Manky (video game)
| Manky | |
|---|---|
 C64 title screenshot of Manky | |
| Developer(s) | Peter Vaas |
| Platform(s) | C64 |
| Release date(s) | 2009 |
| Genre(s) | Platform game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Distribution | 1 floppy disks |
Manky is a 2009 platform game developed by Peter Vaas (Omega120) for the Commodore 64 and released in the Public Domain.
Gameplay
Manky is a single-screen, non-scrolling platform game where the player controls a character, named Manky, who must make his way through a labyrinth of platforms and ladders in order to collect keys and eggs to unlock a door to the toilet. Along the way the player has to evade various enemies, like chickens (chicks) and bats and can collect grain as bonus items. After the door to the toilet has been unlocked the player has to approach the toilet and sit down on it to finish the level.[1]
Technical details
According to its programmer Manky was written fully in Assembly Language on an Action Replay MKVI cartridge (or a similar extension cartridge for the Commodore 64).[2] The game was frozen with the hardware and has several bugs and feels unfinished and it is not known whether the game has more than one level due to the problem that nobody else except for its creator has ever managed to complete the first level because of bugs that make controlling the player sprite very cumbersome. The game has very simple graphics and only very few sound effects.
It has been thought that on more than one occasion that the sprites for some of the in-game characters were plagiarised from the game "Chuckie Egg" - Richard Bayliss made the same assumption when reviewing the game. This was later found to be incorrect after further correspondence with the author(Peter Vaas), and subsequently a footnote/amendment was made to the review to indicate that in fact all the sprites had been drawn and coded by Vaas.[3]
Cult Following
Manky claimed fame on the classic gaming website Lemon64 after its developer Omega120 appeared as a member on the site and started to advertise his game profusely in the website's mini chat and forum. However his advertising of the game quickly reached penetrant levels where he would only talk about the game and try to convince others to play it at every occasion. This resulted in other site members to start making fun about Omega120 and Manky and ultimately had him being banned from the website completely after he started to advertise his creation in otherwise unrelated forum threads. He has also advertised his game on Commodore16.com, a site dedicated to another Commodore system that is totally incompatible with his game. Omega120 also sometimes advertised his two other game creations Moggy and Mr. Wong,[4] two games that were in an even less finished and playable state.
After his ban on Lemon64 there was a small group of site members (in particular pipi666, Lander, dksmfb86, sys2074, DrFred and later retrogamer-downunder) who made jokes about Manky and Omega120 to mock them, mostly in the website's mini chat. They started to pick names of other C64 games and randomly exchanged parts of the name with Manky and other Omega120-related words. With this, Mankyisms were born, followed later by various off-springs of more or less related jokes, namely Manky Bombay TV videos, Locke Jokes, Helga and Kraften jokes and ultimately Jams Jokes.[5]