Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
Authors about their games
Richard Hallas
Join the Jet-Set! - Room descriptions
Jet-Set Willy in Space - Room descriptions
[from Richard Hallas's website, copied with his permission in July 2019]
In the early- to mid-1980s, Matthew Smith wrote a pair of games for the Sinclair Spectrum: Manic Miner and Jet-Set Willy. Manic Miner, in particular, was a stunningly good quality game for its day, and took the world by storm; it created a huge demand for a sequel, which eventually arrived in the form of Jet-Set Willy (JSW). Despite being a bit rushed, and having a number of serious bugs in it, JSW was, if anything, even more popular than the original. Both games were converted to all the major (and most of the minor) computer platforms of their day, and became something of a cult legend; they were certainly among the most popular computer games ever released. Their appeal was partly in the skill required to play them, partly in the exploration element (it was a real challenge to get to some of the less accessible rooms and see what was in them), and partly thanks to their quirky, dream-like conception and off-beat humour.
Whatever the reasons for their appeal, these games remained very popular for a very long time and influenced a lot of games that followed them. Coverage of JSW in particular continued in detail for months in several magazines, as readers (many of whom were hackers or programmers in those days) took great delight in finding new 'pokes' to make the games do unexpected things. The launch of Jet-Set Willy II really drew the saga to a close, as it was merely an upgraded version of the previous game, with a larger map. The new version was written by a different author (Matthew Smith having apparently vanished off the face of the earth), and the magic had been lost; the new game didn't play as well as the old, and the new rooms seemed dull by comparison with the originals.
But in its heyday, the popularity of JSW can't be overstated. As a schoolboy in my early teens I was hugely excited by it, and so were all my friends. These days, games often come with a companion editor program that allow you to design new scenarios and extend the product's life, but back then such things were almost unheard of. However, JSW's popularity led several people to attempt to write a JSW editor. At least one editor was published in a magazine, and there were some semi-commercial offerings. They weren't very good on the whole, though, and so no new games created with the editors were released at the time. Of the several editors available, though, one turned out to be very good indeed. I came across a lone copy of JetSet Editor by Paul Rhodes in The Computer Store in Wakefield, and spent quite a long time debating whether to risk the £5 pocket-money that it cost to buy it, as I knew nothing about it. But after a few visits I finally bought it and took it home. It turned out to be excellent and far exceeded my expectations (which is a rare enough thing in this life). I therefore used it to create a brand-new JSW game called Join the Jet-Set! (JTJS), and performed a little hacking of my own to add some new in-game music and other small modifications. I gave the game to my school friends, who all seemed to like it.
Some time later, my school friend Simeon Hartland came to visit my house, and we started creating a new JSW game set in space. We finished off a few screens but never got any further, and the game remained incomplete. At around this time I also started work on a separate new JSW game of my own, also set in space, and got around halfway through it before running out of ideas, becoming fed up with it and abandoning it. Another school friend, Adam Britton, was more persistant: he completed three entire JSW games using the editor. Privately I didn't think they were as good as mine, as I liked my graphics and room designs better, and I felt that Adam relied too much on some unfair gimmicks, like making the player's character invisible in some rooms just to increase the difficulty. However, overall they were good games, and they were only created for fun, after all. All these games, complete or otherwise, were saved on tapes and soon forgotten.
Years passed; a decade, in fact. Then, in the mid-1990s, Spectrum emulators started to appear for modern computers, allowing ancient games to be resurrected and played again. I hadn't really played any computer games for several years at this point, and thought I'd grown out of them. However, a sense of nostalgia can be a surprisingly potent thing. I got a Spectrum emulator for my Risc PC and found a few snapshots of games on the Internet, and my interest was rekindled. 'Wouldn't it be fun,' I thought, 'to see if I can revive JTJS?' I still had the tape stored in a box in the attic, so I built an audio lead and succeeded in transferring it into the emulator. My joy was unconfined when I managed to load it successfully for the first time!
Since there were other similarly nostalgic ex-Spectrum users on the Internet, I uploaded JTJS and annouced its availability. I was then immediately amazed by the positive reactions it provoked. People genuinely seemed to enjoy playing it, and considered it to be in a similar league to the original; it was as though they'd been presented with an official sequel, a decade later than it should have come out! I was much encouraged by the positive feedback and fan mail that I received.
At the time, there was at least one other unofficial JSW game on the Net, and also a JSW editor program, but both game and editor were pretty atrocious and no-one seemed very interested in them. But the arrival of JTJS seemed to show that it was possible to make a new JSW game that at least approached the character and quality of the original, and I think that's the reason that JTJS proved so popular. I had designed it at the time to mimic the style of JSW (down to the graphics and quirky humour) as closely as I could, and it appears that I succeeded to some degree.
So, the next step seemed to be to try to retrieve the JetSet Editor program for use on the emulators. This turned out to be far less straightforward than retrieving my game, because (a) JetSet Editor used a fast loading routine which made loading the software far less reliable than a program that had been saved in the normal way, and (b) the recording was poor and the tape (presumably poor quality even when new) appeared to have deteriorated with age. I tried using five different tape recorders to transfer it without success, and eventually had to resort to posting it off to Barry Plewa, an Internet contact, to try on yet more equipment. Luckily, Barry's tape recorder was of sufficiently poor quality to be able to read the tape successfully, and so an emulator copy was made. (I'm not being facetious! For the purposes of loading computer data tapes, poor-quality tape decks often fare far better than expensive ones because they lack noise-reduction features and the like.)
By an almost unbelievable coincidence, on the very day that Barry Plewa sent me a working snapshot of JetSet Editor, who should turn up on the comp.sys.sinclair newsgroup but Paul Rhodes! I emailed him at once to find out if he really was the same Paul Rhodes who had written JetSet Editor, and to ask for his permission to distribute his software if so.
