Probably the final version of the game

In previous versions of the game, when AY sound was selected and background music was off, all sound effects used three AY sound channels. When background music was on, all sound effects used two channels. Now, even with background music on, some sound effects and additional musical parts use three channels, so they sound better.

The sound of Mario being destroyed and the sound of the monkey jumping are slightly different from the sound of fire jumping out of a barrel. Previously, all three sounds were the same, now the first two are closer to the original arcade game. The monkey's voice also sounds slightly different from the previous version.

At level 3 and above in the first game stage, the barrel behaviour is again a bit closer to the original arcade game. At levels 1 and 2, the barrel behaviour remains the same as in previous versions of the game (i.e. slightly easier than in the arcade game), because the first stage is the hardest for most players. So it is intentional.

At level 2 and above in the second game stage, there is a slight change to the cement behaviour to make the game more difficult, and from level 4 another similar change. These changes were added because the second stage is the easiest for most players.

The game should now become progressively more difficult up to level 6. From level 7 onwards it remains as difficult as level 6. While testing this version of the game I mostly got to level 4, sometimes to level 5, only a few times to level 6 and never to level 7 so far.

The monkey's face looks a little better again after the final fall, almost the same as in the original arcade game (but the eyes don't move).

The monkey jumping on the top girder in the opening animation interacts with the background a little better again.

While entering a name into the high score table, characters of the entered name can be deleted.

The list of authors of the original arcade game is slightly expanded.

In the previous version of the game, due to a change in one part of the program, an error re-appeared that caused a lift to sometimes redraw the gap between Mario and the lift and to recolour Mario, if Mario died by falling onto the lift. This error has been fixed.

When a player scored more than 999900 points, the high score was intentionally set to 999900, but this score was not recorded in the high score table because it started counting again from 0 inside the program. Now the score remains at 999900 even in the high score table.

When a player scored 500 points for destroying a moving object with a hammer, the explosion displayed 500 points, but 800 points were added to the score. Now, 500 points are added in this case.

Another error that didn't affect Spectrum because it was only trying to write to ROM, but caused errors on SAM Coupé, is fixed. No part of the program should try to write to ROM anymore.

I wondered if jumping over a hole should be easier. When Mario is landing and most of his body is off the platform, he doesn't land on the platform and falls into the hole. But since the second game stage can be solved faster by jumping over a hole, and the third stage can be significantly shortened by a difficult jump, I left it unchanged so that the game wouldn't be too easy in those parts.

I also considered options for making the upper part of the third game stage more difficult (it is easier than in the arcade version due to the shortened playing area), but none of them worked for me.

Furthermore, I did some experiments with the monkey voice, but I couldn't come up with anything better than the current version with the current program length. In any case, most testers preferred this sound to the sound from the old versions consisting only of white noise.

Additionally, I considered adding the option to select Japanese or American stage order, but due to lack of free memory, more important things took precedence.

And finally, there is a version of the game for SAM Coupé with proper SAA sound. Because in the Spectrum version I used some features of AY sound that SAA doesn't allow, it was necessary to create a new player that works in a different way and also converts music tables to a different format (directly from beeper data to SAA). Therefore, the sound is not exactly the same as in the Spectrum version, but I tried not to make it too different. In any case, it finally doesn't sound like a broken Spectrum beeper on SAM, like it did in previous versions.

I was also thinking again about the possibility of better SAM Coupé graphics, because of course I am not very happy with the current version using Spectrum graphics. Creating new pictures wouldn't be a problem, but using them in a different graphics mode would require rewriting many parts of the program, as it now contains a lot of tricks for reducing colour clash on ZX spectrum, plus it would require reorganizing memory and using paging. I don't specialize in SAM Coupé (this version is just a by-product of the Spectrum version), so unfortunately it doesn't seem very likely (but I am not saying "never").

This should really be the final version of the game (at least for Spectrum), I don't plan on improving anything anymore. Only if any programming errors were found (although the game was thoroughly tested), would I consider fixing them.