jetsetdanny

View File Completable tape version of "Jet Set Willy: The Deadly Mission" "Jet Set Willy: The Deadly Mission" is a 1985 game by Adam Britton. It was created using Paul Rhodes' "JetSet Editor". In the mid-1990s, the game was recovered from the original tape and transferred to emulator format by Richard Hallas. It was released in January/February 1996 as part of the snapshot pack in Issue 4 of the "Emulate!" online magazine. The SNA file of the game included in the "Emulate!" magazine was completable without losing a single life, so there was no reason to correct it and the only 'value added' this ZIP package offers is its conversion to tape format. However, a modified version of the game started doing rounds on the internet, with a critical bug that made it incompletable. It must have been created just two days after the file that was included in the "Emulate!" magazine. The latter has a date stamp of 21 September 1995, while the earliest known Z80 snapshot which features the bug has a date stamp of 23 September 1995 (it is currently hosted, for example, on World of Spectrum and Spectrum Computing). The bug was discussed by Andrew Broad on his website, the archival version of which can be found here. As Andrew explains, the application of the Bad Pause-Bug Fix causes the guardian instance list in "Mystery Room" (63) at #FFF0-FFFF to be overwritten with code to correct the Pause-Bug. These data are interpreted as guardian instances which kill the player immediately on entry to "Mystery Room". As mentioned above, the SNA file included in the "Emulate!" magazine snapshot pack does *not* suffer from this problem. This download offers "JSW: The Deadly Mission" in TAP and TZX format, converted to tape format from the SNA snapshot from the "Emulate!" online magazine, dated 21 September 1995. The following changes have been made: 1. The Empty Room Screen Buffer at #8000 - #80FF and the Empty Room Guardian Buffer at #8100 - #813F have been NOPped out (with the value #FF at #8140 terminating the buffer). This change was done for the sake of the 'elegance' of the tape file, as a game loaded from tape should not have any values there other than zeroes before the initial room and its guardians are loaded into the buffers. 2. Three bytes at #8180 - #8182 have been NOPped out, for the sake of 'elegance' as well. These addresses (in fact, the whole range from #8141 to #81FF) are unused in the original "Jet Set Willy". It is hard to tell why the code in the SNA file was placed there (it is a jump to the address #8BFF, which is the first letter "y" in the name of "Mystery Room"), but there is certainly no reason for it to appear there in that otherwise unused chunk of code. 3. The following variables: the number of lives remaining (#85CC), Willy's y-coordinate (#85CF), Willy's animation frame (#85D2), the address of Willy's location in the attribute buffer at #5C00 (#85D3 and #85D4), the Rope status indicator at #85D6, the In-game music note index at #85E1 and the Music flags at #85E2 have been NOPped out, for the same reason of 'elegance'. These variables are initiated when the game starts, so their addresses should have a value of #00 right after the game has been loaded from tape. A visible (or rather audible) effect of this is that the in-game music is turned on by default when the game is started (contrary to what happens in the SNA snapshot, where it is turned off). 4. A custom BASIC loader was created. It aims to reflect Adam Britton's original solution to the loading screen, which is a block of compressed code loaded and then decompressed to display the picture it contains on the screen while the rest of the game loads. The loader is simplified in comparison to the original one, which apparently installed the room "In The Lair Of The Zaquaroid" (33) in its proper shape and to correct the value of several addresses by POKing them. A short pause was introduced after the loading screen has been displayed to make it visible to people who use fast loading on emulators. As a result of the changes described above, the player is offered a completable version of Adam Britton's historic game in a choice of two tape formats. The game can be completed without any loss of life. Currently, the best known in-game completion time is 8:27 am (please see the video on the JSW Central YouTube channel). The SNA snapshot of the game from the "Emulate!" online magazine (JSWDEADL.SNA) is included in the ZIP package offered here for download, for the sake of completeness. It is possible that one day the file of "JSW: The Deadly Mission" will be recovered (again) from its original tape and transferred to the TZX format. If this happens, the conversion of the game to tape format included in this ZIP package will become obsolete. Until then - enjoy it! John Elliott's JSWED v. 2.3.7, Andrew Broad's SPECSAISIE 1.3 Beta 5 (the latest publicly available version is v. 1.2) and Claus Jahn's ZX-Blockeditor v. 2.4.3 (a newer version 2.4.3.1 is available were used to prepare this bugfixed version of "JSW: The Continuing Adventures". Richard Dymond (SkoolKid)'s complete JSW disassembly (available in hexadecimal and in decimal) was also very helpful in this endeavour. The game's page on JSW Central is here. Submitter jetsetdanny Submitted 11/23/2021 Category Jet Set Willy [Remakes]  

