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
60. Plants vs Zombies
Author: Wan YuXiang 万宇翔 (UncleWan)
Contribution: Daniel Gromann
Year: 2026
Language: English
Plants vs Zombies is the first full JSW game created by Wan YuXiang (UncleWan), who discovered JSW around 2021 and quickly became fascinated by its style of platform gameplay. After exploring online resources and discovering many different versions and ports of JSW and MM, including Java, PC and Z88 adaptations, Wan became deeply interested in the history and legacy of the two games. His enthusiasm even led him to write an article about MM for Baidu Baike, the Chinese online encyclopaedia.
In April 2025, Wan started working on a new JSW game inspired by Plants vs Zombies, a 2009 tower defence video game developed and published by PopCap Games Ltd. He used JSWED for his work. When he ran into some technical problems, he reached out to Daniel Gromann, who helped him resolve the issues and offered his assistance in enriching the game with additional elements and with playtesting. Wan continued his work on Plants vs Zombies throughout 2025 and sent the game to Daniel for playtesting in early 2026. Daniel applied a number of technical improvements and volunteered to expand the game further, adding various in-game tunes, some new rooms and other enhancements. As a result of this collaboration, the final game file was completed, fully playtested and released in May 2026.
GAME PREMISE: Willy survived wave after wave of zombie attacks with the help of the plants. Zomboss, in order to end Willy's resistance, captured the source of the plants' power — the Sunflower — and locked it in a cage. While the Sunflower was imprisoned, the plants lost their vitality and went berserk. It was during this time that the zombies also invaded Willy's mansion. Willy hid in his temporary shelter. The Sunflower had left some solar energy all over the mansion before being captured. The player needs to guide Willy in collecting it in order to calm the plants down, then rescue the Sunflower and reorganise the forces resisting the zombies.
The game features various modifications to the original JSW48 game engine which allow it to have, among other things, more guardians than a regular game (thanks to a doubled number of guardian pages) and more in-game tunes (it has 10 of them, most 128 bytes long and all newly coded).
Number of edited rooms: 60
(5 rooms: "The Final Barrier" [10], "Everyone's a Zombie" [29], "Gan De Piao Liang !!!!" [30], "WELL DONE!!!" [32] and "What Is Going to Happen?!?" [33], which are part of the final sequence, are only accessible during the toilet run.)
Number of rooms accessible without cheating: 60
Number of rooms which need to be visited to complete the game: 59
("The Long River" [19] should be omitted as entering it results in a multiple-death scenario.)
Number of items to collect: 256
Spare lives at the start: 7
Completable without loss of life? Yes
Starting time: 7:00 am
Best documented completion time with no unnecessary loss of life: No walkthrough is available publicly yet.
Download links
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The game's home page on JSW & MM Community |
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The ZIP file of the original release, including the game in TAP and TZX format and two Readmes |
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Game file in TAP and TZX formats |
Selected screenshots |
A complete screenshot gallery will be presented on this page in the future.