Jet Set Willie

Hello Daniel and All,
Thank you so much for this feedback after playing and testing my new game.
It's always a nerve-wracking moment to deliver your creation and wait for feedback from those who will play it.
And after so many years, I didn't know where I was going when I started three months ago...
So I'm very relieved to know that this game can be a happy experience for all players.
You have all the green lights to add your musical programming. Your proposal is a huge honor for me.
Take the time you need by prioritizing all your commitments to the authors and time to manage your JSW Central site.
Thanks again, Daniel, for the time you've already spent helping me and improving my games.
Thank you to all of you, the community, for your interest in this project. Only a few more months to wait before you can play it !!!
See you soon
Hervé
A little bonus image, without revealing too much of the game :

MM is fine if set at say 125% or 150% , its still not "that" fast 🙂 
I think for both of these on that platform the programmers did well to squeeze it all in.

Unfortunately JasonMoilm is a sophisticated bot, IMPO. He (or rather it) posts messages that sound related to the thread they are posted in, but either make no sense or have no relation to the issues that are discussed.
Let's see if "it" reacts to this post of mine before we ban it completely 😉 .

View File JSW - 2024
2024 marked the 40th anniversary of Jet Set Willy. 🏆
Initially I had planned on something a lot more elaborate to celebrate this however for various reasons I decided a standard game with a few simple changes would fit nicely.
 
There is a time limit of two hours game playing time enforced. If Willy runs out of time (at 12:00AM), the game is over! This is indicated with the game freezing and the word 'time' flashing for a few seconds, leaving the player in no doubt what has happened.
There are 150 items to collect. Care was taken to place these mostly sensibly without detracting from the original game feeling. Also, some item shapes per room have changed, the main reason being at least one item shape looks like two bottles, so if and when Willy collects one of these it will count as two in his collection.
The main loop was modified (thanks N.S for your guidance) giving a reasonable speed boost during play.
Other changes and small fixes include:
The four original bug fixes were applied with the change of not having an invisible item in The Hall.
The rope top height was altered to prevent Willy leaving via the top of the room when he is not intended to.
Aborting the game displays the Game Over page before returning to the title screen.
The pause bug was remedied by preventing the game auto-pausing
By default on starting a new game, the in-game tune is switched off. Enabling it will be respected so that starting a new game will remember the players choice.
The status area was altered slightly, namely the room descriptor was moved down one row, room names were centred and the lives remaining were moved along one block.
The usual text flicker back to 000 objects / time on losing a life or entering a room was altered to prevent this being so visible.
Some internal changes to sprite location, mainly concatenating them hence no gaps between.
Title screen tune changed a little bit (in-game music used) and in-game music from re-release version (MM in game tune)
There is one additional room that is accessible but its not necessary to visit it. This was done as a way of avoiding a 'teleport' effect , the alternative as seen in the 2015 bug fixed version required some earth tiles adding which I wanted to avoid.
 
Lastly, it is quite possible within the time limit to complete the game. I have played a few times and averaged around 10 to 15 minutes game time remaining without really rushing around.
 
I hope my small celebratory 2024 JSW version is welcomed!
Submitter Spider Submitted 12/12/2024 Category JSWMM Releases  

I like the original BBC versions. 🙂 

I finished "The Temple" for the first time a few days ago. It was a great pleasure to play, and actually quite an emotional experience for me after waiting for it for 18 years 😊. It is certainly worth the wait, though!
I like the game a lot. It features Hervé's numerous signature themes that I like so much: mysteries, references to space and the planets, the UFOs, ancient civilizations, exotic animals and movies. And, of course, there is Yeti, as there is one in every game of Hervé's... well, there's even more than one, but I will not reveal the exact details of this 🙂 . 
"The Temple" has a lot of nice graphics, some interesting challenges (that would be VERY frustrating if I wasn't using Rollback when playing), and also some well-known sprites from Hervé's previous games that have now become classics.
So, all in all, I am pretty sure you will enjoy exploring it and gathering the 256 items 🙂 . But before you do, I would like - with Hervé's kind permission and encouragement - to add some freshly-coded music to it. It will take me a while (with my spare time being severely limited and my other JSW-related activities running in parallel), so please bear with me.
Thanks again, Hervé, for letting me carry out the first playtest of "Willy in the Islands of Mystery (Part II: The Temple)"! 👍It was a true privilege and a great pleasure 😊.

