Jet Set Willy
Encyclopedia
Jet Set Willy is a computer game originally written for the ZX Spectrum
home computer
. It was published in 1984 by Software Projects
and ported to most home computer
s of the time.
The game is a sequel to Manic Miner
(1983), and is the second game in the immensely popular Miner Willy Series
. It was a significant development in the platform game
genre on the home micro
.
has to tidy up all the items left around his house after a huge party. With this done his housekeeper Maria will allow him access to his bedroom. Willy's mansion
was bought with the wealth obtained from his adventures in Manic Miner
but much of it remains unexplored and it appears to be full of strange creatures, possibly a result of the previous (missing) owner's experiments. Willy must explore the enormous mansion and its grounds (including a beach and a yacht) to fully tidy up the house so he can get some much-needed sleep.
Jet Set Willy is a flip-screen
platform game in which the player moves the protagonist, Willy, from room to room in his mansion collecting objects. The game is an early example of a nonlinear title since, unlike the screen-by-screen style of its prequel, the player can explore the mansion at will and tackle the screens in the order of their choosing. Willy is controlled using only left, right and jump. He can climb stairs by walking into them (jumping through them to avoid them) and climb swinging ropes by pushing left or right depending on what direction the rope is swinging. The play area itself consists of 60 screens making up the mansion and its grounds and containing hazards (static killer objects), guardians (killer monsters which move along predetermined paths), various platforms and collectable objects. The collectable items glow to distinguish them from other items in the room.
Willy loses a life if he touches an enemy or falls too far, and he is returned to the point at which he entered the room. This may lead to a game-ending situation in which Willy repeatedly falls from a height, losing all lives in succession.
, and as such is an early example of such an error - and the problems it can cause.
Initially Software Projects attempted to pass off this bug off as an intentional feature to make the game more difficult, claiming that the rooms in question were filled with poison gas. However, they later rescinded this claim and issued a set of POKEs
to correct the flaws.
Other bugs included a case where an item under The Conservatory Roof was placed too close to both the screen entrance and a killer object making it impossible to collect. The Software Projects fix removed the killer object. There was also an invisible and impossible to reach item in First Landing. The Software Projects fix relocated the item to The Hall - although some fixes relocated the object to The Bathroom where it became visible as another tap item, by poking value 33, instead of 11.
The Banyan Tree was impassable in an upward direction - the Software Projects fix changed the status of an essential block from solid to passable.
, a spin-off from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
; in the original comic, the quirkafleeg was an obscure ritual in a foreign country, required to be performed upon the sight of dead furry animals.
Like most ZX Spectrum games, Jet Set Willy was stored on a cassette tape
. Simply making an audio copy of the cassette allowed people to easily copy Spectrum games. Jet Set Willy was one of the first to come with a form of copy protection: a card with 180 coloured codes on it was bundled with the cassette. Upon loading, one of the codes from the card had to be entered before the game would start. Although the cassette could be duplicated, a copy of the card was also needed and at the time, home colour reproduction was hard to do. Thus copying Jet Set Willy was trickier than most Spectrum games. However, means of circumventing the card were quickly found. Reflecting the attitude to software piracy at the time, one method was published in a UK computer magazine.
and the data describing the rooms. The rooms themselves are stored in a straightforward format, with no compression
. It is therefore relatively easy to create customised versions of the game.
The review of JSW in issue 4 of Your Spectrum included a section entitled 'JSW - A Hacker's Guide'; remarks in this section imply that the author had successfully deduced at least some of the data structures, since he was able to remove sections of wall in the Master Bedroom. The following year, issue 13 contained a program that added an extra room ("April Showers") to the game, and issue 15 described the data formats in some detail.
Several third-party editing tools were published between 1984 and 1986, allowing players to design their own rooms and sprites. Since then, these and other programs have been used by fans to create many modified versions of JSW, ranging from relatively minor changes in a few rooms to completely new games. In recent years, a Windows
-based JSW editor has been created.
Henry's Hoard, released by Alternative Software in 1985, was based on a modified version of the JSW game engine, apparently without the knowledge of Software Projects.
to other computer platforms were made.
Jet Set Willy: The Final Frontier, an expanded version for the Amstrad CPC
, was later converted back to the ZX Spectrum
and released as Jet Set Willy II
. Both the original game and Jet Set Willy II were released for the BBC Micro
, Acorn Electron
, MSX
, Commodore 16
and Commodore 64
. The original releases of Jet Set Willy for the BBC Micro and the Commodore 64 also contained bugs which made it impossible to complete the game - though different bugs to the Spectrum version. In the Commodore 64 version, it was impossible to reach all of the items in the Wine Cellar.
