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Message: 2028

Author: andrewbroad

Date: 02/03/2001

Subject: Re: JESTER's misson...

 

I've finally got my head,ears,eyes and other
parts of my body out of our latest project to

let you all know that we DO read the postings to this Yahoo Club... ;oD beating heart!> (Oh, and if anyone knows how to fix a slightly busted Q.L. - let me

know! :oD )

Try asking on
comp.sys.sinclair.

Classic games with great playability will always

stand the test of time,

Manic Miner and
Jet Set Willy have certainly stood the test of time,
and are getting bigger and bigger thanks to all the
recent remakes, and the discovery of new features! A lot
of people think that having such an obsessive
interest in MM/JSW is very narrow, but MM/JSW design is a
science onto itself, not to mention an art-form in its
own right! :D

regardless of the platform

they appear on.

Personally, I am only
interested in Spectrum versions of MM/JSW, as I do almost
all of my gaming on my real Spectrum at home (and a
bit on my emulator, MacSpectacle, but that's no
substitute for the real thing). I certainly have no interest
in consoles, only /real/ computers.

So

long as that essence is carried forward into
the newer versions.

I think the essence of
what sets MM/JSW apart from other platform games is in
the game mechanics. There's an elegant simplicity
about it - you know precisely how far you can walk to
the edge of a platform without falling off, for
example, unlike so many later platform games.

But
the main thing that sets MM/JSW apart is the quirky
features
[ http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/features.html ] - unintended by Matthew Smith, but deliberately
exploiting them is so much fun! Any conversion of MM/JSW
that irons out these `bugs' loses a large part of the
essence of MM/JSW.

Some feel it's sacrilige to even try to take the ideas forward, but (as I've seen from this and other lists) most

of us love the idea!

I'm certainly very
excited about taking the ideas forward on the Spectrum.
Like I said, other platform versions are outside my
interest. It would be a shame if everyone but me moved
their MM/JSW editing away from the good old
Spectrum.

One thing's for sure, we're not going to rush

into this - we need to get it absoultely spot

on.

I'm glad to hear it, and joining this
club is certainly a good step in that direction, as is
thorough research of the MM/JSW community literature
(gosh, that makes it sound so academic! :-)
).

Hopefully we can have a whole new generation of

kids falling in love with Willy, Paradroid, Uridium (and others!).

That's certainly a
noble mission, and a reason to convert to modern
platforms. I hope this results in some of them getting into
the Spectrum MM/JSW scene, which is currently
dominated by men in their late twenties and early thirties.
We do have some younger men coming through, but we
are failing to attract girls to MM/JSW (beyond a few
quick plays if my sister is anything to go by), and we
also need to spread the game to a wider range of
countries (particularly Eastern Europe, the Oriental
countries, Australia, and America).

--
Andrew
Broad
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/

 

 

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