View File Completable tape version of the original edition of "Jet Set Willy: The Continuing Adventures" "Jet Set Willy: The Continuing Adventures" is a 1985 game by Adam Britton. It was created using Paul Rhodes' "JetSet Editor". In the mid-1990s, the game was recovered from the original tape and transferred to emulator format by Richard Hallas. It was released in November/December 1995 as part of the snapshot pack in Issue 3 of the "Emulate!" online magazine. The original edition of the game was not completable due to a critical bug, discussed by Andrew Broad on his website, the archival version of which can be found here. In April 1998, Adam Britton released The Special Edition of the game, completable, with new rooms and various other improvements. However, an 'official' bugfixed version of the original edition has never been released. It could be argued whether or not there is any need for it, as a completable Special Edition is available. Andrew Broad argues that he considers TCA and TCA-SE to be parallel variants, since TCA-SE removes "The Sky-Ladder" (42), and also because of the historical value of the original TCA. It could be added that there are some differences in gameplay, e.g. in the rooms "The Further Recesses" (49) and "Don't Fall Off!" (58), which make playing the original and the Special Edition a slightly different experience. This download offers a bugfixed, original edition of "JSW: The Continuing Adventures" in TAP and TZX format, prepared using the SNA snapshot from the "Emulate!" online magazine, dated 21 September 1995, and converted to tape format in a way which aims to reflect the original loading process. It should be noted that other versions of the original edition of "JSW: The Continuing Adventures" are available on the internet. A SNA file dated 19 January 1997 is hosted on JSW remakes. A Z80 snapshot dated 20 December 2004 is hosted on World of Spectrum and Spectrum Computing. These files contain the so-called Bad Pause-Bug Fix (please see Andrew Broad's explanation for details). The Bad Pause-Bug Fix must have been added to the game file some time *after* it was released as part of the snapshot pack of the "Emulate!" online magazine. It does not affect this particular game, since Room 63 is not edited or used during gameplay. However, the code in these snapshot files at #8B07 - #8B09 and #FFF0 - #FFFF is different from the code in Adam Britton's original file. The following changes from the "Emulate!" magazine SNA file have been made in the #8000 - #FFFF range: 1. The fix suggested by Andrew Broad was applied to make the game completable. A Water cell was added at (6,23) in "The Miniature Sherwood Forest!" (17) by changing the value of the address #D135 to #01. This makes it possible for the player to collect a previously unreachable item there. This change has also been applied by Adam Britton himself in the Special Edition of the game. 2. The Empty Room Screen Buffer at #8000 - #80FF and the Empty Room Guardian Buffer at #8100 - #813F have been NOPped out (with the value #FF at #8140 terminating the buffer). This change was done for the sake of the 'elegance' of the tape file, as a game loaded from tape should not have any values there other than zeroes before the initial room and its guardians are loaded into the buffers. 3. The following variables: the current room number (#8420), the number of lives remaining (#85CC), Willy's y-coordinate (#85CF), Willy's animation frame (#85D2), the address of Willy's location in the attribute buffer at #5C00 (#85D3 and #85D4), the Rope status indicator (#85D6), 256 minus the number of items remaining (#85DE), the Music flags (#85E2) and the Temporary variable (#85E4) have been NOPped out, for the same reason of 'elegance'. These variables are initiated when the game starts, so they should have a value of #00 right after the game has been loaded from tape. A visible (or rather audible) effect of this is that the in-game music is turned on by default when the game is started (contrary to what happens in the SNA snapshot, where it is turned off). 4. A custom BASIC loader was created, based on the original one, with some modifications. The loading process reflects Adam Britton's original solution to the loading screen, which is a block of compressed code loaded and then decompressed to display the picture it contains on the screen while the rest of the game loads. Three POKEs which allowed the player to bypass the colour code protection from the original "Jet Set Willy" were removed from the loader, as this bypass is already present in the game code. A short pause was introduced after the loading screen has been displayed to make it visible to people who use fast loading on emulators. It should be noted that when Adam Britton created the Special Edition of the game, he did not bother to compress the loading screen (it loads as a standard SCREEN$ code block 6912 bytes in length, as opposed to 2728 bytes of compressed code in the attached tape files). So this version restores a solution from TCA 'lost' in TCA-SE. As a result of the changes described above, the player is offered a completable version of Adam Britton's historic game in a choice of two tape formats, preserving the original 'loading flavour'. The game can be completed with one life lost - it has to be sacrificed to collect the leftmost item in the room "The Miniature Sherwood Forest!" (17). While not really elegant (it should be possible to complete a JSW game, difficult as it may be, without losing a single life), it is consistent with the original "Jet Set Willy", where even after applying the official Software Projects POKEs to make it completable, one life still has to be sacrificed to collect the leftmost item in "Conservatory Roof" (43). Currently, the best known in-game completion time is 8:23 am (please see the video on the JSW Central YouTube channel). The SNA snapshot of the game from the "Emulate!" online magazine (JSWCONTA.SNA) is included in the ZIP package offered here for download, for the sake of completeness. It is possible that one day the file of "JSW: The Continuing Adventures" will be recovered (again) from its original tape and transferred to the TZX format. Another bugfixed edition will then be in order. Until then, please enjoy the restored and fixed file included in this ZIP package. John Elliott's JSWED v. 2.3.7, Andrew Broad's SPECSAISIE 1.3 Beta 5 (the latest publicly available version is v. 1.2) and Claus Jahn's ZX-Blockeditor v. 2.4.3 (a newer version 2.4.3.1 is available were used to prepare this bugfixed version of "JSW: The Continuing Adventures". Richard Dymond (SkoolKid)'s complete JSW disassembly (available in hexadecimal and in decimal) was also very helpful in this endeavour. The game's page on JSW Central is here. Submitter jetsetdanny Submitted 11/23/2021 Category Jet Set Willy [Remakes]  