Paul wrote back to confirm that he was indeed the author and to say that he was very happy for his software to be distributed. He was interested to know about my copy because it seems that JetSet Editor, published by Spectrum Electronics, had had a very limited release. I quote:
I'm curious to know how widespread it became: after I wrote it I made an arrangement with a local computer shop to give it 'proper' distribution. We got permission from Software Projects and printed up the covers, sold some via mail order and, for all I know, through other shops; but I can't be sure because the sod disappeared on me.
Spectrum Electronics was on Marsh Road in Luton. I'd run off copies of the tape with photocopied sleeves and took one in, hoping to sell it to them. Instead, he offered to distribute it for me. All went well for a while, and I did receive about fifty quid (and a box of blank tapes which came in useful later!), but then he shut up shop and I never heard from him again. I guess he went bankrupt.
So I OCRed and tidied up the instructions and uploaded the editor, with its full documentation, to the Internet, where the Spectrum enthusiassts devoured it eagerly, everyone agreeing that it was a far better editor than any of the available alternatives.
I also managed to transfer the three games by Adam Britton and my own two partially-completed JSW projects. Since I was in the mood at the time, I decided that, rather than let my two unfinished projects go to waste, I would combine them together (both were set in space, after all) and make a full new game. So, during the Christmas holiday of 1997, when (at age 28) I was long past being old enough to know better, I patched together my two JSW extracts into a single game, created enough new rooms to give it its maximum complement of 64, and released a new game to the world: Jet-Set Willy in Space. I was never quite as satisfied with it as with JTJS because it was inherently a bit 'cobbled together', but I was quite pleased with it nevertheless, and as a project it was fun. It, too, received quite a lot of positive feedback (not as much as JTJS, but enough), and there, for me, the story ended.
The release of all this new JSW material, though, evidently got a lot of people on the Internet very excited, because a whole range of new resources started to spring up. The first was Arsen Torbarina's JSW Ultimate Fan Page, a very impressive Web site devoted to the game (which sadly no longer appears to be online), and several others followed. More importantly, though, many fans now started to create JSW games of their own.
And so there was a sudden mushrooming of clone-JSW games on the Net. I confess that I largely lost interest in the subject once I had completed and released my second game, so I didn't pay much attention to what was happening after 1998, but I do know about several of the developments. For example, a project by John Elliott involved writing JSW 128, a version of JSW for the 128K Spectrum (and emulators thereof) with new features, allowing more extensive games in the original style. The original JSW 128 used the set of JSW rooms together with the set of rooms from my own JTJS game. Several authors of new games incorporated (with my permission) graphics and music from my original games in their new ones. People started getting ambitious by hacking games more extensively to incorporate new features. Various quite successful attempts were made at creating new games based on Manic Miner, too, which was harder because there wasn't such a good editor.
My games included new music (JTJS even offering a choice of ten different melodies), as I'd figured out how to write new tunes by hacking the game in the 1980s. This was seen as being a desirable thing for other new games to do, so Andrew Broad (author of numerous impressively-designed JSW games which present virtually insurmountable difficulties for the player!) requested that I write up all about how to create new in-game music for JSW. So, as my last significant contribution to the JSW scene, in 1998 I wrote up my notes and did a bit more research to present a comprehensive guide to music in both JSW and Manic Miner.
All told, there are now several dozen new JSW games, most or all of which can be found at the JSW Remakes site; I'm afraid I haven't really kept track of them, as I seem to have got JSW out of my system for the time being.
But lest any readers of these meanderings should think that all these modern-day JSW enthusiasts must be lifeless little non-entities who ought to get out more, consider this: in May 2002 I was visited and interviewed by an Italian film crew who were making a documentary about Jet-Set Willy for release in Italy and Finland. They had been travelling all over the United Kingdom (and perhaps elsewhere), interviewing other such sad invidiuals as myself, and they were all, to a man, deeply interested in the subject of JSW. I was amazed. I was very happy to cooperate with their project (and they seemed like nice people), although I'm not certain that I'm too keen to find out how I come across on their film! But apparently it will have its debut in a few months' time (late 2002 or early 2003), so I'd better steel myself in case they send me a tape. And, for what it's worth, JSW still gets positive coverage in even the national press from time to time (for example, it gained several mentions in The Daily Telegraph's excellent Connected technology supplement when that was still being published). JSW is 'one of those games': if you are of an age to have played it when it was originally released, you're likely to remember it fondly today.
(Update, June 2004: The Italian film crew never got in touch with me again, despite promising to send me a tape of the programme, so I have not seen it. However, a Web page about it has appeared, so I assume that it was indeed made and shown. From the transcripts of the programme that can be downloaded from the site, it appears that I have made almost no contribution to it, as there's only a couple of very brief references to me in it; all the stuff I tried to tell them about starting off the JSW revival must not have suited their programme. I'm also a bit displeased to be described as a "Huddersfield couch potato" on the page; whilst I'll admit to being a little overweight due to lack of exercise, for the record I am not an excessive TV viewer who spends his hours glued to the goggle-box! Ah well; that's showbiz!)
And so that, dear reader, is my contribution to the JSW revival. I believe that I was largely responsible for getting it underway, and I appear to have become a minor celebrity in a field which I actually find quite embarrassing. Much as I used to like the game in my youth, "Jet-Set Willy" isn't a phrase that can pass the average person's lips without a modicum of bemusement or embarrassment being incurred, so being credited as the father of the JSW revival isn't really a public plaudit that I would seek.