I don´t care about that game, but I think the name is great for another new JSW game. 🙂 Maybe we should "hijack" that name for a next project? 👍

Thanks once again for this release, Francisco (lemmyleming)! 👍I am going to post the results of my playtest below and I do hope that you will do a little more work on this project to make it completable 🙂 .
 
  
I would not promise no more edits without playtesting the game to completion first. The game does need some more editing for reasons I will explain below
(WARNING!: MY COMMENTS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS).
 
Well, first of all, it was the pleasure to explore Willy's mansion and its vicinity modified in various ways in the 128K of the JSW128 game engine 😊.
 
The things I particularly like:
- the title screen (even though, if it was my project, I would make the name more easily legible);
- the in-game music;
- the modification of some of the JSW sprites;
- in "Rescata a Esmerelda" (014) how you can come for the two items from the room above, but cannot do anything else in this room, or, alternatively, how you how to leave this room upwards if you come for the items from below;
- the hole in "La playa" (058) which makes you think that there is a downward exit, but there isn't one;
- the two new rooms "The Night Sky" (064) and "Deep Swim" (065). However, I have only seen them in JSWED, because I don't think they can be accessed when playing the game without using the Writetyper cheat.
 
Unfortunately, the game is incompletable due to several critical errors. 
I have been able to collect 124 items, out of a total of 142. I had to sacrifice 1 life to collect the items in "La Isla (aburrida no?)" (047). 18 items are impossible to collect as far as I can tell. These are:
- 6 items on three platforms in the middle of the room in "Un monton de vasos" (021). I don't see how you can collect them. Hint: if you want to solve the problem without modifying the room, enable the Superjump feature for this room. I believe it should do the trick. The Superjump can be enabled in "Options" - "General".
- 2 items in the room "Linda vista no?" (013). The problem with this room is that the vertical guardian hits the white square on top of its trajectory, which kills Willy. It happens a couple of seconds after entering the room, so there's not time to do anything useful inside it. The easiest way to solve the problem would be by deleting the white square. Alternatively, the guardian's upper limit could be lowered so as to avoid the square, but the change in this guardian class (2d) would also happen in other rooms if the same guardian class is used elsewhere (I didn't check).
- 1 item in the room "Encima de la casa" (044). Willy gets killed immediately and repeatedly after entering this room. The reason for this is that the colour attributes of the Water cells (which Willy touches right after entering the room, both at the upper and at the lower level) are the same as the colour attributes of the Fire cells, so that the Water cells effectively behave as Fire. An easy solution for this is to change one (or both) of the colour attributes of the Water cells or one (or both) of the colour attributes of the Fire cells.
- 1 item in the room "La logia" (053). Willy gets killed immediately and repeatedly after entering this room. The reason for this is that the colour attributes of the Fire cells are the same as those of Willy (Ink 7, Paper 0) and this kills Willy. For this reason this room is also impassable, which complicates the route. An easy solution for this is to change the colour attributes of the Fire cells so that they are not what they are now.
- 6 items in the room "The Night Sky" (064) - I don't see how this room could be accessed during gameplay without using the Writetyper cheat. I don't believe the completability of a game should depend on using the Writetyper cheat. So I would suggest finding a way to access this room from one of the edited rooms.
- 2 items in the room "Deep Swim" (065) - I don't see how this room could be accessed during gameplay without using the Writetyper cheat. I don't believe the completability of a game should depend on using the Writetyper cheat. So I would suggest finding a way to access this room from one of the edited rooms.
 