Horrible, shocking news... I was in touch with Daren by e-mail over the years, sending him mainly my RZX recordings of Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy games. Then I met him in person at Manchester PLAY Expo on 4th May 2019. He actually spotted me (wearing a JSW Central T-shirt) and said hello right at the very entrance, and we spent a good part of the day walking around the Expo together. We also grabbed some lunch outside. I met his wife and his daughter, too. They were extremely nice folks and I did hope to see them again one day. Daren will be greatly missed, and what a shame it is that he will not be updating the RZX Archive any more! The Archive has been a fantastic resource, truly one of the cornerstones of the ZX Spectrum community. There is news that it will be preserved, though it will never be the same without Daren... Below is a photo of us at the Manchester PLAY Expo. Daren is the guy on the right. What a happy day it was for me!

Thanks for your contribution, MtM! 👍

My replies are in green below: > I did search for Adam Britton using duckduckgo Danny, is he something to do with crocodiles now? Yes, he lives in the Northern Territory in Australia and is a recognised expert on crocodylians. I almost met him in Darwin one day when I happened to be there (some years ago), but unfortunately he was busy with a film crew at that time, and I was only there for a couple of days, and so missed the chance to meet him in person. > Either way, it is impressive that in a year or so, 1985, he managed to put out 3 modified versions of JSW. > Presumably he developed them directly on the Spectrum itself, though I guess he could of used other computers at the time if he had access. Yes, it's very impressive, IMO. He created his games on the Spectrum, using Paul Rhodes' "JetSet Editor". To quote Adam's words from the text file which accompanies the Special Edition of TCA: "JSW:TCA was originally written in 1985 using Paul Rhodes' quite marvellous "Jet-Set Edit", purchased at a tiny computer store in Wakefield called... The Computer Store! I always felt rather guilty going into there when I should have shopping at Microbyte, but it was the only time I'd ever seen Jet-Set Edit. This was my first attempt at writing a JSW game, and it shows in some of the graphics and room designs. The game was circulated amongst my school friends, Richard Hallas being one of them. In 1995, Richard found a dusty tape containing a copy of this and my other two JSW games (The Deadly Mission and Willy's Holiday). He dutifully resurrected them (along with his own game, "Join the Jet-Set!") and made them available over the internet, and in 1997 I rediscovered them myself!" > I note the new tune in two of them, was this the first instance of this tune, and can anyone say what the tune is supposed to be, i.e. in the original we all know it is If I were a Rich Man, etc, but I do not think I recognise what this tune is supposed to be? The tune was coded by Richard Hallas, and I am pretty sure it must be one of the tunes that are featured in his game "Join the Jet-Set!" (the game features a choice of ten tunes, which must be poked into memory before the game starts). I can't recall off the top of my head which tune it is, but if you are interested enough to investigate, Richard lists the tunes that he remembers here, quote: 0: Tambourin, by Gossec 1: Unknown 2: If I were a rich man, from Fiddler on the Roof (original JSW tune) 3: In the Hall of the Mountain-King, by Grieg (original Manic Miner tune) 4: Wedding-Day at Troldhaugen, by Grieg 5: Whistle Song (original) 6: Unknown 7: Wheels by The String-A-Longs (thanks to Ian Rushforth for identifying this!) 8: Kinderszenen no 1 (Von fremden Landern und Menschen), by Schumann 9: American Patrol If you recognise the tune now that you know most of the titles corresponding to what it may be, please let us know 🙂 . If you don't, you could pursue the matter further by loading "Join the Jet-Set!", choosing one tune after another (you need to reload the game to be able to choose another tune) and seeing which one sounds the same as the one you hear in Adam's two games. > I know others have used it in their JSW games etc, including one of yours Danny, I was playing the other day, I forget which one it was now, the tune changes as you get so far on the first screen? I don't believe I've ever used this particular tune in any of my projects (I hope I'm right on that LOL). I've used at least two other tunes that Richard Hallas coded ("Radetzky March" and "Wheels"), but not this one. You are probably referring to the Special Edition of "Willy's New Mansion", where the in-game tune is set individually in each room, so that the game uses four proper in-game tunes plus one "quasi-tune". Furthermore, a Patch Vector makes the in-game tune change in mid-room in "The Front Door" (60) - a novelty that hasn't ever been applied before TTBOMK. One tune is playing when Willy is outdoors, but as soon as he steps into his New Mansion, the tune changes to a different one. It's one of those little details about the game I'm quite proud of 🙂 .

Two things I would like to add to what I wrote above: 1. Richard Hallas should be duly credited for transferring Adam Britton's games to emulator format back in 1995. He also submitted these games to the "Emulate!" online magazine for publication. 2. The SNA snapshot of "The Deadly Mission" from the "Emulate!" magazine, unspoiled by the Bad Pause-Bug Fix, confirms Andrew Broad's guess that "Mystery Room" (63) did not have any guardians.

I certainly hope there will be people revisiting MM and JSW games for centuries to come 😃.

