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: 7111
Author: jetsetdanny
Date: 14/04/2017
Subject: "Henry's Hoard" - completable at last!
"Henry's Hoard" is a game released by Martyn Brown and Andy Bigos (Alternative Software Ltd) in 1985. It uses a heavily-modified Jet Set Willy (JSW) game engine. The gameplay is almost identical to "JSW", while the title screen, Game Over screen and lives display have been extensively modified. John Elliott has published an analysis of the Henry's Hoard game engine, focusing on the differences from the original JSW game engine and highlighting the differences between the 1985 and 1986 edition.
Three versions of "Henry's Hoard" exist: the 1985 edition, the 1986 edition and the latter edition with minor changes (including the year 1987 mentioned in the scrolling message on the title screen), which appeared on Side A of "MicroHobby" Issue 188: Tape 7 in May 1989.
All versions of the game suffer from critical bugs that make them impossible to complete. The crucial one has been identified by John Elliott, who described it as follows:
"According to my notes, what happens is that if you're in room 26 [REVENGE OF THE AWESOME ALE!] and you have collected all the items (according to JSWED there are 255 of them), then the 'up' exit changes to room 24 [HENRY'S ANTICS]; go left from there to get to the hoard itself.
However, since there are items that have to be collected in HENRY'S ANTICS, it's entirely possible that this is a Catch-22 situation - you can only get into HENRY'S ANTICS to collect the items if you've already collected the items in it."
There are also two other critical problems in "Henry's Hoard" which, to the best of my knowledge, have not been discussed publicly so far:
I. Some of the items defined in the code cannot be collected within the game.
"Henry's Hoard" has 255 items to collect (as defined at #A3FF). However, 11 of them cannot be collected in any of the rooms. These are:
1. Two items on the upper right of "THE DROP" (14). They are invisible when playing the game, because they do not have any pixels. They are defined at #A4DE - #A5DE and at #A4E2 - #A5E2 in the item table, and they are in exactly the same location as the items in "Rescue Esmerelda" (14) in "JSW".
2. Nine items which are located in rooms 56-60 of the game, non-existent in "Henry's Hoard". Their position in the room reflects the position of items in the rooms with corresponding technical numbers in "JSW". These are:
- four items in room 56 ("West Wing Roof" in "JSW"), defined in "Henry's Hoard" at #A4B2 - #A5B2, #A4B3 - #A5B3, #A4B4 - #A5B4 and #A4EE - #A5EE in the item table;
- one item in room 57 ("Above the West Bedroom" in "JSW"), defined at #A4C5 - #A5C5 in the item table;
- two items in room 58 ("The Beach" in "JSW"), defined at #A4C0 - #A5C0 and #A4C6 - #A5C6 in the item table;
- one item in room 59 ("The Yacht" in "JSW"), defined at #A4BF - #A5BF in the item table;
- one item in room 60 ("The Bow" in "JSW"), defined at #A4BE - #A5BE in the item table.
II. It is impossible to cross the room "LOONY LAGOON" (19) from left to right at the upper level, which effectively blocks the player's progress through the game.
There are two Fire cells (to use the established JSW terminology) in "LOONY LAGOON", one at 2,6 and the other at 2,19, which always kill Henry when trying to jump to the right along the upper row of platforms. This in itself renders the game incompletable.
Furthermore, as discussed by John Elliott, in the 1985 edition of "Henry's Hoard" the victory code is buggy. Its first byte is overwritten by a RET instruction. This causes the initial scrolling message to display repeatedly, instead of the Victory Screen, until the computer is reset.
John Elliott's JSWED (Jet Set Willy Editor) allows users to edit games based on the Henry's Hoard game engine. It offers a tickable option of fixing the victory bug in the 1985 edition (by adjusting the pertinent code to be the same as in the 1986 edition).
I am now pleased to announce the creation of bug-fixed, completable files of all three versions of the game. They are available for download from JSW Central and from JetSet Willy & Manic Miner Community. The ZIP includes a Readme with credits, detailed list of changes applied to the original files and other info.
I believe the bug-fixed versions are exactly as the game's authors meant the game to be (unless they wanted it to remain impossible to complete - but in such case they probably would not have bothered to design the Victory Screen and the code which activates it).
So you can now complete "Henry's Hoard" and enjoy its splendid Victory Screen like you could never have done before!
RZX walkthroughs of the bug-fixed versions are available on RZX Archive.
If you enjoy the game, you can also have a look at "Willy's Hoard", my 2006 expanded conversion of "Henry's Hoard" to the classic JSW game engine, with 49 rooms from "Henry's Hoard", 26 new rooms, Miner Willy as protagonist and some innovative technical features.
|
|
|