Reviews

Gameplay: Walk and jump around the mansion collecting flashing objects and avoiding death from falls and enemies.

A highly polished game which was hugely popular at the time but in retrospect it lacks the focus of Manic Miner, the game which this is a sequel of.

The game does have some great ideas though , and still retains the humour of Manic Miner. The game cannot be completed but you did pretty well if you managed to get past some of the more notorious sections, such as the Banyan Tree.

I prefer to play the Andrew Broads 'Manic Miner - Jet Set Willy'. This takes the Manic Miner engine and game structure but uses screens from Jet Set Willy. Give it a try yourself: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0017540

Jet set willy was the first game i ever queued up for , we (me and a cousin) had spent months conquering the prequel manic miner and decided to make sure a copy of jet set would be ours on release morning.

We eagerly jogged home , hit play and waited for it to load , first thing to hit us was the colour coded protection ,we'd never seen anything like this before but it wasn't too difficult (sounds silly now) and we entered the code and got the now familiar title screen , a nice tune played for us , pressing enter to play (and not seeing many screenshots before) , we were again a touch confused that you could walk from room to room fairly unhindered. This is a world all of its built inside the spectrum , fantastic , we spent all day messing about , even writing the names of all the rooms we could , excited when we found a new one , dismayed when we lost all our lives on a repeated death.

Sorry for rambling but i don't remember being as excited or intrigued by any other game - ever.

For anyone not familiar with Jet set willy , it only requires 3 keys to get you around Willys huge mansion , left / right and jump , the aim of the game is to collect all the objects scattered around the various rooms after a mad party before the time runs out , stopping you are a variety of wierd and wacky well animated objects such as skulls , penguins , saws and other such nightmares from the mind of Matthew Smith.

The rooms were ingenious in design , simple by todays mega bucks but in 1984 ,( good lord 25 years ago ! ) , they were a breath of fresh air compared to most releases.

Its been copied hundreds of times now , and not many come even close to the impact that the original release had , to be honest i hardly ever play it now , but whenever i do , i enjoy a wave of nostalgia and fond memories of the summer of 84 , that can't be a bad thing !

A great platform game like Manic Miner but with more screens. The storyline was that with the treasure Miner Willy made from Manic Miner he purchased a mansion. He threw a party and his housemaid Maria, refused to tidy up so he had to collect the trash around the mansion before he could go to bed.

The game involved jumping over platforms, avoiding aliens and sliding up and down ropes.

Very addictive although the game did suffer from what was known as The Attic Bug which stopped anyone completing the game without a "poke" I believe.

Played it for many hours but slightly preferred Manic Miner. Would still rate it 5 out of 5 though.

Whooohuu !! Jet Set Willy ... a legendary sequel for the legendary Manic Miner.

This is more complex and difficult than its predecesor but it is equally enjoyable.

Help Willy to tidy up his new mansion before going to bed.

Highly recommendable. Sheer brilliance , high quality .

1984 Software Projects (UK)
by Matthew Smith

I used to like JSW more than Manic Miner, just because it was easier. Well no exactly easier, because the engine is basicaly the same, but exploring the rooms was now a possibility, so this made me keep coming back, even despite the numerous bugs the early versions had. There is not much more I can say that hasnt been said before. JSW is undoubtedly a Speccy classic and even if you didnt like the game in your younger years, I bet it left a dent somewhere. Together with its predecessor it was responsible for a huge increase of new game ideas and, of course, the usual clones. The unleashing of these 2 monsters would revolutionize the game industry and boost sales dramatical. I hope the Software houses thanked Matthew Smith for it.

it's too bloody hard.

Jet Set Willy eschews the single screen levels of Manic Miner for a flip screen approach and is all the better for it. It's still insanely difficult though!

The endless stream of modifactions and clones has come about for a reason. Jet Set Willy fired up imaginations like so few other creative works in any field have managed to do.
As you walk/jump your way around Willy's loadsamoney mansion you reveal a map with intrigue around every corner.
We wanted the yacht to set sail to a distant island or to leap from the rooftop battlements to the moon - and these are things that followed in the official and unofficial chapters that eventually followed.
JSW is a rare example of a masterwork that transcends its media, yet in passing helped elevate the ZX Spectrum as a creative device from practical to astonishing.
No wonder Sir Clive was reputedly so fed up with hearing about JSFW as one young man, Matthew Smith, took his homework home computer and turned it into such an epicurean adventure box.

Seemingly the most inspirational game of all-time because it's spawned 150 million unofficial games, and frankly I never saw the fuss in it, not back then and certainly not now. It's just a larger expanded version of Manic Miner, which for me was always the better game compared to this. Like it's still a nice enough game but not the greatest game ever that deserves to be cloned by every aspiring programmer, their sisters and their grannies. And for the record I will never review any of the unofficial JSW games, just this and the official sequel and then I am done with JSW, forever. Forever. For. Ever. And ever. And. Ever.

The sequel to Manic Miner, both by Matthew Smith, is definitely one of the iconic games for the Spectrum.

Miner Willy is now a millionaire that lives in a huge mansion. After a party he wants to go to bed but Maria, his italian housekeeper won't let get him in the bedroom till he collect all the bottles used in the party that are spread all over the mansion.

A catchy tune, limited UDG graphics and a very long map sum up this classic plattformer along with a high difficulty.