Adam Britton's three 1985 JSW games: "The Continuing Adventures", "The Deadly Mission" and "Willy's Holiday" are great classics, being among the first new games ever created, enjoyable to play to this day. They bear testimony to what a brilliant guy Adam has always been (he has since had a successful career in a field unrelated as such to computers - Google him up if you're interested, he's easy to find 🙂). Adam's games are going to be the next ones I will present on the JSW Central YouTube channel. In order to be able to present them in the way I have adopted as a standard (including a clip of the game loading from tape), I must have tape files of these games, and such files have not been released so far. This situation prompted me to create bugfixed, tape format files of Adam's games. These files will be made public soon, after a 'peer review' I'm going to submit them to. Meanwhile, I would like to share some discoveries I made about Adam's games. Andrew Broad discussed the critical bugs they suffer from on his website. The archival version of it is here. Andrew's information is greatly appreciated, of course, and it has been very helpful in preparing these bugfixed games. I assume that, in the past, it also helped Robin Clive to prepare completable versions of "The Deadly Mission" and "Willy's Holiday" to make RZX recordings of them (available for download from the RZX Archive, here and here, respectively). However, as it turns out, some of the information given there is not correct when one looks at the earliest versions of Adam's games released on the internet, or becomes obsolete in view of one particular discovery I made while being involved in JSW-archaeology. So here are my findings and the remaining question marks: 1. The way "The Beach" really looked like The room "The Beach" (63) in "Willy's Holiday" in ALL files available on the internet was corrupted because of the application of the Bad Pause-Bug Fix (please see Andrew's archival page for more info about this bug): its list of guardian instances was overwritten by the code to correct the bug. However, fortunately, the entire room "The Beach", including the correct list of guardian instances, happens to be preserved in the existing snapshot files in the Empty Room Screen Buffer at #8000 - #80FF! So we know exactly what the guardians in this room were in Adam's original game file 🙂 . Andrew made a guess as to what the guardians in "The Beach" may have been. I must say that, while not entirely correct, his guess was very close to the mark, being wrong only on the horizontal location of the sun and the starting points of the two cloud guardians. Here's a comparison of the actual guardian data and Andrew's guess: Original game Andrew’s guess Guardian 5394 539B The Sun 510C 511A Lower Cloud, left side 528E 529C Lower Cloud, right side 4F04 4F09 Upper Cloud, left side 5086 508B Upper Cloud, right side 001E 001E The ship So Andrew was spot on regarding the ship, and right as to which other guardians were there in the room. Congratulations! And here's what this room looks like (please disregard the in-game time, I placed the starting position in "The Beach" to make the screenshots quickly): The room as it really was: Andrew's guess: Since the clouds keep moving, the location of the sun is the only visible difference, really. 