The issues described above are critical because they make the game incompletable. So I would strongly suggest to correct them. There are also some other issues that are not critical, but I believe the game would be much better if they were corrected. Here they are:
- When you exit "Nido en una rama" (007) to go back leftwards to "Dentro del MEGA TRONCO" (008), you encounter a nasty Multiple-Death Scenario (MDS) in "Dentro del MEGA TRONCO" because of stepping on a Fire cell. This can be avoided, but you have to jump exiting "Nido en una rama". You could argue that the player has just been to "Dentro del MEGA TRONCO", so they should have seen that jumping is what they have to do on their way back. That's true, but still, I would suggest eliminating this MDS, because it is pretty nasty (moving the two yellow colums of Fire cells at least one block to the left would solve the problem).
-  In the room "Y esas caras raras?" (020) I believe it is impossible to pass below the yellow vertical guardian when going leftwards (it's moving too fast). This makes this room impassable from right to left at the floor level, which complicates the route very significantly. I would suggest slowing the guardian down (or adding another ladder to its right or some other element that would allow the player to jump over it leftwards) to make the room passable in both directions.
- Jumping up from "Y que hace Satanas aqui?" (038) leads to a nasty Multiple-Death Scenario in "En camino a la isla" (060). I would suggest eliminating this, as it's unfair - there is nothing to warn the player that they should not jump up to leave "Y que hace Satanas aqui?".
- It's nice to see the room "La Isla (aburrida no?)" (047). However, there are three problems with it.
One is that entering this room after leaving "El Hoyo Misterioso" to the right leads to a nasty and unfair Multiple-Death Scenario. I would suggest eliminating this (if there is no other way, by closing the right exit from "El Hoyo Misterioso", or perhaps making it lead to "Deep Swim" (065) (after modifying it so that the player doesn't fall to their death after entering "Deep Swim").
The second problem is that because Water and Ramp cells have the same colour attributes in "La Isla (aburrida no?)", they are Water-Ramp cells. This makes it very easy for Willy to fall down into the room below, which is "La playa" (058) (it's actually not very logical that the beach is below the deserted isle - it should be to the right or left of it, not below). And this fall results in a nasty Multiple-Death Scenario if Willy isn't caught by the rope, which happened to me a number of times. I believe that making Water cells be Water cells only (by changing their colour attributes or those of the Ramp cells so that they are not the same) would solve this problem.
The third problem is that after collecting the items (or at least the leftmost item), there is no way to go back to "En camino a la isla" (060), so the player needs to lose a life to be able to go back and continue playing the game. I believe that making Water cells be Water cells only (by changing their colour attributes or those of the Ramp cells so that they are not the same) should solve also this problem.
- In the room "La torre" if the player lands on the added uppermost platform (coming from another room, I can't remember which one off the top of my head), if the player wants to jump up to go back to the room they've come from, they emerge again in "La torre", but this time at the bottom of the room, and immediately fall down into "Chiste no funciona en Espanol" (016) where they face another nasty Multiple-Death Scenario. I believe this could be corrected by setting the upwards exit from "La torre" to the room whose name I don't remember from which the player can go down onto that uppermost platform in "La torre".
 
Those would be my observations regarding the various issues I have encountered. I may have missed a problem or two. In any case, I would be happy to playtest the game again when the bugs described above have been corrected and report any additional issue I may encounter 🙂 .
I would also suggest editing the font so that more diacritical Spanish characters can be used instead of symbols that are not used anywhere. So for example creating an "á", or a "¿" or any of the other ones that are missing from the room names. I also have a number of comments concerning the accuracy of the Spanish room names, but I will present them later, or perhaps via a PM.
 
My other suggestion would be to use the unused items to add them in places where currently the player doesn't have to go, like e.g. in "Un buen desafio" (026) - so that the player has to go on the right side of the main column, on the left side of "Trepando el arbol" (036), above the highest platform in the lower half of the room on the right side of "Debajo del techo" (042), etc.
So, Francisco, I hope you will bring the game to a state of completability and I look forward to being able to play it again to make sure it doesn't have any more problems 😊.

