Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
Versions and minor mods of the original Jet Set Willy
A Big HELLO /to/ Richard Hallas!
Author: Andrew Broad
Publisher: Broadsoft
Year: 1998
Language: English
A Big HELLO /to/ Richard Hallas! is a version of the original JSW which Andrew Broad wrote in 1998 for Richard G. Hallas, the author of Join the Jet-Set! and Jet-Set Willy in Space. This version has three new rooms:
Room 61 - "A Big HELLO /to/ Richard Hallas!" - was written especially for this occasion, making a titular nod to the room "A Big HELLO from Richard Hallas!" (17) from Join the Jet-Set!. This was the last room Andrew ever wrote using his Jet Set Willy Screen Editor.
Room 62 - "Skyhooks" - comes from the old version of Andrew's Jet Set Willy: Manic Miner. A revamped version of this room appeared in Part 1 of Andrew's Party Willy. The room was included because Richard had independently written a room called "Sky Hooks" (48) for Jet-Set Willy in Space.
Room 63 - "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" - comes from Jet Set Dizzy, a partially completed rewrite of JSW which Andrew abandoned in 1993. It was included because Richard had independently written a room called "In the Hall of the Mountain-King" (33) for Join the Jet-Set!. Andrew once announced that a revamped version of this room would be included in his future game Toy; however, his current plans regarding the possible creation of this game remain unknown.
Back in 1998, Andrew sent A Big HELLO /to/ Richard Hallas! to Richard who acknowledged it and said that it would be nice to see room 61 in a released game. Andrew did not release this special version of JSW to a wider audience, but he included it (a snapshot file called HALLAS.SNA) in his For Completists compilation, of which four versions were uploaded to the Files section of the MM and JSW Yahoo! Group between October 2005 and December 2008. It was a limited-edition 'club release' for members of the MM and JSW Yahoo! Group (which, sadly, ceased to exist after Yahoo! shut down Yahoo! Groups in December 2020).
The possibility of making A Big HELLO /to/ Richard Hallas! public was discussed in the Contributor Lounge of the JSW&MM Community in March 2021. Andrew was not enthusiastic about it, stating that "HALLAS.SNA really is only worthy of crashed hard disks and deleted Yahoo! Groups." At the same time, he did not expressly object to the game being made public and he confirmed that it fits in the category of variants of the original JSW. In August 2023, Richard suggested that this version - created for him, after all - should be added to JSW Central. Consequently, A Big HELLO /to/ Richard Hallas! is now made public - a quarter of a century after it was created - with Richard's express approval, as an interesting piece of JSW history.
Andrew's original file HALLAS.SNA had only one of the four official Software Projects POKEs applied (the Banyan Tree fix). Therefore, it was incompletable (the game file was probably not meant to be played to completion, it was mainly created to showcase the three new rooms). A bugfixed, completable version in TAP and TZX formats is available for download below in case someone wanted to not only see the new rooms, but also play the game to completion. The information below refers to this bugfixed version.
Number of edited rooms: 63
Number of rooms accessible without cheating: 63
Number of rooms which need to be visited to complete the game: 59
("Entrance to Hades" [06] should be omitted as entering it results in a multiple-death scenario. The three new rooms can be omitted as they contain no items, so it is not necessary to visit them to complete the game.)
Number of items to collect: 83
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" [43].)
Starting time: 7:00 am
Best documented completion time with no unnecessary loss of life: It should be the same as that of the original JSW, i.e. 7:58 am, as the new rooms do not have to be visited (because they contain no items) and so the game can be played exactly like the original.
Best documented completion time with no unnecessary loss of life while visiting all of the new rooms: 8:02 am
Download links
|
Original game file in SNA format |
|
Completable version in TAP and TZX formats |
|
Completable version in TAP and TZX formats with a Readme |
|
RZX walkthrough of the completable version showing the best documented completion time while visiting all of the new rooms |
Screenshot gallery |
New rooms
The remaining screens look the same as in the original JSW.