2. "The Deadly Mission" was perfectly completable when first released on the Internet "The Continuing Adventures", "The Deadly Mission" and "Willy's Holiday" were first released in SNA format as part of the snapshot packs of three consecutive issues (3, 4 and 5) of the "Emulate!" online magazine, in November/December 1995, January/February 1996 and March/April 1996, respectively. These SNA files of "The Continuing Adventures" and "The Deadly Mission" do NOT have the Bad Pause-Bug Fix applied. In the case of "The Continuing Adventures", it doesn't matter too much, because the original edition of the game does not use Room 63, so the bug doesn't affect it. The only thing is that, by looking at the SNA file from the "Emulate!" magazine, we know what the original values of the addresses #FF00 - #FFFF were, before they were overwritten by the Bad Pause-Bug Fix code. However, the above means that "The Deadly Mission", as released in the "Emulate!" magazine, must be perfectly completable! (I say "must", because I didn't play it to verify, but the code, free from the Bad Pause-Bug Fix, tells us it's completable). Interestingly, it looks like the Bad Pause-Bug Fix was introduced into the game file just two days after the creation of the file that was included in the "Emulate!" magazine. That file has a date stamp of 21 September 1995, while the earliest known Z80 snapshot which features the bug has a date stamp of 23 September 1995 (it is currently hosted, for example, on World of Spectrum and Spectrum Computing). In case of "Willy's Holiday", the SNA file released (the following year) in the "Emulate!" online magazine, dated 14 October 1995, already has the Bad Pause-Bug Fix applied. Fortunately, as described above, thanks to "The Beach" being preserved in the Empty Room Screen Buffer, we can be sure of what it looked like originally. 3. The original loaders of "The Deadly Mission" and "Willy's Holiday" were similar As Andrew pointed out on his website, the BASIC loader installs "The Hotel Bathroom" (02) in "Willy's Holiday". I was surprised to learn, by analysing the "Emulate!" magazine snapshot of "The Deadly Mission", that the same thing used to happen there, with room 17 "In The Lair Of The Zaquaroid" being installed by the BASIC loader. You can see it in the loader, even though, contrary to what happens in "Willy's Holiday", the room data is correct in the SNA snapshot already. The snapshot of "The Deadly Mission" from the "Emulate!" magazine is the only one where you can see the BASIC loader (or at least a part thereof). The Z80 snapshot hosted on "World of Spectrum", or the SNA snapshot hosted on the old Jet Set Willy remakes website do not have this information any more (unless someone is able to retrieve it from the code in a way I couldn't). The remaining mysteries I was able to see how the loading screens worked for each of these games (a block of compressed code loaded at 26000 (#6590 - in "TCA" and "TDM") or at 25500 (#639C - in "WH") and then decompressed to display the picture it contains on the screen while the rest of the game loads. I recreated this loading process in the tape files I have prepared (and will make public soon). However, I have to admit I don't know why "Willy's Holiday", and most probably also "The Deadly Mission", loaded their opening rooms ("The Hotel Bathroom" and "In The Lair Of The Zaquaroid", respectively) using the BASIC loader, while the data for these rooms were disrupted (and so had to be fixed by the BASIC loader) and what purpose the code at 25000, 25020 and 25040 (in "TDM") and at 25300 (in "WH") actually served (also POKE 23659,0 and then POKE 23659,2 in "WH"'s BASIC loader). If you should want to check it, the SNA files of these games (and also of "TCA" for completeness) from the "Emulate!" magazine are attached 🙂 . The completable tape versions of the original editions of Adam's three games will be made available for download soon. JSWCONTA.SNA JSWDEADL.SNA JSW-WHOL.SNA