I thought to bring you a little notice how my two games are doing. 🙂
The current room development stages are "Diner" 65% finished and "Mansion" 72% finished.
The needed little pieces of extra code is missing from both games.
No new music is available, I haven´t done anything for it, as it feels stupid to make music as I don´t know how to add the tunes to my games.
In "Mansion" game, I managed to get one buggy arrow room to work! 🙂 I mean the features/bugs of JSW or JSWED, I´m glad I managed to get around them and learned a bit more about arrows to make them do what they were not intended to do. 🙂 Let´s see, if somebody has made such an arrow room previously or not! 😉 
I don´t know yet, how to connect certain rooms together, this applies for both games. I have some ideas, though. 🙂 
The difficulty level for both games will be easier than in What a Wonderful World of Willie, but you will have to discover how to solve the rooms. 🙂 
No "impossible" rooms are included, there are some little "traps", though. 🙂 If you can´t solve the room, you have somehow gone the wrong route and haven´t practised enough. 🙂 Both games will have easy and a bit harder rooms to play, something for everyone! 🙂 

I have played various Frosya games and liked their very nice graphics! 🙂 Here´s a feedback about a bug I have found.
Uzor game starting from "Warehouse next to the dead pond" has a bug. When game starts, go up, left, down. The game ends to multiple deaths in "Green peace wasn´t here". Now, if you start a new game, the game will end to multiple deaths.
 
 

I thought it must be something like that. The Spectrum (especially the 48K version) was fairly unusual for having a comparatively large amount of free memory available, partly because 48K was relatively generous compared to the 32K that was common on many other machines, and the fact that its screen required only a little under 7K of it, leaving loads of room for code and data. There was a little over 40K of usable RAM on a 48K Spectrum, which was a lot, really.
Contrast in particular with the BBC Micro. That too was a great machine with many fantastic features, but it was so hampered by its lack of RAM and its hungry screen modes. A decade later, Acorn's approach to screen modes showed its worth on the Archimedes range, but on the BBC they demanded an uncomfortably high percentage of available RAM. A 32K BBC Micro only had about 27K of usable RAM at best, and then the more demanding screen modes (the ones with high resolutions or all the available colours) ate up 20K of it, leaving only around 7K or so for the program. (You could compare it to a 16K Spectrum in terms of available program/data memory.)
This is why I was always such a supporter of the Spectrum's eccentric approach to its screen display. Yes, character-level colour resolution (leading to the dreaded attribute clash) was a major compromise, BUT it did mean that you could always have full resolution and all the colours on the screen at once, with no further sacrifices to be made… and it still took up only a very modest amount of RAM. Not only was it a great solution to the problem, but it gave the Spectrum most of its character!
The BBC's trick up its sleeve was Teletext (MODE 7) graphics, and that brought similar benefits: a colourful screen mode with a useful resolution (40x25 characters) in only 1K of RAM. Very useful, but its big compromises were (a) character-based colours AND graphics and (b) graphics of only an extremely low resolution (2x3 per character space). This did, of course, mean that you couldn't really do graphical games in Teletext, other than mainly text adventures with very primitive illustrations. Mind you, having said that, it's not long since someone produced a version of Elite (yes, the 3D space game) that runs entirely in Teletext mode, just to prove a point. (It has extremely low resolution graphics, as you'd expect, but it works and is an interesting novelty.)
Anyway, I know very little about the Lynx, but with 96K or 128K of RAM and graphics with pixel-resolution colour, it ought in theory to have been able to do really impressive things. It's a shame that it apparently had such limitations as it did (i.e. extremely slow graphics handling and seemingly an inability to scroll its screen – based on reviews I've read in the past). Even so, games like JSW ought to have worked well on that machine, I'd have thought.
As a matter of interest regarding the Jynx emulator… I'm interested to notice that on its Github page, there's already provision for a Mac build, and the author explicitly says he'd like a RISC OS version too, particularly for use on the Raspberry Pi. (RISC OS is an OS very close to my heart.) The only reason these things don't exist is that no-one with the appropriate expertise has stepped up to do the porting, which is a great shame. It's a pity that Jynx wasn't written sooner, because RISC OS actually used to be absolutely awash with good emulators; it was by far the best platform for emulating other systems at one time, and I can think of a few people from years gone by who'd probably have jumped at the chance of producing a RISC OS version of Jynx. But the world moves on…

The Lynx 48K only has about 14k of useable RAM - the rest is mainly graphics ram. This isn't so unusual - back in the day, the Spectrum originally only had 16k (although they dropped that version fairly quickly). One of the selling points of the Lynx was that it could be upgraded (albeit by returning it, to be factory upgraded). So the "48k"  label was creative marketing! The lynx had four 8k colour banks, which was rather generous at the time. But it did raise the question "where's all my ram gone?" as soon as you got it home.