A different expanded version of Jet Set Willy was released for the Dragon 32/64
, with extra rooms. This version could not be completed (without cheating) as it was impossible to traverse the screen called The Drive in a right-to-left direction, which was necessary to return to bed after collecting all the items. The game could, however, be completed using a built-in cheat, accessed by holding down the keys M, A and X simultaneously, allowing you to start Miner Willy from any position on any screen, using the arrow keys and spacebar. The Dragon port (and therefore also the Archimedes port) is also missing ropes. All screens previously containing a rope now have platforms added to enable safe passage.
The Dragon port was itself converted to run on the Acorn Archimedes
computers. The port became colour - the Dragon version being black & white - but apart from extra colour no advantage was taken of the Archimedes' superior hardware compared to that of the Dragon, although in that sense it remained faithful to the original ZX version.
A port of Jet Set Willy to the Atari 8-bit family
of computers was released by Tynesoft
in 1987. It received generally poor reviews which criticised inferior graphics and animation, with Rob Hubbard
's theme music the only highlight. Like the Spectrum version, it was impossible to complete but for different reasons. Some of the legitimate items that were needed caused the player to lose a life (e.g. the bottles in the Off Licence). Krzysztof Dudek ported the original ZX Spectrum code to the 8-bit Atari in 2007, creating a much more authentic version of the game than the Tynesoft version, but kept the Rob Hubbard soundtrack.
Software Projects made ports to the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST
but canceled them before they were released, although Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy II were later released on the Commodore Amiga.
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd...
home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
. It was published in 1984 by Software Projects
Software Projects
Software Projects was the name of a computer game development company which employed Manic Miner developer Matthew Smith. After leaving Bug-Byte as a freelance developer, Smith was able to take the rights to his recently developed Manic Miner game with him, due to an oversight in his freelance...
and ported to most home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
s of the time.
The game is a sequel to Manic Miner
Manic Miner
Manic Miner is a platform game originally written for the ZX Spectrum by Matthew Smith and released by Bug-Byte in 1983 . It is the first game in the Miner Willy series and among the pioneers of the platform game genre. The game itself was inspired by the Atari 800 game Miner 2049er...
(1983), and is the second game in the immensely popular Miner Willy Series
Miner Willy
Miner Willy is a fictional character in a series of platform games for the ZX Spectrum, MSX, Amstrad CPC and the Commodore 64 home computers starring Miner Willy...
. It was a significant development in the platform game
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
genre on the home micro
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
.
Plot
A tired Miner WillyMiner Willy
Miner Willy is a fictional character in a series of platform games for the ZX Spectrum, MSX, Amstrad CPC and the Commodore 64 home computers starring Miner Willy...
has to tidy up all the items left around his house after a huge party. With this done his housekeeper Maria will allow him access to his bedroom. Willy's mansion
Mansion
A mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. real estate brokers define a mansion as a dwelling of over . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms...
was bought with the wealth obtained from his adventures in Manic Miner
Manic Miner
Manic Miner is a platform game originally written for the ZX Spectrum by Matthew Smith and released by Bug-Byte in 1983 . It is the first game in the Miner Willy series and among the pioneers of the platform game genre. The game itself was inspired by the Atari 800 game Miner 2049er...
but much of it remains unexplored and it appears to be full of strange creatures, possibly a result of the previous (missing) owner's experiments. Willy must explore the enormous mansion and its grounds (including a beach and a yacht) to fully tidy up the house so he can get some much-needed sleep.
Gameplay
Flip-screen
In video games, flip-screen is a principle whereby the playing environment is divided into single-screen portions...
platform game in which the player moves the protagonist, Willy, from room to room in his mansion collecting objects. The game is an early example of a nonlinear title since, unlike the screen-by-screen style of its prequel, the player can explore the mansion at will and tackle the screens in the order of their choosing. Willy is controlled using only left, right and jump. He can climb stairs by walking into them (jumping through them to avoid them) and climb swinging ropes by pushing left or right depending on what direction the rope is swinging. The play area itself consists of 60 screens making up the mansion and its grounds and containing hazards (static killer objects), guardians (killer monsters which move along predetermined paths), various platforms and collectable objects. The collectable items glow to distinguish them from other items in the room.
