Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
II. Jet Set Willy (JSW48)
A. New games using Matthew Smith's original Jet Set Willy game engine for the 48K Spectrum and its modifications
15. J4 (The Fourth Remix)
Authors: Geoff Eddy, Iain Eddy and Alasdair Swanson
Year: 1999
Language: English
J4 (The Fourth Remix) was the first JSW game to use what later came to be known as "Geoff Mode" - modifications to the JSW game engine created by Geoff Eddy. The game was created by Geoff together with his brother Iain and friend Alasdair Swanson. The name signifies that the released version was the fourth 'remix' of the game, i.e "the fourth (and most successful) time the designers attempted to redesign the game for their own satisfaction".
According to the authors, the game "isn't as difficult as some of the other JSW redesigns out there, nor is it as coherent in concept, but it's hopefully at least as interesting for other reasons." The game reflects each designer's own tastes and preferences regarding the design of the rooms. "It was once said that Geoff's rooms were meant to be passed through, Iain's to be looked at, and Alasdair's to die in".
Geoff Mode, which this game introduced, are modifications to the standard JSW48 game engine resulting in some improvements and new features. The modified engine has a new room format, a new guardian class format and other functional modifications, such as rewritten code which deals with ropes and arrows. As a result, Geoff Mode allows for such novelties as diagonal guardians, fast-moving horizontal guardians and 'wraparound' (unidirectional) guardians. It also offers the possibility of adding the so-called 'patch vectors', i.e. additional code that produces special effects in individual rooms (which could not be produced by the standard game engine). Finally, games that use Geoff Mode also have some cosmetic changes, such as items animating through eight colours (instead of four), each successive remaining "life" sprite showing a different phase (rather than all of them being the same phase) and a 7-digit time counter which counts down from 9999999 (rather than the standard clock).
Number of edited rooms: 64
Number of items to collect: 231
Bugfix needed after original release? NO
Spare lives at the start: N/A
(The game starts with an Infinite Lives POKE applied; 16 spare lives are shown on the status bar [the lower third of the screen]).
Completable without loss of life? NO
Lives which need to be sacrificed to complete the game: 2
(One life has to be sacrificed to collect the two leftmost items in "Abbey of Thelema" [45] and another life has to be sacrificed to collect the leftmost item in "The White Room (well, almost!)" [08].)
Starting time: 9999999
(In Geoff Modes there is no clock like in the original JSW, but a timer using a 7-digit number which counts down from 9999999.)
Best documented completion time without unnecessary loss of life: 9971648
Download links
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Game file 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 the game showing the best documented completion time |
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RZX walkthrough of the game on the RZX Archive (showing a completion of the game which is inferior to the best publicly available recording) |
Video
A walkthrough of the game on the JSW Central YouTube channel
A complete screenshot gallery will be presented on this page in the future.
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