Thanks for all that. That's odd about JSW not loading on a 48K machine, because the advert does imply that there's a reduced-size version of the game for that system. Given that both sizes of machine were available at the same time, the implication is that the game distinguishes between them and loads the appropriate code. (Or perhaps there's a cut down version on the other side of the tape?) Anyway, if the version that's been preserved is the full one then that's the most important thing.
I also find it curious that a 96K Lynx was needed to run JSW in full anyway, since the game was written originally for the 48K Spectrum, and its code and data is in fact only 32K in size anyway! But of course, the Lynx is a totally different system architecture, and maybe it needs loads of memory for its screen, for example. (The Spectrum's screen was very efficient, at under 7K.)
I'll look into Jynx, thanks. Shame there's no Mac version, but I'm sure it'll run under Crossover or some other emulation/virtualisation option.

My version is 96k only. When they upgraded the Lynx 48k to 96k, they also upgraded a few rom routines, which means it won't even load on a 48k (you get a "not yet implemented" error message). It's no problem these days, because most Lynx enthusiasts will upgrade to 96k anyway.
My favourite for simplicity is "Jynx". It's very robust and well written, by Jonathan Markland. Its seems to run *almost* all Lynx software.
"Pale" lacks polish, and can be overly complicated (although very feature rich for hardcore enthusiasts/developers). Both are PC mainly, although you may find a linux variant.
As you say, neither are actively maintained.
I occasionally use Mame, but it can be confusing to configure. I have had fun using it's inbuilt debugger though, to step through the Lynx ROM code, etc.

Thank you. Pleased to be among fellow retro enthusiasts!

Thank you very much, Mike! It was very interesting to read your info! 🙂
What´s the year of this Phoenixx Software´s advertisement?

I thought to bring you a little notice how my two games are doing. 🙂
The current room development stages are "Diner" 65% finished and "Mansion" 72% finished.
The needed little pieces of extra code is missing from both games.
No new music is available, I haven´t done anything for it, as it feels stupid to make music as I don´t know how to add the tunes to my games.
In "Mansion" game, I managed to get one buggy arrow room to work! 🙂 I mean the features/bugs of JSW or JSWED, I´m glad I managed to get around them and learned a bit more about arrows to make them do what they were not intended to do. 🙂 Let´s see, if somebody has made such an arrow room previously or not! 😉 
I don´t know yet, how to connect certain rooms together, this applies for both games. I have some ideas, though. 🙂 
The difficulty level for both games will be easier than in What a Wonderful World of Willie, but you will have to discover how to solve the rooms. 🙂 
No "impossible" rooms are included, there are some little "traps", though. 🙂 If you can´t solve the room, you have somehow gone the wrong route and haven´t practised enough. 🙂 Both games will have easy and a bit harder rooms to play, something for everyone! 🙂 

Thank you. 🙂 I think the same about that they can be a pleasure to play.  At least there will be a pleasure to look at some eye/effect candy. 🙂 I hope people will like those little add-ons, made possible with 128K memory. 🙂 
I´m not sure how many will think they are still too hard, I have made them easier anyway and I will continue to bring some "easy touch" to existing rooms. When you practise enough, you will notice you can easily make a dash through the guardians, just please practise and memorize first where and how you can make it. 🙂 In many rooms there are alternative routes, if you don´t like to go certain way or think some platform is too hard to pass.

I thought to bring you a little notice how my two games are doing. 🙂
The current room development stages are "Diner" 65% finished and "Mansion" 72% finished.
The needed little pieces of extra code is missing from both games.
No new music is available, I haven´t done anything for it, as it feels stupid to make music as I don´t know how to add the tunes to my games.
In "Mansion" game, I managed to get one buggy arrow room to work! 🙂 I mean the features/bugs of JSW or JSWED, I´m glad I managed to get around them and learned a bit more about arrows to make them do what they were not intended to do. 🙂 Let´s see, if somebody has made such an arrow room previously or not! 😉 
I don´t know yet, how to connect certain rooms together, this applies for both games. I have some ideas, though. 🙂 
The difficulty level for both games will be easier than in What a Wonderful World of Willie, but you will have to discover how to solve the rooms. 🙂 
No "impossible" rooms are included, there are some little "traps", though. 🙂 If you can´t solve the room, you have somehow gone the wrong route and haven´t practised enough. 🙂 Both games will have easy and a bit harder rooms to play, something for everyone! 🙂 

