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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 6826
Author: jetsetdanny
Date: 07/04/2015
Subject: The mystery of "Willy Takes a Trip"
Has anyone ever completed Geoff Eddy's Willy Takes a Trip? Is it completable?
The three JSW games, the recordings of which are still missing from the RZX Archive (apart from the Down and Out Trilogy), are:
- Dr. Jet Set Willy, whose lack of completability was discussed by Andrew Broad in message 5673.
- Maria vs Some Bastards, the enigma of which has been discussed several times (in messages 6193, 6754, 6752 and 6778, among others) - Vidar's verdict on the subject or a bug-fixed Revision F have not been forthcoming so far.
- Willy Takes a Trip.
I have recently tried to play Willy Takes a Trip to completion and so far I have failed to do so. It seems to me that the game is not completable. However, I may be wrong. I would like to share my doubts and ask for everyone's help in establishing the truth.
There are 213 items ("thingees") to collect in the game. I have managed to collect 184 of them and then got stuck.
The 29 items which I have not been able to collect are:
- 3 items placed together in "The Store Room".
I can't see any way to collect them other than teleporting in from another room or a patch vector opening the wall or providing some other way to reach them.
- The leftmost item in "The Arches of Despair, I fear", the item in "Nineteen - Not Out!", the middle item in "The Windowbox" and the two items in "Oh no! CLIFF".
All of the above belong to a section of the game map which I am unable to access. It looks to me like it should be accessed by going up from "A Quiet Corner to rest in" - but that's impossible to do, AFAICT.
- The middle and the two left items in "The Promised Land (tropical)".
I cannot access this part of the room, either from the left side, or coming up from "Willy's Drinking Licence", or from the lower left of "The Promised Land (arctic)". Am I missing something?
- The upper item in "Weeds", the 5 items in "Don't Inhale, Billy", the 5 items in "Good Skunk" and the 7 items in "...".
This is another section of the game map which I don't know how to access. It looks like the player should be able to drop down into "Weeds" from the room above, but no room has such exit, AFAICT.
Sendy inquired about this back in message 879 ("okay, does anyone know how to get onto the top ledges of the room 'weeds' in 'willy takes a trip'? without cheating, that is"). Sendy further said, "i asked geoff and he said it's complicated but he can't remember. he also said andrew might know." Unfortunately, no reply has ever been posted to this message and so the mystery has continued for the last fourteen and a half years, to this very day!
Andrew wrote in message 6482, "such challenges would be better achieved using patch-vectors, such as the one in Geoff Eddy's _Willy Takes a Trip_ (IIRC), where collecting all the items in one room causes a wall to disappear in another".
I haven't observed any such phenomenon in "Willy Takes a Trip", which doesn't mean, of course, that it's not there. If it is, it might indeed offer accessibility to an otherwise inaccessible area. Does anyone know if it occurs, and if so, in which room(s)?
When Andrew advertised the release of "Willy Takes a Trip" back in message 30 (at the very beginning of the Club!), he said, "it was just short of brilliant when I beta-tested it, but now it's got a load of patch-vector effects in it, and might well make that mark!"
That would suggest two things to me: that the game had been completable when Andrew beta-tested it, and that changes were made to it after his beta-testing. Which, in effect, does not tell us much about the completability of the gamma release.
In message 6182 some other problems which occur in Willy Takes a Trip were discussed, namely the necessity to sacrifice one life in order to collect the items in "Psychic Bread and Butter", one life in "Reception Antechamber" and two lives in "Womflechompies". These problems, however, do not affect the completability of the game.
So, is Willy Takes a Trip completable? Any help or comments?
Daniel
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