But maybe I'm being too serious. Everyone needs a little escapism, and that's what JSW is all about. I'm slightly alarmed by the seriousness with which some people seem to treat the subject, but at least JSW is completely harmless entertainment, and doesn't pervert the minds of the younger generation with knives, machine guns and death. So to round off my spiel, I'll conclude with links, for the budding JSW game-maker, to the JetSet Editor program, my article about hacking in new music, and some resource files.
And do I have any plans to create a third JSW game? No serious plans, no; but, for the sake of nostalgia, I do let the possibility run through my mind from time to time. I still have a few good ideas for rooms, and I sometimes think it might be quite fun to create another game. So, in the 'unofficial' words of James Bond: never say never again!
About Join the Jet-Set!
[from Richard Hallas's website, copied with his permission in July 2019]
This game was created using the truly outstanding (Software Projects-approved) JetSet Editor which was written by Paul Rhodes and published by Spectrum Electronics. This editor is much better than the Softricks Mark II Jet Set Willy Editor which has been available for a long time on the various FTP sites. I do still have the original tape of JetSet Editor, and thanks to the efforts of Barry Plewa, it has now been made into a snapshot (plus TAP file with some demo rooms). It's available in a zip archive for downloading, complete with OCRed and corrected documentation. Sincere thanks to the author, Paul Rhodes, for agreeing to its free distribution.
Join the Jet-Set! was intended to be very much in the style of Jet-Set Willy, with a similar atmosphere and collection of awful puns, etc. (Sorry if some of the jokes are a bit bad, but remember I was only 14 or 15 when I thought them up!) Most of the rooms in the game are original, but a handful of JSW rooms remain, in an edited form.
An important source of inspiration was a letter which appeared in Your Spectrum magazine (or was in Your Sinclair by then?); I no longer have the magazine, so can't look it up. The letter caused much excitement amongst my Spectrum-owning school-friends, as it contained many exciting claims about Jet-Set Willy (all of which were fictitious). As I recall, it said that if you were standing on The Bow (of the Yacht) at 7:30pm (I think that was the time; or was it midnight?), a raft would appear and take you to a desert island (which I think was called Crusoe Corner, though I may have invented that name myself). You could climb a tree on the island to reach "Tree Tops - the sequel". The letter also mentioned an "Ice Volcano" below Hades.
Although the letter was a piece of pure invention, and none of the things it mentioned existed in JSW, it caused a lot of excitement; and the fact that the yacht does sail away to a desert island in JSW II probably owes something to it, as might the fact that there's a raft in Dynamite Dan. Anyway, I took many of the ideas in that letter and made them reality in this game; so you really can visit the ice volcano (has hell frozen over?) and go to that desert island.
I play-tested this game extensively all those years ago (and since retrieving it for the emulators!), and it's definitely possible to complete all the rooms and collect all the objects. Some rooms are very tricky, but most are quite easy, and the game overall is probably easier to complete than JSW itself. Have fun!
Tunes
The game features a choice of ten tunes, which must be poked into memory before the game starts. The ones I can remember are as follows:
0: Tambourin, by Gossec
1: Unknown
2: If I were a rich man, from Fiddler on the Roof (original JSW tune)
3: In the Hall of the Mountain-King, by Grieg (original Manic Miner tune)
4: Wedding-Day at Troldhaugen, by Grieg
5: Whistle Song (original)
6: Unknown
7: Wheels (Cha Cha) by Joe Loss and his Band (thanks to Ian Rushforth for identifying this!)
8: Kinderszenen no 1 (Von fremden Ländern und Menschen), by Schumann
9: American Patrol
Sorry I can't remember all of them! I do recognise the missing ones, but can't put a name to them; they may have been adaptations of things I heard on TV.
Join the Jet-Set! - Room descriptions
[from Richard Hallas's website, copied with his permission in July 2019]
What follows is a guided tour of rooms in alphabetical order.
(SPOILER! If you want to 'preserve the magic' and discover all the rooms yourself, come back and read this section later after you've spent some time playing the game!)
A Big HELLO from Richard Hallas!
A very bad joke which I couldn't resist...
A far cry from Hades
This tranquil, sunny and pleasant scene is far removed from the hellish screens next to it.
All at sea
En route to the desert island. Watch out for the submarine!
Below Hades
Directly below hell, you must navigate through the furnace to collect the flames, avoiding the evil scroll and the devil. Note the rather nice dancing-flame effect of the conveyor belt.
Branch
This "branch of the tree" is a pun: you must collect the railway train's eggs from the nest, as well as the baby engine which is learning to fly. Branch = railway branch-line. GWR on the side of the engine = Great Western Railways.
Bug-Bytten
Named for Bug-Byte software, original publishers of Manic Miner and publishers of Stay Kool, subject of the adjacent room (see "Who is Luke Warm anyway?").
Cliff walk
Walk through a secret passage to reach the cliff.
Courtyard
A tricky room; collect the cutlery from the battlements.
Crusoe Corner
The fabled, fictitious desert island from JSW. Collect the coconuts.
Entrance to Hades
At last, this screen is a real part of the game. Collect the crucifixes and avoid the evil god.
Eugene's Lair
An adaptation of one of my favourite caverns from Manic Miner. The old-style toilets have been replaced by the Jet-Set Willy ones, though.
Hades
You can actually go there in this game! There's no special significance to the words "Live or let die" except that they're similar to the title of the James Bond film, and seemed appropriate to this location.
How on earth did you get here ?!
Well, if JSW can have an unreachable room in it, why can't I?
If I were a rich man ...
This is the name of the music from Jet-Set Willy. Collect all the money bags.
In mid air
Jump from aircraft to aircraft, but avoid the smutty fumes, and don't get too close to the sun!