I looked up the source of the above advert – thanks, Mike, for the link. There are some pretty interesting-looking Lynx newsletters to be found in the archive. Unfortunately, there's very little to go on in terms of dates, and this newsletter (Lynx User Group, volume 1 issue 3) contains no such information that I could spot.
However, having said that, I've concluded that it comes from 1985. Looking through it, I was interested to discover a review of the Lynx version of Jet Set Willy on page 3. I suppose it's quite possible that other such newsletters will have reviewed the game, but this is, to date, the only review of the Lynx version I've seen anywhere, so I thought it might be interesting to reproduce it here.
Interesting points to note:
1. Apparently the game took a year to appear on the Lynx after its release on the Spectrum. JSW was released in 1984, so I presume the game and this newsletter must have been published in 1985.
2. The Lynx version was apparently supplied with the Spectrum version of the cassette inlay!
3. From the reviewer's experience, the Lynx version is more demanding than the Spectrum original (which can only mean that its collision detection is less precise, since the Spectrum version is pixel-perfect), and apparently contains a bug in the Wine Cellar which is not in the Spectrum original (though Spectrum bugs are not reproduced on the Lynx either).
Anyway, here's a transcription of the review. It's been done via OCR (I didn't retype it!), and the formatting maintains the single-column presentation of the original (from page 3 of the newsletter). The text is unedited, except that I've corrected a small handful of typos.
JETSETWILLY *********** Many popular home computer magazines voted JETSET WILLY the Spectrum game of the year in 1983, which shows how far behind the LYNX tags behind in the software stakes. Still, it’s a ‘classic’ game, and none the worse for its age a year in home computing is a long time! JETSET is actually the ‘sequel’ to MANIC MINER, but many people rate it a better game. The object of the game is to guide the hero, Willy, around his mansion after a party, collecting all the glasses, and having done so, Willy will be allowed to go to bed. This sounds simple, but little could be farther from the truth! The game has umpteen screens, each of which roughly corresponds to a “room” in Willy’s mansion, and allowing for walls and stairs you can move between them quite freely, you don’t have to complete one room before moving on to the next (as in MANIC MINER). The rooms are full of moving objects and characters, touching any of which will lose one life. Sometimes things you think are objects, turn out to be fatal. Using the arrow keys for left and right and RETURN to jump to manoeuvre around, leap between platforms and over moving objects. Timing successive leaps to avoid numerous objects moving at differing speeds and judging exactly where to jump from, to land on very narrow platforms becomes more and more complex the further you go in the mansion. Sometimes rooms seem impossible at first and require careful thought, timing and dexterity! If you are completely stuck, ask a Spectrum owner, but beware! There are subtle differences between the LYNX and Spectrum versions, generally that the LYNX is less forgiving and stricter. Some rooms which are absurdly easy on the Spectrom version, require care on the LYNX, personally I think this is a bit of an improvement. There are, hovever, annoying situations where the LYNX just won’t let you survive some things you can get away with on the Spectrum. A final note is the inlay card, it is the Spectrum version. The software protection scheme includes a little card which talks of the Spectrum colour keys—ignore it and use the LYNX colours, they of course work. Oh, and there is at least one bug in the LYNX version, in the wine cellar....This bug is not in the Spectrum version, although the Spectrum bugs seem to be absent from the LYNX. A first clue, you have to jump THROUGH staircases, and you have to be in precisely the right place to do so....numerous other problems are up to you!! VERDICT: Absolutely recommended. Easily a year ahead of any other LYNX game. After a month I still haven’t explored the whole mansion and I haven’t even considered starting to collect any objects yet! Rating 10/10, this should have happened more than a year ago!! PS: When will we see Knight Lore/Atic Atac/ Sabre Wulf....not to mention graphics design and other utility software??? A. Bolton  

Thank you. 🙂 I think the same about that they can be a pleasure to play.  At least there will be a pleasure to look at some eye/effect candy. 🙂 I hope people will like those little add-ons, made possible with 128K memory. 🙂 
I´m not sure how many will think they are still too hard, I have made them easier anyway and I will continue to bring some "easy touch" to existing rooms. When you practise enough, you will notice you can easily make a dash through the guardians, just please practise and memorize first where and how you can make it. 🙂 In many rooms there are alternative routes, if you don´t like to go certain way or think some platform is too hard to pass.

