''Jet Set Willy'' is a platform

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

written by Matthew Smith for the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer developed and marketed by Sinclair Research. One of the most influential computers ever made and one of the all-time bestselling British computers, over five million units were sold. ...

home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became 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 s ...

. It was published in 1984 by

Software Projects Software Projects was a computer game development company which was started by ''Manic Miner'' developer Matthew Smith (games programmer), Matthew Smith, Alan Maton and Colin Roach. After leaving Bug-Byte as a freelance developer, Smith was abl ...

and ported to most home computers of the time. The game is a sequel to '' Manic Miner'' published in 1983, and the second game in the Miner Willy series. It spent over three months at the top of the charts and was the UK's best-selling home video game of 1984. The player controls Miner Willy as he tidies up his mansion after a massive party to get some sleep. Players navigate Willy through 60 screens of the mansion and grounds, collecting glowing items while avoiding hazards and guardians. The game features classical music from

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...

Grieg Edvard Hagerup Grieg ( , ; 15 June 18434 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the leading Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use of N ...

, Bach, and

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

. Initially the game could not be completed due to various bugs, but fixes for these were released by Software Projects. ''Jet Set Willy'' included a copy protection measure in the form of a card with coloured codes, making it more difficult to duplicate. Various expanded versions and ports were released, as well as third-party editing tools that allowed players to design their own rooms and sprites.

Plot

A tired Miner Willy has to tidy up all the items left around his house after a huge party. With this done, his housekeeper Maria will let him go to bed. Willy's

mansion A mansion is a large dwelling house. The word itself derives through Old French from the Latin word ''mansio'' "dwelling", an abstract noun derived from the verb ''manere'' "to dwell". The English word ''manse'' originally defined a property l ...

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.

Gameplay

''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. Unlike the screen-by-screen style of its predecessor, the player can explore the mansion at will. 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 playable screens making up the mansion and its grounds and contains 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 objects in the room. Willy loses a

life Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...

if he touches a hazard, guardian or falls too far. He is returned to the point at which he entered the room, which may lead to a game-ending situation where Willy repeatedly falls from a height or unavoidably collides with a guardian, losing all lives in succession. One of the more bizarrely named rooms in the game is ''We Must Perform a Quirkafleeg''.We must perform a quirkafleeg — Game meets comic. () On some versions it is misspelt ''We Must a Quirkafleeg''. The pre-release name for the screen was ''The Gaping Pit''. This is a reference to the comic strip '' Fat Freddy's Cat'', 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.

Music

Music on the Spectrum version is Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata for the menu, and Grieg's " In the Hall of the Mountain King" during the game itself. Early versions used " If I Were a Rich Man" as the in-game music, but it was not licensed, and the publishers of the song wanted £36,000 for its use. Music on the C64 version is Moonlight Sonata on the title screen, and J.S. Bach - Inventions # 1 during gameplay. Some rooms play Mozart's Rondo alla Turca. Music for the Atari 8-bit computer version was composed by Rob Hubbard.

Bugs

Upon release, the game could not be completed due to several bugs. Although four completely unrelated issues, they became known collectively as "The Attic Bug". After entering ''The Attic'' screen, various rooms would undergo

corruption Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense that is undertaken by a person or an organization that is entrusted in a position of authority to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's gain. Corruption may involve activities ...

for all subsequent playthroughs, including all monsters disappearing from ''The Chapel'' screen, and other screens triggering a game over. This was caused by an error in the path of an arrow in ''The Attic'', resulting in the sprite traveling past the end of the Spectrum's video memory and overwriting crucial game data. Initially

attempted to pass this bug off as an intentional feature to make the game more difficult, claiming that the rooms in question were filled with poison gas, but they later rescinded this claim and issued a set of POKEs to correct the flaws. Despite these bugs, Ross Holman and Cameron Else won the competition that Software Projects had set for completion of ''Jet Set Willy'' and provided Software Projects with a set of bug fixes. Software Projects then hired Cameron Else to port both '' Manic Miner'' and ''Jet Set Willy'' to the

MSX MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, the director at ASCII Corpo ...