Inside the trunk
Halfway up the tree. There's a subtle exclamation mark built into the trunk, which is made out of lethal blocks, just ready to catch you if you ascend the wrong side of the trunk...
In the Hall of the Mountain-King
This is the name of the music from Manic Miner. The Mountain-King floats up the middle of the screen. The object at the bottom-right (for the end of the game sequence) is an RH monogram.
Into the sky
Watch out for the black rain-clouds! This room is notable because it features a non-central rope. Note that there's a bug associated with this: you get picked up by the rope as if it were positioned in the centre of the screen, if you try to approach it from the right!
Into the wide blue yonder
Leading from "Up in the clouds" (see entry). I told you to watch out for birds! Collect the bird's eye. (Hmm, now I wish I'd included a fish's finger!)
Is this Pacman or Caterpiller?
A very attractive room which requires pixel-perfect jumping and exact timing to traverse.
Library
The red/yellow blocks are meant to look like rows of books. Collect the Bible. Note the machine bouncing the ball at the bottom of the screen: it's not possible to jump over this.
Maria's Hideout
A redecorated Master Bedroom
M*E*S*H
The title was taken from one of my favourite TV programmes, M*A*S*H. This room is easy, except for the fact that the details are hard to make out because you see them through a mesh. Seeing this screen on a computer monitor makes it rather too clear; it was much harder to make things out on a normal TV set!
Mountain Peak
The tip of the Mountain-King's home.
Mules Pong
A joke based on Donkey Kong. Jump the barrels, avoid the flames, collect the broken heart at the top to rescue the damsel in distress.
My Old Flame
This is the title of a song, here represented by the collectable flame on top of a candle.
Nelli Secundus
A "Nomen Luni"-style pun on A&F Software (also known as A'n'F), who were responsible for Chuckie Egg. The A and F letters are built into the floor, and you have to collect the ampersand (&). Watch out for the rolling (chuckie) egg... A&F Software used to subtitle themselves "Nulli Secundus": "Second to none"; hence the title of this room.
Off to town!
Jump the skyscrapers and collect the satellite dishes. Be careful when entering this room from the right.
Out on a limb
Slightly modified room from JSW.
Outskirts of town
This room forms a pair with "Under the mansion", and you must cross sets of platforms through both rooms just to get a single object. Doing so is extremely difficult; this is probably the most demanding object to collect in the whole game.
Over Dover
It's always raining over the white cliffs. Jump on the driving rain to collect the object.
Over the harbour
Collect the flag from the top of the ship's mast.
Over the ocean
You're in fluffy white cumulus clouds, attempting to collect a flag which has blown away. Watch out for the bird and the raindrop, and be careful not to fall from the clouds, which are only partially solid! If you jump left off this screen to get back to "Tree Tops - the sequel", be very careful about how you do it!
Plinth
A "Monty Python"-inspired room, like the end-game foot from both MM and JSW. Collect the foot, but don't allow yourself to be stamped upon! Easier than it looks.
Sweet dreams!
A rather unnerving development from JSW's "Nightmare Room"! Note that it's not possible to exit to the left of this room. Collect Maria's frowning eyes. Note that if you jump up from Maria's hairpiece, you end up in "Wigfalls". This was supposed to be amusing.
The Aviary
Ascend the parrots' backs to collect the ostrich, watching out for the other flying birds.
The Book Tower
Named after the children's TV programme hosted by Tom "Dr Who" Baker. The room takes the form of a castellated tower made from Bibles. Collect the glowing books, avoiding the lethal bookworms! The bookworms are a little tribute to Bill the Worm from Mined Out! (Quicksilva) and Splat! (Incentive), both of which were written by Ian Andrew.
The Bow
Thanks to a new pair of boots, Willy can now walk on water! The letter in Your Spectrum mentioned that a raft would appear and take you to a desert island at 7:30pm(?). Whilst this was not true, in this game it is possible to reach that desert island.
The Cess Pool
At the bottom of the garden... This is a tricky jump, especially from right to left. It's very easy to land right in it. Oh, you do have to collect one rather unpleasant object!
The Gaping Pit
In JSW, this was the original title for the room "We must perform a Quirkafleeg".
The Garden
Jump over the plant pots to collect the flower in this alpine garden. Watch out! Most flowers are deadly.
The Greenhouse
Lives up to its name...
The Ice Volcano
A fictitious screen of this name was mentioned in the letter in Your Spectrum. In this game, it really exists. The ice-cubes erupting from the volcano are actually undefined guardians from the original JSW game; I thought they looked quite suitably icy without any editing!
The Object Shop
Surely the most objects you've ever seen all together in one place! An easy room, but watch out for the bird!
The Off Licence
Modified version of the room from JSW.
The On Licence
Compare with "The Off Licence". I know this joke is awful, but I couldn't resist it; sorry!
The Plumber is incompetent
A joke focussed on the end-game animation from JSW. Quite a tricky room.
The Smithy
Named for Matthew Smith, creater of this wonderful Miner Willy series. As he was (is!) considered a bit of a demi-god by Spectrum games-players, the room contains a couple of 'god' guardians.
The Terrace
Don't spend too much time trying to get the object if you've entered the room from the left...
The TV Room
Collect the TV aerial, avoiding the TV sets and joystick. I don't know who the TV presenter is, but he must be a bore!
The wide blue yonder
Collect the "B" for "blue". This room is quite tricky because of the combination of wide jumps which need to be timed carefully with the firing of arrows. NB You can't cross this room from the right; you need to enter it from "Into the wide blue yonder".
The Yacht
Willy has moored his yacht at the foot of the cliff.
Top of the cliff
Rescue the stranded man who's reaching out for help, and avoid the fish.
Tree trunk
The bottom of a three-screen-high tree, situated at the side of the mountain.