Willy loses a life if he touches an enemy or falls too far, and he is returned to the point at which he entered the room. This may lead to a game-ending situation in which Willy repeatedly falls from a height, losing all lives in succession.
Bugs
As originally released, the game could not be completed due to several bugs. Although actually four completely unrelated issues, they became known collectively as "The Attic Bug". After the player entered the room The Attic, various rooms would undergo corruption on all subsequent game plays, including all monsters disappearing from The Chapel, and other screens triggering instant death. This was caused by an error in the path of an arrow in The Attic, resulting in the sprite travelling past the end of the Spectrum's video memory and overwriting crucial game data instead. This bears similarities to a buffer overflowBuffer overflow
In computer security and programming, a buffer overflow, or buffer overrun, is an anomaly where a program, while writing data to a buffer, overruns the buffer's boundary and overwrites adjacent memory. This is a special case of violation of memory safety....
, and as such is an early example of such an error - and the problems it can cause.
Initially Software Projects attempted to pass off this bug off as an intentional feature to make the game more difficult, claiming that the rooms in question were filled with poison gas. However, they later rescinded this claim and issued a set of POKEs
PEEK and POKE
In computing, PEEK is a BASIC programming language extension used for reading the contents of a memory cell at a specified address. The corresponding command to set the contents of a memory cell is POKE.-Statement syntax:...
to correct the flaws.
Other bugs included a case where an item under The Conservatory Roof was placed too close to both the screen entrance and a killer object making it impossible to collect. The Software Projects fix removed the killer object. There was also an invisible and impossible to reach item in First Landing. The Software Projects fix relocated the item to The Hall - although some fixes relocated the object to The Bathroom where it became visible as another tap item, by poking value 33, instead of 11.
The Banyan Tree was impassable in an upward direction - the Software Projects fix changed the status of an essential block from solid to passable.
The Quirkafleeg
One of the more bizarrely named rooms in the game is We Must Perform A Quirkafleeg. (The pre-release name for the screen was "The Gaping Pit".) This is a reference to the comic strip Fat Freddy's CatFat Freddy's Cat
Fat Freddy's Cat is a fictional orange tomcat nominally belonging to Fat Freddy Freekowtski, one of the Freak Brothers, a trio of hippies who are featured in Gilbert Shelton's underground comix.-History:...
, a spin-off from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers are a trio of underground comic strip characters created by the U.S. artist Gilbert Shelton. The Freak Brothers first appeared in The Rag, an underground newspaper published in Austin, Texas, beginning in May 1968; and were regularly reprinted in underground papers...
; in the original comic, the quirkafleeg was an obscure ritual in a foreign country, required to be performed upon the sight of dead furry animals.
Protecting against piracy
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
. Simply making an audio copy of the cassette allowed people to easily copy Spectrum games. Jet Set Willy was one of the first to come with a form of copy protection: a card with 180 coloured codes on it was bundled with the cassette. Upon loading, one of the codes from the card had to be entered before the game would start. Although the cassette could be duplicated, a copy of the card was also needed and at the time, home colour reproduction was hard to do. Thus copying Jet Set Willy was trickier than most Spectrum games. However, means of circumventing the card were quickly found. Reflecting the attitude to software piracy at the time, one method was published in a UK computer magazine.
Third-party modifications
In its original Spectrum version, Jet Set Willy has a clear separation between the game engineGame engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
and the data describing the rooms. The rooms themselves are stored in a straightforward format, with no compression
Data compression
In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use....
. It is therefore relatively easy to create customised versions of the game.
The review of JSW in issue 4 of Your Spectrum included a section entitled 'JSW - A Hacker's Guide'; remarks in this section imply that the author had successfully deduced at least some of the data structures, since he was able to remove sections of wall in the Master Bedroom. The following year, issue 13 contained a program that added an extra room ("April Showers") to the game, and issue 15 described the data formats in some detail.
Several third-party editing tools were published between 1984 and 1986, allowing players to design their own rooms and sprites. Since then, these and other programs have been used by fans to create many modified versions of JSW, ranging from relatively minor changes in a few rooms to completely new games. In recent years, a Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
-based JSW editor has been created.
Henry's Hoard, released by Alternative Software in 1985, was based on a modified version of the JSW game engine, apparently without the knowledge of Software Projects.
Ports
The following portsPorting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
to other computer platforms were made.
Jet Set Willy: The Final Frontier, an expanded version for the Amstrad CPC
Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself primarily in the United Kingdom,...
