Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
Archive of the
Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group
messages
|
|
|
|
|
Message: 5993
Author: Daniel
Date: 19/12/2006
Subject: Philip Bee's games
1. I have completed recently, for the first time without any
cheating, both gamma-released games by Philip Bee: "Jet Set Willy
Ivy" and "Jet Set Willy (again)". I did it for the purpose of
recording nice-looking walkthroughs for The RZX Archive, so I had to
figure out how to collect every item without losing a life and
without cheating. With my current knowledge of JSW mechanics and
quirky features it was not a forbiddingly-difficult task, but I just
want to say that I was very impressed with Phil's work. Both games
have many novel features, apparently products of Phil's experimenting
with various aspects of the game engine, and they are very
interesting to play. And I am saying it now, at the end of 2006, but
how much more novel they must have seemed when they were first
released back in 1999 and 2000 (beta-release in case of "JSW (again)"!
2. In message 5976 I wrote (concerning Andrew Broad's 1999 game "We
Pretty"):
> It was also the first game to purposefully exploit various "quirkyWell, admittedly "Jet Set Willy Ivy" already has some examples of
> features" of the game engine
this, such as the necessity to jump through an overhead Earth-cell to
collect an item (as in "Clement Time" [37]) or through an Earth-cell
just above the floor level, also to collect an item (as in "A Close
Shave" [57]), the rope moving through three rooms, etc.
3. Philip has been kind enough to send me three old working files
with his unfinished games. The most interesting one is a Manic Miner
game ("ER_JAN00.sna"), more than half-finished, I would say, which
indeed, as Phil mentioned in a message a while ago, has some never-
before-seen features. It will be a great shame if this effort never
sees the light of a gamma-release, especially in this era of easy
Manic Miner editing with the current versions of JSWED (or so I
imagine, at least, never having worked on designing a MM game).
Is there any chance at all, Phil, that one day you will load the file
into JSWED and say: "What the heck, I'm just gonna finish this game!"
It would make you the third person in the world to gamma-release both
a JSW and a MM game (that is, if Sendy doesn't release "Manic Person"
before that). Come on, Phil, you can do it! :-)
Daniel
|
|
|