Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group
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Message: 1224
Author: gawp2000
Date: 20/11/2000
Subject: on behalf of Carl Murray (ewgf)
soa1000 wrote
>Hmm, an interesting
thought. Actually, on that thought, have you
played
>the unfinished JSW game based on the Speccyemulation
scene circa 1996?
>I had wondered if for the next
project, could we get in contact with the
original
>author and see if we could expand and finish it?
Specifically it would retain roughly
>the same theme,
but perhaps branching out to cover A) the Speccy
scene today
>and B) The history of the Spectrum
as a whole? It's just a thought, but I mean I
love
>that thing. If we can't, then I shall read up myself
on the subject, and then finish it
>off on my
own, because it deserves to be finished.
Briefly, the story behind JSW '96 (or JSW '97 as it was
looking to have been called) is this:
The author
of JSW '96 was Paul Howard, an old Spectrum contact
of mine. Back then
we were a hardcore group of
Spectrum owners, bonded together by the three facts that
we all
loved and used real Spectrums, we all had
+D disc drives (a superb 3.5" floppy disc
system)
and we all refused to "upgrade". There were a few
dozen or more, and we mostly just
knew one-another
via post and the Speccy fanzines, such as Alchnews,
and we used to swap
all the Spectrum software,
including the new, up to date (and sometimes amazingly
good)
foreign games and demos.We called ourselves "The Spectrum
Underground", and it was
great (I've had and used both a
Spectrum and an Atari ST when they died commercially,
and
believe me, the best time to own a computer is when the
market is dying, as then the
standard of programming
is at it's highest, the remaining users are real
enthusiasts and not
childish pirates, and all the best
software is freely available) and wow do I miss those
years.
Anyway, Paul decided to rewrite JSW to
feature everyone is the then Spectrum scene
and as you
can see, did a really promising job, but his one copy
of the work-in-progress
became corrupted and so
he sadly lost interest. In fact, if it wasn't for
him sending me a
beta a fortnight or so before
then JSW '96 would have been totally lost. As it is,
at least the
beta is still around.
Since
then I had asked Paul about the posibility of his
continuing JSW '96, but he wasn't
interested. He did,
however, start work on a PC conversion of JSW, even to the
extent
of producing a screenshot of "The Bathroom" (can't
remember how it looked, sorry), but
then his WWW site
dissapeared, his e-mail address knocked back my e-mails and
so
we lost touch. To be fair, my PC had been down for a
fortnight or more, until I found out
his site had
vanished, so it may not have been so sudden, but whatever
the reason, I
have not been able to contact him
since.Actually, come to think of it, it must be well
over a
year since I've tried my old contacts, so I may well
give it a go, Anyway, soa1000,
if you do manage to
contact him, please tell him I said Hello, and ask him to
get
in touch sometime.
I know for a fact Paul
would not object to any of his work being reused,
provided he
was credited. It really was a shame JSW '96
was never finished, and it would be
great if JSW:
The Spectrum Resistance (or whatever you'd called it)
could be created.
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