Jet Set Willy

The Good
The ZX Spectrum had many unique and excellent games - from the lightning fast 3D Deathchase to the sprawling epicness of Where Time Stood Still and the unique art-experience of Deus Ex Machina. However, of all the games which were released for this budget-priced computer, Jet Set Willy is perhaps the most quintessential title of all.

Written by Matthew Smith at the age of 18, Jet Set Willy was the sequel to a popular game called Manic Miner, which itself was inspired by other games such as Donkey Kong and Miner 2049'er. However, where these older titles involved a small set of single-screen levels which had to be played in a fixed order, Jet Set Willy gave the player access to a vast, sprawling mansion which the player was free to roam around and explore at their leisure - arguably, this was actually more fun than collecting the items to complete the game!

To be fair, there had been other games which offered non-linear games, especially in the realm of text adventures, but JSW was essentially the first platformer to offer this level of freedom, and it was certainly the first to offer such a large map. Better yet, there was a strong sense of humour running through the game, starting with a plot which poked fun at the "yuppie" lifestyle which was developing in eighties Britain, and continuing through the surreal layouts and names of the various rooms within the mansion; there's nods to American counter-culture comics, mild jabs at other popular Spectrum games and several visual jokes - in one room, Willy gets turned into a flying pig! And when you die, a Monty Python-esque boot descends from the top of the screen to crush poor Willy!

Then too, there were a number of technical innovations within Jet Set Willy. The use of data-compression to enable the creation of such a large map was one such example, as was the implementation of background music via interrupts. Even the loading screen offered something new, using the Spectrum's "flash" attribute to create an animated image without affecting the loading mechanism. And JSW was also the first commercial game to use a copy-protection mechanism, in the shape of a colour-printed card containing codes which had to be typed in before the game would start.

There are a few other things of note about JSW. For starters, the original release was bugged and impossible to complete. Initially, the publisher claimed that this was a "feature", but later on sent the details of a fix to some of the leading computer magazines at the time, making Jet Set Willy the first ever commercial game to receive a post-release patch...

Later on, a magazine published a type-in which could be used to create a new room for players to find and explore. So Jet Set Willy is also perhaps the first ever commercial game to have a third-party mod published for it!

The Bad
Aside from the aforementioned bug, there's a few issues with Jet Set Willy. The gameplay is very much focused around pixel-perfect jumping, and there's a few areas (e.g. the Banyan tree) which are virtually impossible to pass.

However, the only unforgivable flaw lies in the two facts that Willy will always respawn at the point where he appeared on the screen, and he dies if he falls too far. It's possible therefore to get irretrievably stuck in a death loop, where Willy keeps falling to his doom until he runs out of lives!

The Bottom Line
Groundbreaking, heavily quirky, slightly flawed and playing to both the strengths and weaknesses of the host hardware, Jet Set Willy is one of the greatest video games ever made.