Tree Top
Slightly modified room from JSW.
Tree Tops - the sequel
As far as I can recall eleven+ years on, the Your Spectrum letter mentioned that climbing the tree on the desert island led to a screen called "Tree Tops - the sequel". So here it is.
Under the mansion
See entry for "Outskirts of town"; this room is half of a pair, with a very hard-to-reach object in it. The object is an arrow pointing upwards, indicating the direction of the mansion.
Up in the clouds
You're high up in the sky. Watch out for birds...
Use "WRITETYPER" in this room!
A fairly unsubtle clue as to how to turn on the cheat mode!
WC
An outdoor privy of no special significance.
What shall I do with this room?
I ran out of ideas for naming this one! It's a moderately taxing challenge, though. Watch out for the Microdrive cartridges!
Who is Luke Warm anyway?
This refers to a very obscure game called Stay Kool, which featured a main character called Luke Warm. Stay Kool was a mediocre platformer which was very much in the Manic Miner/JSW style, and which was written by a friend of my best school-friend's elder brother. Stay Kool was published by Bug-Byte (see "Bug-Bytten"). It was never successful. I played it once in a shop, but didn't buy it.
Wigfalls
Named after a chain of shops which, I think, no longer exists. (As I recall, they sold DIY stuff.) In this room, you must collect the flashing "W", whilst avoiding the falling wigs.
[
A tribute to the spare room in JSW.
About Jet-Set Willy in Space
[from Richard Hallas's website, copied with his permission in July 2019]
Jet-Set Willy in Space is the sequel to Join the Jet-Set!.
The in-game music is supposed to be the Star Trek: Voyager theme. If it doesn't sound recognisable, blame Matthew Smith's play routine!
Fans of Join the Jet-Set! should be warned that this game isn't quite as good, and it's significantly more difficult, too. The reason that it's not quite as good is that it has a few slightly gimmicky features (like occasional invisible platforms, and at least one completely hidden room), and a less unified design. This can be partly excused by its history (see below if you're interested) and the way it was patched together from two different games. So, it doesn't have quite the same JSW atmosphere as my previous game, and it's much harder to complete; but that's not to say that it isn't OK! I'm reasonably pleased with it on the whole, and there are some very good rooms and nice touches, as well as a smaller number of less successful ideas. I hope that you enjoy playing it, even if the quality is slightly more variable than in my previous offering.
Note that if you are to complete this game, you will have to be quite a skilled JSW player! I don't think that this is necessarily the hardest JSW clone, but it's certainly quite a lot harder than Join the Jet-Set! (which is actually the easiest JSW game). You will have to become very proficient on ropes, as this game make more extensive and imaginative use of ropes than any other JSW game I've seen so far. Elsewhere, there are some critical moves which involve both pixel-perfect positioning and exact timing.
However, bear in mind that even if some things appear impossible at first sight, there is always a way! Although it would take tremendous skill, it is theoretically possible to complete this game without losing a single life. At no point is it necessary to sacrifice a life to get a particular object. It was one of my design goals to make sure that it's always possible to get the objects without killing yourself, even if it's occasionally very difficult! I have played the game to completion, and can verify that it is indeed possible.
You are offered the chance for infinite lives when the game first loads, and I would advise taking up the offer! You are also allowed to enable teleportation (in other words, turn WRITETYPER mode on, since it's not possible to do this manually in the game).
This game was created using Paul Rhodes' superb JetSet Editor program, along with a bit of manual hacking to produce the new in-game music, the altered title page and the non-standard colours etc. for the status information. All the room designs are my own, except for two screens which came as example files with the JetSet Editor. I've edited them slightly, but they remain substantially the same, and were designed by Paul Rhodes.
Join the Jet-Set! was released to some school friends in 1984 or 1985, and seemed to meet with general approval. Since its resurrection on the emulators ten years later, it has, of course, found its way to a rather larger audience, and I have been flattered by the number of people who have said how much they like it. Foremost among these is Arsen Torbarina, author of the superb JSW Ultimate Fan Page Web site, who was particularly enthusiastic about it and devoted an entire Web page to the game, claiming it to be the best of the 'unofficial' JSW games.
Jet-Set Willy in Space was a product of the initial pleasure expressed by my school friends, though its arrival has been somewhat delayed, to say the least! My friend Simeon Hartland once came over to my house during the school holidays in 1985, and we decided to design a JSW game set in space. Oddly enough, the game wasn't even going to feature Willy! Its central character was instead a sort of bouncing ball. We put together a few rooms and graphics, but didn't get very far, and there was never really another opportunity to go back to it. I suspect that I then mislaid the tape with our game on it, because the game stayed as we had left it for the next 12 years! At some point I started another JSW in Space game, entirely on my own, and got roughly half-way with it. This would probably have been in either late 1985 or summer 1986. Again, though, it got dropped long before completion. Both games had quite a lot of good rooms and nice ideas in them, but plenty of things that were left unfinished.
In 1995 I managed to retrieve Join the Jet-Set! on an emulator, and at the same time I also resurrected Adam Britton's three JSW games. Then I remembered my two partially written JSW games, both of them set in space, and wondered if I could somehow stitch them together and create a complete new game. The stitching together process took quite a lot of time, as both games used a lot of common rooms, graphics and guardians, but I managed it eventually, which left a 75%-complete game. The game I designed with Simeon Hartland was set mainly on a planet's surface, and contained 15 screens; my later game was set on a space station, and contained 32 screens. I therefore had quite a lot of tidying up to do: several screens in both games were unfinished, and I had to create some more graphics, a further 17 new screens, and somehow link together the two maps/scenarios. I added several new rooms to both the space station and the planet, reordered the space station's internal layout to some extent, and created a set of linking screens to join the space station to the planet's surface. (These linking screens form a tribute to Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, one of my favourite books in my childhood.)
