Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
IV. Jet Set Willy 128 (JSW128)
Games using John Elliott's JSW128 game engine for the 128K Spectrum
1. Jet Set Willy 128
Also known as: Jet Set Willy 128k
Authors: John Elliott and Richard G. Hallas
Year: 1996 (Version 0.00 Hacklevel 1)
Latest 'official' revision: 2000 (Version 0.04 Hacklevel 7)
Latest 'unofficial' revision: 2004 (Version 0.04 Hacklevel 9)
Language: English
The JSW128 game engine was created by John Elliott as an extension of the classic JSW48 game engine to allow more rooms and more features. Games using this 128K engine can have up to 256 rooms, up to 8 guardians per room and up to 4 cell classes per room.
The development of the JSW128 game engine was gradual and related to the development of its companion editor, JSWED. Its consecutive revisions are called "Hacklevels".
Jet Set Willy 128 was the first game ever to use the JSW128 game engine. It combines the rooms from the original JSW and the rooms from Richard Hallas's Join the Jet-Set! Its development was also gradual. Its "Versions" (v.) refer to the room data, while its "Hacklevels" (HL), as mentioned above, refer to the game engine.
Jet Set Willy 128 v. 0.00 HL 1 was released in January 1996. It was a 128-room JSW game featuring the rooms from the original JSW and Join the Jet-Set!.
Version 0.00 HL2 was released the following month. Hacklevel 2 introduced 128K music, multiple guardian-class tables, a user-defined font, three sets of colour attributes for the title screen and a new cheat mode.
Version 0.00 HL3 was releasd in June 1996. Hacklevel 3 allowed a long scrolling message to be stored in Bank 7.
Version 0.01 HL3 was released in May 1997. The room "Macaroni Ted" (061) was added as alink between the two halves of the game.
Version 0.01 HL4 was released in August 1997. Hacklevel 4 added support for teleporters and allowed each room to specify the player's sprite page in Offset 237.
Version 0.02 HL5 was released in September 1997. Hacklevel 5 introduced the ability to turn superjump (POKE 36404,44) on/off for each room according to the most significant bit of Offset 222.
Version 0.03 HL6 was released in August 1998. Hacklevel 6 added diagonal guardians and colour-cycling guardians. This version featured some new rooms: "The Central Cavern" (062), "The CGA Room" (063) and "Reach for the skies" (128).
Version 0.04 HL7 was released in June 2000. Hacklevel 7 fixed a bug in the diagonal guardians and v. 0.04 added a new room: "The other CGA room" (129).
Hacklevel 8, introduced in July 2000 in a beta version of JSWED, tidied up the superjump so that Willy didn't become misaligned and fall.
Hacklevel 9, introduced in May 2004, added stopped ropes, half-speed and double-speed horizontal guardians, and tidied up some of the code (e.g. by replacing inline code with subroutines), leaving 3K extra for sprites or guardian-class tables.
John Elliott has released the consecutive revisions of the game as a ZX Spectrum +3 Disk or a .TAP file installer. He did not ever release any tape or snaphot files of the actual games.
Whenever you load a JSW128 game in JSWED, it automatically upgrades it to the highest Hacklevel.
John Elliott's latest gamma-release (as installer) of Jet Set Willy 128 was v. 0.04 HL 7. However, as the Hacklevel has been updated since, in fact the highest existing revision of the game is Jet Set Willy 128 v. 0.04 HL 9. It can be created using, first, the latest gamma-released installer and then version 2.10 or higher of JSWED.
Not all of the revisions of the game mentioned above have been preserved to this day.
Jet Set Willy 128 v. 0.04 HL 9
Number of edited rooms: 129
(This number includes: 60 rooms from the original JSW [technical room numbers 000-060], 64 rooms from Join the Jet-Set! [technical room numbers 064-127], modified conversions of "Macaroni Ted" from JSW II [061] and "The Central Cavern" from the original MM [062] and three new rooms designed by John Elliott: "The CGA room" [063], "Reach for the skies" [128] and "The other CGA room" [129].)
Number of rooms accessible without cheating: 128
(The room "How on earth did you get here ?!" [127] is accessible only using the Writetyper cheat and causes instant multiple death on entry.)
Number of rooms which need to be visited to complete the game: 108
("Entrance to Hades" [006] should be omitted as entering it results in a multiple-death scenario. The rooms "Hades" [071], "Branch" [073], "The Plumber is incompetent" [074], "Over Dover" [075], "Out on a limb" [077], "The Book Tower" [082], "Over the harbour" [084], "In mid air" [085], "Over the ocean" [086], "Maria's Hideout" [099], "The Greenhouse" [105], "Is this Pacman or Caterpiller?" [112], "The Terrace" [121] and "The Aviary" [126] can be omitted. Furthermore, the rooms "What shall I do with this room?" [095], "The Gaping Pit" [100], "WC" [101], "Library" [118], "Mountain Peak" [119] can be omitted if a life is lost in "Eugene's Lair" [108] after collecting the item in that room and the player goes back the same way he arrived there instead of exiting down.)
Number of items to collect: 250
Spare lives at the start: 7
Completable without loss of life? NO
Lives which need to be sacrificed to complete the game: 1
(A life has to be sacrificed to collect the leftmost item in "Conservatory Roof" [043].)
Starting time: 7:00 am
Best documented completion time with no loss of life: 8:53 am
Download links
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The game's homepage on John Elliott's website |
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Game files of the preserved revisions of the game in TAP and TZX formats |
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The game's page on WoS |
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The game's page on Spectrum Computing |
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The game's map on Speccy Screenshot Maps |
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RZX walkthrough of Jet Set Willy 128 v. 0.04 HL 9 showing the best documented completion time |
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RZX walkthrough of Jet Set Willy 128 v. 0.04 HL 9 on the RZX Archive (showing a completion of the game which is inferior to the best publicly available recording) |
Video
A walkthrough of Jet Set Willy 128 v. 0.04 HL 9 on the JSW Central YouTube channel
A complete screenshot gallery will be presented on this page in the future.
| Back to the list of JSW128 games |