Hi,
I am Mike who posted the JSW tap file on the other forum. I stumbled across this thread by accident, and thought I'd share my knowledge on the provenance of the JSW software for the Lynx.
The JSW software actually came from a disk image, which a retro/lynx enthusiast had uploaded to the internet for the community. But disk images aren't very emulator friendly or accessible to users, and so I altered the loading program - which was written in Basic - to make it load as a single tap file. At the time, I had been writing a utility to create tap files for the Lynx, and so I had the necessary knowledge.
The version that I uploaded had a menu screen that allowed you to choose infinite lives. So I suspect it was hacked version. Hacked versions were inevitably made "back in the day" to help with playground distribution. But whether this was hacked more recently, I don't know.
The software does show a "by Tim Titchmarsh for Phoenixx Software" message. Why I originally thought it was by "Tynesoft" is unclear. This is probably just my mistake when I was trying find attributions for the software titles.
I've done some investigation and found a copy of an original advertisement for JSW (by Phoenixx Software) - which proves it was definitely of the era and not a later conversion (see attached). The magazine is the Lynx User Group's publication (Volume 1, issue 3, page 15) - which is available online. UKScone's Camputers Lynx Archive
Whether JSW was licensed to Phoenixx, is anyone's guess. But I am confident it is "of the era". I think Richard is right about those other software titles, which were probably later conversions by hobbyists.
There are a lot of similarities (hardware-wise) between the Lynx and Spectrum, and so software conversions wouldn't have been *that* challenging, relatively speaking. But the Lynx market was tiny, so hardly anyone bothered. The graphics were actually better on the Lynx (no colour clash!), but slow, and no good for gaming. The sound was just a simple beeper - like the spectrum.
Mike.

I believe the various reasons you mention do point to it being 'back from the day'.
It's new to me. But that doesn't mean much, because I focus on the Spectrum games, and while I read information like you have presented here with interest and have a general idea of versions for other platforms, I don't try to keep track of them or have them 'catalogued' in my mind in any way.
But I'm sure others will tell if they've been aware of its existence before. In particular, Andy (Spider) is the person to say if he's seen it already, as he has presented versions for various platforms on these pages (including videos) and seems to be 'in the know' 😉 .
 

Must admit I had not heard of a version for this, at least not an "official" one.
Tynesoft did release as mentioned JSW for other machines:

I agree – and it appears that that's what's probably happened with Alien8 and some other familiar titles.
But JSW? Surely that's authentic, isn't it? The scrolltext pictured in the video says that the Lynx port is by Tim Titchmarsh for Phoenixx Softwarre (note the double letters!), and it doesn't appear to be a straight port of any other existing version.
I've tried Googling Tim Titchmarsh in association with Phoenix/Phoenixx and Lynx, and I haven't found any results – which you'd imagine there probably would be if this were a modern conversion. But if it dates from 1984, it's obscure enough to not have been recorded online. Also, the forum poster who provided the tape (and credits the game to Tynesoft rather than Software Projects) refers to having gone through his "old" Lynx tapes and transferred them – and JSW was one of them. (Notably, the other possibly modern conversions, like Alien8, were not from this source.) He also mentions that the tapes are over 35 years old. This all certainly points to Lynx JSW being authentic from 1984.
Was it known about already by any members of this site, or is it new to all of us?
Whether it's really from 1984 or is a more modern conversion is immaterial in a sense, if it's a new platform that wasn't previously known either way; it's one more new version of JSW to catalogue either way. But it'd be quite nice to think that it's a new discovery of a previously unknown yet authentic 1984 conversion, as that'd make it one more platform for JSW to have appeared on back in the 80s.