Matthew Smith's Spectrum Classics Return on Cassette in New Box Set

Pixel Jockey's officially endorsed Matthew Smith Collection is bringing Styx, Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy back to cassette, with extra tiers adding Andre's Night Off and a new 200-page book.

Matthew Smith's ZX Spectrum catalogue is heading back to cassette, and for once that sentence does not involve somebody finding a dusty C15 in a loft. Pixel Jockey has launched the officially endorsed Matthew Smith Collection, a new physical box set built around Styx, Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy. The crowdfunding campaign went live on 20 September and passed its £14,500 target rapidly; by 21 September, specialist coverage had it comfortably beyond the goal.

The standard £39 tier packages the three games on newly produced cassettes with fresh artwork by Trevor Storey, whose illustration work will be familiar to readers of classic British computer magazines. Higher tiers add Matthew Smith: Mining for Success, a new 200-page hardback book, enamel badges and signed art prints. One particularly neat historical footnote is Andre's Night Off: originally published as a type-in listing in Computer & Video Games in 1984, it is receiving its first standalone cassette release as part of the expanded package.

Smith wrote Styx while still a teenager before Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy turned him into one of the defining names of the Spectrum era. That makes this more than another nostalgia box with a nice sleeve. It is a deliberately physical reissue of three foundational British microcomputer games, plus an obscure fourth piece of Smith history finally escaping the magazine page.

The campaign currently targets February 2027 for fulfilment. As with any crowdfunded physical release, that date is a target rather than a guarantee — but the collection itself is very real, fully funded and produced with Smith's permission.