So, this game dates from 1985/86 and the last few days of 1997. I don't like leaving things unfinished, and it was fun to design a few more rooms. I hope you have as much fun playing it as I did designing it.
The loading screen was hacked up very quickly from a variety of elements. The picture frame border and everything surrounding it comes from the Join the Jet-Set! loading screen. The planets are taken from the in-game graphics of Gargoyle Games' Ad Astra. The planet surface at the bottom of the picture comes from Quicksilva's Timegate. The craters on the planet's surface are slightly touched-up versions of one from the loading screen of Ultimate's Lunar Jetman. Finally, the rocket is a touched-up version of the U1 rocket from Ultimate's Jetpac. I didn't have time to draw a proper picture myself, so I hope that this cobbled-together mish-mash will suffice! (It sort of matches the game itself...) The picture was created in Acorn's Paint program (the bitmap editor built into RISC OS machines) and converted into a Spectrum SCREEN$ using Lee Tonks' BMP2Spec program, which I compiled for RISC OS for this very purpose. That gave just a black & white picture, of course, so I inserted the attributes from the Join the Jet-Set! loading screen by editing the TAP file manually, then loaded it into Melbourne Draw and finished off by colouring in the bit inside the picture frame. I was quite pleased with the result, actually...
Jet-Set Willy in Space - Room descriptions
[from Richard Hallas's website, copied with his permission in July 2019]
What follows is a guided tour of rooms in alphabetical order.
(SPOILER! If you want to 'preserve the magic' and discover all the rooms yourself, come back and read this section later after you've spent some time playing the game!)
Alien Highway Encounter
A tribute to Vortex Software's Highway Encounter and Alien Highway. Highway Encounter in particular was one of my favourite Spectrum games of all time, and one of the few that I completed. In this room, jump around the barrels forming the giant Vorton, and collect the flashing Terratrons, whilst avoiding the animated Vortons. (The solid blocks are Vortex Software logos.) Move to the right very quickly upon entry to this screen, or you'll get killed! To collect the top left-most Terratron, you'll need to walk through the head of the giant Vorton from right to left. Watch out for the red aliens at the top.
Atomic Power Pile
Not a difficult room, but it has a few misleading design features which may fool you the first time you play it.
Bedpan
To be found below the bed. Collect the ... erm ... flashing excrement, whilst avoiding all the other similar material that isn't flashing, and the manic sausage. (Yes, I designed this room in my teens, when schoolboy humour was running rampant. Actually, it's quite a well-designed screen.) The room is made more difficult by the fact that Willy turns into a bouncing smiley face.
Bottom deck
This is room 0, where you will return when you press 9 if you have teleportation enabled.
The Bridge
This 'Bridge' is both a bridge to jump over and the bridge of the space station, complete with computers and view-screen. Collect the control buttons.
The Bridge above Nowhere
When I was very small, I used to like a story called The little bridge to Nowhere in a book at my Grandma's house; and I also liked Nowhere Man in the Yellow Submarine film by The Beatles. Hence the appearance of Nowhere as a place in this game. Note that it looks as though you can jump across the bridge, but it's actually too wide, and you'll have to find another way around to get that other flashing object. Observe the tributes to Star Trek and Blake's 7 in this room, with the combined Enterprise and Liberator graphics flying overhead.
Captain's Unready Room (Lounge)
A tribute to the Captain's Ready Room in Star Trek: The Next Generation, complete with fish. A little work is involved with the rope here.
The Catwalk
Avoid the killer moggies when jumping around, and be careful not to slip; this screen is actually quite easy. Note that both soft and solid blocks look identical in this room (they're both yellow blocks), which allowed me to conceal an exit to a completely hidden room. Go to the centre of the top walkway, and jump up to get to "The hidden room of many objects!". The single collectable object below the ramp in this room is actually a flashing arrow, indicating the position of the hidden exit.
Computer room
In Willy's universe, clearly Sinclair continued making computers and the PC didn't take over! Note that the computer is constructed from 5.25" floppy discs. Collect the cassette tape.
Costa Pan-handle
The handle attached to "Bedpan". The name is actually a play on the name Costa Panayi, one of may all-time favourite Spectrum programmers who wrote utterly superb games such as Highway Encounter and Cyclone, published by Vortex. The flashing object in this room is the Vortex logo, and the monsters are Vortons from Highway Encounter. This is a very tricky screen that requires precise and perfectly-timed jumping, but it is possible.
Countdown to Lift-off
The bottom half of a rocket. The counting number graphic is actually taken from the software protection screen (which required you to type in colour numbers from a code-sheet) in the original JSW game.
Don't fall off
A very easy screen; just be careful when jumping.
Earth Exit
This was originally intended as the 'exit room' from the space station game; a bit of wall would materialise when you went up the ramp, blocking your way until you'd collected all the objects. The TARDIS was, of course, the means of departure rather than the reason you ended up here in the first place. That's why the room's called "Earth Exit" rather than "Earth Entrance"! I didn't want to change the name, though.
East Wing Dormitory
It's possible to walk under the bed (to get to Bedpan), but only from right to left, not from the other direction. (This is actually a bug in JSW which I exploit in several other rooms.) Jumping up to the roof of this screen returns you to the bottom (to help people who can't work out that you can walk under the bed!). The animated teddy bear is my favourite graphic in the whole game. Collecting the object in this room is like collecting the lone syringe in "Sick Bay", but this screen is very much easier!
The Engine Room
A rather strange room, featuring two warp cores.