, was later converted back to the ZX Spectrum
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd...
and released as Jet Set Willy II
Jet Set Willy II
Jet Set Willy II: The Final Frontier was a platform game released in 1985 by Software Projects for a variety of 8-bit home computers. It was the only official sequel to Jet Set Willy, one of the most successful and popular home computer games ever released...
. Both the original game and Jet Set Willy II were released for the BBC Micro
BBC Micro
The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, was a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation...
, Acorn Electron
Acorn Electron
The Acorn Electron is a budget version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd. It has 32 kilobytes of RAM, and its ROM includes BBC BASIC along with its operating system....
, MSX
MSX
MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation...
, Commodore 16
Commodore 16
The Commodore 16 was a home computer made by Commodore with a 6502-compatible 8501 CPU, released in 1984. It was intended to be an entry-level computer to replace the VIC-20 and it often sold for 99 USD...
and Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
. The original releases of Jet Set Willy for the BBC Micro and the Commodore 64 also contained bugs which made it impossible to complete the game - though different bugs to the Spectrum version. In the Commodore 64 version, it was impossible to reach all of the items in the Wine Cellar.
A different expanded version of Jet Set Willy was released for the Dragon 32/64
Dragon 32/64
The Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 are home computers that were built in the 1980s. The Dragons are very similar to the TRS-80 Color Computer , and were produced for the European market by Dragon Data, Ltd., in Port Talbot, Wales, and for the US market by Tano of New Orleans, Louisiana...
, with extra rooms. This version could not be completed (without cheating) as it was impossible to traverse the screen called The Drive in a right-to-left direction, which was necessary to return to bed after collecting all the items. The game could, however, be completed using a built-in cheat, accessed by holding down the keys M, A and X simultaneously, allowing you to start Miner Willy from any position on any screen, using the arrow keys and spacebar. The Dragon port (and therefore also the Archimedes port) is also missing ropes. All screens previously containing a rope now have platforms added to enable safe passage.
The Dragon port was itself converted to run on the Acorn Archimedes
Acorn Archimedes
The Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd's first general purpose home computer to be based on their own ARM architecture.Using a RISC design with a 32-bit CPU, at its launch in June 1987, the Archimedes was stated as running at 4 MIPS, with a claim of 18 MIPS during tests.The name is commonly...
computers. The port became colour - the Dragon version being black & white - but apart from extra colour no advantage was taken of the Archimedes' superior hardware compared to that of the Dragon, although in that sense it remained faithful to the original ZX version.
A port of Jet Set Willy to the Atari 8-bit family
Atari 8-bit family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992. All are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU and were the first home computers designed with custom coprocessor chips...
of computers was released by Tynesoft
Tynesoft
Tynesoft Computer Software was a software developer and publisher in the 1980s and early 1990s.- History :The company was originally set up in 1983 to release educational software but soon moved into the video games market on which it concentrated for most of its time...
in 1987. It received generally poor reviews which criticised inferior graphics and animation, with Rob Hubbard
Rob Hubbard
Rob Hubbard is a music composer best known for his composition of computer game theme music, especially for microcomputers of the 1980s such as the Commodore 64...
's theme music the only highlight. Like the Spectrum version, it was impossible to complete but for different reasons. Some of the legitimate items that were needed caused the player to lose a life (e.g. the bottles in the Off Licence). Krzysztof Dudek ported the original ZX Spectrum code to the 8-bit Atari in 2007, creating a much more authentic version of the game than the Tynesoft version, but kept the Rob Hubbard soundtrack.
Software Projects made ports to the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
but canceled them before they were released, although Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy II were later released on the Commodore Amiga.
See also
- Miner Willy series of gamesMiner WillyMiner Willy is a fictional character in a series of platform games for the ZX Spectrum, MSX, Amstrad CPC and the Commodore 64 home computers starring Miner Willy...
- Roller CoasterRoller Coaster (video game)Roller Coaster is a platform-based game which contains some strategy and puzzle elements. Uniquely it holds the claim of being the first video game to ever simulate amusement rides....
- Technician TedTechnician TedTechnician Ted, also known as The Chip Factory: Featuring Technician Ted, is a platform computer game for the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum home computers that was published in 1984 by Hewson Consultants....
- Top Hat WillyTop Hat WillyTop Hat Willy is a platform computer game created by Tero Heikkinen for the Commodore Amiga and was released in 1994. The objective of the game is to collect 160 pieces of trash that are scattered around the 100 room gamplay area. The rooms are set up in a 10 x 10 grid, each room connecting to its...