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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 6349
Author: Daniel
Date: 05/01/2008
Subject: JSW64 MM: James Bond - Daniel's review / Help needed
I have struggled with JB in the last few days and I would like to
share my impressions.
First of all, it is great to see a new game from Andrew, three years
after the previous gamma-release of a new project :-) JB is the
first game by Andrew which I have played right after its release.
It is nice to see some of Andrew's well-known sprites. It gives a
sense of continuity and familiarity, while at the same time there
are a lot of new elements.
What impressed me most about the game is the technical variety - a
combination of MM and JSW features, plus the advanced JSW64
features, which all together produce - in addition to the extensive
use of the quirky features of the game engine - a wide range of very
interesting and oftentimes unexpected challenges. Plus the brand new
features - the lifts especially - it's great to see them; they make
JB a new quality, indeed. So, it's been a great pleasure to discover
all of these elements and to struggle with them :-) .
The level of difficulty is Andrew's average, I would say. JB is not
the most difficult game, certainly, but it has some really tough
moments. I have been playing it between 3 and 5 rooms a day. Even if
I had had more time than I did to devote to it, I think it would
have been unhealthy to spend more time on it without taking
breaks... :-)
One thing the game is very good (or: cruel :-)) at is making the
solution obscure and tricking you into thinking that it's something
else. I wasted a long time trying to jump from one rope to the other
in "Octopussy", trying to somehow get down from the lifts in "The
Living Daylights" and wondering why the jump over the green fence
in "Licence to Kill" doesn't work... That's as much as I will give
away at this point in the sense of spoilers :-) .
I have now reached the seventeenth room (technical number 16) -
"GoldenEye" - and I have collected all of the items in it. The
portal is invitingly red, but I don't know how to reach it. My
suspicion is that it has to be done with a cleverly-placed jump onto
the rope, which will then allow me to jump right again and get onto
the plane-lift, but I cannot find the right position. I would keep
on trying if I were sure the solution is not completely different
(like a clever jump to the left from the left-hand side of the
screen, or falling through the floor somehow to land on the plane-
lift, or something different still). Could you help out, Andrew?
Once again, then - thanks for this outstanding game, Andrew, and I
hope many more Bond movies get released, so that the JSW-MM James
Bond challenge will keep growing! :-)
Daniel
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