Reception

Reviewing ''Jet Set Willy'' for '' Your Spectrum'' magazine in June 1984, Sue Denham wrote that the game was "every bit as good and refreshing as the original". In the final issue of Your Sinclair, the ZX Spectrum version was ranked number 32 on "The Your Sinclair Official Top 100 Games of All Time", and voted number 33 on "The Your Sinclair Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time". In 2004, the ZX Spectrum version was voted the 6th best game all of time by ''

Retro Gamer ''Retro Gamer'' is a British magazine, published worldwide, covering Retrogaming, retro video games. It was the first commercial magazine to be devoted entirely to the subject. Launched in January 2004 as a quarterly publication, ''Retro Gamer'' ...

'' readers in an article originally intended for a special issue of ''Your Sinclair'' bundled with ''Retro Gamer''.

Copy protection

''Jet Set Willy'' came 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 difficult, making ''Jet Set Willy'' harder to copy than most Spectrum games, but means of circumventing the card were quickly found, and one method was published in a UK computer magazine.

Ports

A version of ''Jet Set Willy'' for the Commodore 64 was released by Software Projects and ported by Shahid Kamal Ahmad. 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. In the Commodore 64 version, it was impossible to reach all of the items in the ''Wine Cellar''. There are two versions of the original ''Jet Set Willy'' for the MSX. The Software Projects version that was sold in the UK is dated 1984 and was programmed by Cameron Else, co-winner of the ''Jet Set Willy'' competition. The other version was published by Hudson Soft in 1985 as a Bee Card in Japan. A port of ''Jet Set Willy'' for the Atari 8-bit computers was released by Tynesoft in 1986. It received generally poor reviews which criticised inferior graphics and animation, but Rob Hubbard's theme music, unique to this version, was considered a 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''). A port of the game by Tim Titchmarsh to the Camputers Lynx was released by Phoenixx Software in 1985, and was one of extremely few mainstream games to be converted for that system. The Lynx version was supplied with the cassette inlay from the Spectrum edition. Ports from Software Projects for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

and

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

were cancelled before release, but have since been made available on the internet.

Legacy

Expanded versions

''Jet Set Willy: The Final Frontier'', an expanded version for the

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for "Colour Personal Computer") 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 ZX Spec ...

, was later converted back to the

and released as '' Jet Set Willy II''. Both the original game and ''Jet Set Willy II'' were released for the

BBC Micro The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a family of microcomputers developed and manufactured by Acorn Computers in the early 1980s as part of the BBC's Computer Literacy Project. Launched in December 1981, it was showcased across severa ...

, Acorn Electron,

, Commodore 16 and

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...

. A differently expanded version of ''Jet Set Willy'' was released for the

Dragon 32/64 The Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 are 8-bit 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., initially in Swansea, Wales, before mo ...

, with extra rooms. This version could also not be completed as it was impossible to traverse ''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 the player to start Willy from any position on any screen, using the arrow keys and spacebar. The Dragon port was itself converted to run on the Acorn Archimedes computers. Better collision detection meant that "The Drive" could now be completed right-to-left, unlike on the Dragon.

Third-party modifications

In its original Spectrum version, the rooms themselves are stored in a straightforward format, with no compression, making it 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 detail."Interior Decorating"
Your Spectrum, Issue 15, June 1985 Several third-party editing tools were published between 1984 and 1986, allowing players to design their own rooms and sprites.

References

External links

* *
Jet Set Willy
' at World Of Spectrum * * {{atarimania, id=2664 1984 video games Amstrad CPC games Atari 8-bit computer games BBC Micro and Acorn Electron games Commodore 16 and Plus/4 games Commodore 64 games Dragon 32 games Hudson Soft games MSX games Platformers Single-player video games Software Projects games TI-99/4A games Tynesoft games Video games developed in the United Kingdom Video games scored by Rob Hubbard ZX Spectrum games