A new officially endorsed collection is bringing three of Matthew Smith’s ZX Spectrum games back to physical cassette. The Matthew Smith Collection is being produced by retro publisher Pixel Jockey with Smith’s permission and includes new cassette editions of Styx, Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy. The project is being funded through Kickstarter, with the standard collection priced at £39 plus shipping.
All three games will be presented in newly produced physical editions housed together in an illustrated box. The collection is designed around the original ZX Spectrum format rather than simply packaging modern emulated versions of the games. Pixel Jockey specializes in officially licensed Spectrum products and has previously produced cassette reissues and collections aimed at collectors of original hardware.
Styx was Smith’s first commercially released ZX Spectrum game and was published by Bug-Byte in 1983 when he was still a teenager. The maze-style action game became the first title in a three-game agreement between Smith and the publisher. His next project, Manic Miner, became considerably more successful and established Miner Willy as one of the defining characters of Britain’s early home-computer era.
Manic Miner arrived in 1983 and tasked players with guiding Willy through a series of hazardous single-screen caverns while collecting objects before his oxygen supply ran out. The game became one of the ZX Spectrum’s most recognizable releases, combining precise platforming with unusual enemies, colorful environments and music that stood out on the hardware. Its success led directly to Jet Set Willy, which followed in 1984.
Jet Set Willy expanded the formula into a much larger interconnected mansion, allowing players to move between dozens of rooms rather than completing stages in a fixed sequence. Smith developed the game under intense expectations following Manic Miner’s success and has since spoken openly about how difficult its development became. Despite its famously demanding design and bugs in the original release, Jet Set Willy went on to become another major Spectrum title.
The new collection also has several optional extras for buyers who want a broader archive of Smith’s work. One add-on is the first cassette release of Andre’s Night Off, a game Smith originally submitted to Computer and Video Games magazine as a type-in program. Type-in games were distributed as printed source code, requiring readers to manually enter the program into their computers rather than loading it from commercial media.
Another optional extra is the approximately 200-page book Matthew Smith: Mining for Success, which focuses on Smith’s career and the development of his games. Pixel Jockey is also offering an enamel badge set and a limited signed artwork collection. The artwork has been newly commissioned from Trevor Storey, whose illustrations have appeared in retro gaming publications including ZZAP! and Crash.
Smith’s career became closely associated with the ZX Spectrum despite his relatively small number of released games. After the success of Jet Set Willy, he worked on projects including The Mega Tree, also known as Willy Meets the Taxman, and the memorably titled Attack of the Mutant Zombie Flesh Eating Chickens From Mars, but neither became a completed commercial follow-up in the same way as his earlier releases. He later stepped away from the games industry for a period before eventually returning to development work.
The Matthew Smith Collection is therefore positioned as both a playable physical reissue and a retrospective on one of the ZX Spectrum’s best-known programmers. By reproducing the games on cassette rather than limiting the project to digital distribution, Pixel Jockey is targeting collectors who still own original Spectrum hardware as well as enthusiasts interested in preserving the presentation of early British computer games.
The core £39 set includes Styx, Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy on newly manufactured ZX Spectrum cassettes inside the illustrated collector’s box. Additional items such as Andre’s Night Off, the book, badges and signed artwork are available separately through the crowdfunding campaign.
