pixels high and collide with each other without causing Willy to lose a life (a bug affecting the original code); there can be multiple conveyor belts on a single screen, even in opposite directions to each other.

But the most important innovation is the presence of six game modes, one of which, Ace, is activated after at least one of the others is completed. These are: Training, Normal, Expert, Lantern and Torch. Differences range from the amount of air available to Willy, to the behaviour of nasties - whether contact with them only decreases Willy's amount of air or causes him to lose a life, as in the original game -, up to the last two, in which caves are shrouded in partial or complete darkness and Willy must rely on the beam of light, which can also be directed up or down if Willy stands still, projected by the torch placed on his helmet to illuminate the path. In particular, in Torch mode air does not decrease when Willy is immobile.

Control precision is fundamental in this type of games, and certainly there are no disappointments here: Willy moves smoother and faster than in Manic Miner thanks to the new code.

Ultimately, the new features of Manic Panic are such and so many that I believe it will be appealing even to those who are overcome by nausea just by hearing about Manic Miner and the like.