The Entrance into Nowhere
It's actually very easy to get past the bottom-left Knid, but it may not be immediately obvious how to do so. Sit to its immediate left, facing it, and just jump vertically upwards. The killer blocks in this room have 'OUCH' written in them, if you were wondering... and there's a concealed exit at the left.
Even the trees are weird!
See "Heyyy! Weeeird!". "Even the trees are weird!" was the next line in the commercial. This is an easy room, although it's not instantly obvious how to get at all the flashing oranges.
Extremely Unpleasant Alien Goo
This room forms a pair with "Me Tarzan...". It involves some quite tricky rope jumping if you're going to collect the objects. As for leaving the room at the right, get as close to the end of the rope as you can without falling into the goo, and leave it to the last possible moment to jump off. This room contains a small tribute to the Ludoids text adventures, published first by 16/48 (the tape magazine) and later by Bug-Byte. The flashing objects are the Ludoid symbol, and the 'tree' structure housing them is the same symbol inverted.
Food Store
You'll be a Silly Sausage if you rush headlong into this room!
Frankie Comes To Scunthorpe
Mike Harding, a comedian who was prominent in the 1980s, used to make a lot of fun of Scunthorpe. This screen is a fun-poking tribute to Frankie Goes To Hollywood, a Crash Smash from Ocean which I bought and absolutely loathed. I gave (or maybe sold) the game to Simeon Hartland, who really liked it, so that was OK. The flashing object says "POP". This is the upper half of a two-screen puzzle formed with "Yes Of Nosod".
Geoffrey's Tube
A tribute both to Star Trek (Jeffreys Tubes are a feature of the USS Enterprise) and the London Underground (Tube trains)... and my middle name is Geoffrey (don't laugh!).
Half-way House
Half-way to what, I'm not quite sure at this stage! Quite an easy room, but be careful not to miss any of the tiny objects, as it's a long way round to get back here again! The room forms a pair with "System Variables".
Heyyy! Weeeird!
A very odd screen indeed. The name was taken from a catch-phrase of a TV advert for something or other (I think it was Cadbury's Curly-Wurly chocolate bar, but it may have been Wrangler Jeans or something else). It's very easy to get completely lost in all the blue stuff, but there is an exit to the left. To get to it, just drop down to the third 'shelf' (so that Willy is roughly in the vertical centre of the screen) and walk in a straight line to the left.
The hidden room of many objects!
The only completely hidden room in the game. It's essential that you visit it, because it contains about 20% of the objects in the entire game! Jump around the letters spelling TREE HOUSE and collect all the coconuts.
In the foggy region above stairs
Go and collect the dust from alongside the mini-snowman, avoiding the right-hand pudding-bird. The screen may initially appear impossible, but you can exit through the top of the snowman by making use of the 'walk through solid blocks from the right' bug. Watch out for the conveyor belt when leaving, or you'll have to go round again! (You need to jump onto the stairs from above to leave.)
Into the Inky Black Void
It's cold in space. Jump among the stars to collect the icicles, and continue into "Star Struck", another similar screen.
Keep it under your hat!
Another rather boring 'link' screen, accessed from "Sh! Secret room! Mum's the word!". The 'joke' (if you can call it that...) in this room is that the single guardian is a policeman's helmet, positioned over the 'it' in the room name... hence "IT" is being kept under the 'hat'. Doh!
Leap of Faith
This was originally called "Realm of the Pudding-birds", but I created a new room for the pudding-birds and gave this one a new title that reflects its contents better. Although it's apparently largely empty, the room actually contains both an invisible conveyor belt and an invisible staircase. You just have to venture into mid-air to find them (walk for the ramp; leap for the conveyor). Think of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade...
Liquefaction of Julia's Clothes
The odd title is actually a reference to Upon Julia's Clothes by Robert Herrick: "When as in silks my Julia goes, Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows That liquefaction of her clothes." Julia's skirts, jumpers and stockings are strewn all around this room, and you must collect her jumpers for washing. The emphasis really is on jumping; this room requires both perfect timing and perfect positioning (made worse by the fact that the skirts are actually conveyors), and altogether it's one of the most difficult rooms in the game.
Living Quarters
The crew's recreation area. Collect the bottles and glasses. To get the left-most one, you'll have to enter the room by jumping up the stair blocks from the room to the left ("Yes Of Nosod") rather than walking up the staircase in the usual way.
Me Tarzan...
You arrive here by jumping off the rope from "Extremely Unpleasant Alien Goo". Collect the flashing monkey. My idea was to have a pair of rope-rooms, where the only way of getting from one to the other was by swinging from rope to rope, like Tarzan. Your performance on the ropes in both of these rooms is critical! If you've timed it right in "Extremely Unpleasant Alien Goo", you should be caught by the rope in "Me Tarzan...", but if you've got it wrong you'll miss the second rope, resulting in 'infinite death' (one of the few places in the game where this can occur; and it's very near the end, too!). If you've enabled the WRITETYPER teleporter, though, you might be able to rescue yourself. The final leap off the rope in "Me Tarzan..." is also extremely difficult; and when you leave the room to the right (and arrive back in "Planetfall: Return to Endor") be careful to stop straight away, or you'll fall off the ledge onto a man-eating plant.
Middle deck
The flashing B7 is a tribute to my favourite British sci-fi programme (and my favourite sci-fi programme of all during the 1980s), Blake's 7.
Moon Craters
Be careful not to fall down the crater, unless you really know what you're doing!
Nose Cone
The top of the two-screen rocket. Note the concealed object. This is also the 'end of game' room in which you must activate the transporter. The materialising wall ceases to appear once you've got all 255 objects. Just walk up to the green control panel by the computers to complete the game.
Nowhere
A tribute to The Beatles' film, Yellow Submarine, which I enjoyed when I was very small. My favourite character in the film was Nowhere Man, so here he is.
Observation Dome
A nice, symmetrical screen which is quite easy. Collect the telescopes. The magenta bouncing ball guardian at the bottom left was actually going to be the central character in the game which I started to design with Simeon Hartland!
Photon torpedoes
Another Star Trek reference.
Planetfall: Return to Endor
Walk through clouds, avoid the wall of arrows and collect the hats. Willy has encountered inhabitants of this planet before, in Manic Miner ("Endorian Forest").
Raymond Briggs fans everywhere..
A simple tribute to Raymond Briggs' The Snowman.
Realm of the Pudding-birds
The all-new room devoted to the pudding-birds (see "Leap of Faith"). This is again a moderately difficult room with some tricky jumps which require good timing. Collect the Christmas puddings (I designed this on 26th December!). The pudding-birds are so named because they're fat versions of the birds in JSW (well, the horizontal ones are based on the JSW bird graphics; the vertical ones are new).
See-link
A completely pointless room, I'm afraid. I'd run completely out of ideas when I created this one all those years ago! I remember it being one of the very last screens that I designed, and I was really bored when I did it.
Sh! Secret room! Mum's the word!
I was going to have a floating 'Mum' word in this room, but decided it wouldn't be very funny, and I was running out of guardian graphics anyway. There's nothing to do in this room; it's just a means of getting to the other side of "The Bridge above Nowhere".
Shuttle
The front half of the shuttle, forming a pair with the back half in "Shuttle bay".
Shuttle bay
Featuring the rear end of a shuttle, this is quite a good room which requires some careful jumping. Look out when you enter it from the ground level! Incidentally, I was particularly pleased with the corkscrew graphic.
Shuttle bay service tunnel
The flashing B5 is the game's one and only tribute to Babylon 5, my all-time favourite sci-fi programme.
Sick Bay
This looks quite easy, but in fact it contains one of the most difficult jumps in the entire game. It is possible to get that lone syringe, but your timing and positioning has to be perfect.
Sky Hooks
This is the first screen on the way down to the planet, and the name refers to the means by which the Great Glass Elevator (in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl) is suspended in mid-air. This is actually a very difficult screen, and requires really expert handling of ropes. It's possible to collect all the objects without dying, but hard to manage!
Solar Cells
An easy room, but note that you have to walk onto an invisible conveyor belt (which takes you out into space) in order to collect the flashing cells.
...The Space Station...
...is one of two rooms designed by Paul Rhodes and slightly modified by me.
The Star-spangled Stairway
Named after the Star-spangled Banner. This is the final screen in the game (that's the transporter at the bottom-right), but it was originally the start screen in the game I created with Simeon Hartland.
Star Struck
Willy is out in deep space now, with even more stars surrounding him. Collect the flashing star and return to the space station. This screen is very similar to "Into the Inky Black Void" (which you have to pass through to reach it).
Sterilisation Sector
A decontamination room. If you play the game a lot, you may even learn to remember about the arrow that shoots you just after you enter the room from the left!
Suit up! Shooting Stars...
...is one of two rooms designed by Paul Rhodes and slightly modified by me. I also gave it a title, as Paul had left the room unnamed. Going down from here begins your descent to the planet's surface.
System Variables
The right-hand half of a pair with "Half-way House". Collect the flashing chip. I think I was originally planning to have several rooms based on the insides of a computer, but that idea never got any further, and this is all that's left.
Top of the Stairs
Be sure not to miss the concealed object, which will require some precision-jumping to collect.
Transporter 1
The space station's internal transporter system; links to "Transporter 2" on the left and "Food Store" on the right.
Transporter 2
The space station's internal transporter system; links to "East Wing Dormitory" on the left and "Transporter 3" on the right.
Transporter 3
The space station's internal transporter system; links to "Liquefaction of Julia's Clothes" on the left and "Transporter 1" on the right.
Unexpected Happenings!
The unexpected happenings are the appearance of the two UFOs that fly by at the top of the screen, and the fact that you slide uncontrollably down the stairs. This room marks your first encounter with Darth Vader (and quite hazardous it is, too!).
Vermicious Knids!
The evil Knids were space monsters in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and feature here as an equally hostile foe for Willy. Collect the Wonka W letters, while avoiding the large and small Knids. Again, good rope handling is required in this room.
Willy & the Great Glass Elevator
The tribute to Roald Dahl's book is obvious here. Collect the elevator's push-buttons.
Worse Things Happen In Space
The name of this room is a tribute to Worse Things Happen At Sea, Silversoft's final game. This is room 63, and uses the same undefined/corrupt graphics to create a 'disaster/horror' theme for the room. In other ways, yes; it's meant to look garish! Whatever you do, be careful when collecting the object from the bottom of the staircase! Don't get caught on the conveyor belt, or you'll die.
Yes Of Nosod
A tribute to Nodes of Yesod by Odin, one of my favourite games at the time. The lower half of a nice vertical two-screen puzzle.
Zen & the Art of Oric-exploding!
This room is a tribute to the TV programme, Blake's 7, and to the Tangerine Oric-1, one of the poorest (and least successful) home computers to appear in the 1980s. In Blake's 7, the crew's first ship was called Liberator (the most gorgeous spaceship I've ever seen in any programme/film!), and its on-board computer was called Zen. The room is designed to look like Zen; collect his flashing lights. The other computer in Blake's 7 was called Orac, and it was widely speculated that the Oric-1 was named after Orac (though Tangerine claimed that this was not the case). One of the Oric's few distinguishing features was the fact that it had a set of four built-in sound effects, produced by issuing commands. One of the sound effect commands was EXPLODE; hence the title of this room. (I think that the others were PING, ZAP and BEEP.)