This is an interesting novelty: https://www.monkeon.co.uk/jetsetwillygeoguesser/ It could serve as a test to determine if someone is fit to be a member of a forum like this one LOL 😄

Thanks for the info, Paolo! 👍 And welcome to the forum 🙂 .

Yes, "Jet Set Mini" is full of very inventive new features. I hope some of them will get re-used in other future projects - they deserve it 🙂 . My recordings are meant to showcase efficient and elegant solutions of the games. So they will obviously miss various elements which are not compatible with this premise. There are some games (i.e. Sendy's "where's woody?") where nice rooms are devoid of items and there is no need to enter them to complete the game, and entering them wouldn't speed up the completion process, but would rather slow it down. So I don't enter these rooms when recording the game and the viewer cannot see them, which is a shame, but that's the way it has to be. That's why I am not fond of including such rooms in games - my personal preference is that every room should serve some purpose in the game (related to its completion).

That could have been the reason, indeed, but for me, it would be a very strange one - to produce a spurious recording, one which does not show the real game file, only for the sake of gaining a few minutes of real time. We (speaking in general terms) spend so much time on making these recordings. Why would gaining a few minutes be more important than producing an authentic recording? It's incomprehensible, to be honest.

JSW Central YouTube channel has just been updated with two new videos. These are the walkthroughs of: The Special Edition of "Willy vs The Vampire Lord" "Jet Set Luis: Rumbo a la Costa Blanca".

JSW Central YouTube channel has just been updated with two new videos. These are the walkthroughs of: "Manic Pietro" "Willy - The Man Who Sold the World".

OK, I have completed version 1-1 without any problems. The game can be completed with one life lost - it has to be sacrificed to collect the leftmost item in "Conservatory Roof", just like in the original game. I loved the little extra thing at the end 🙂 . An RZX recording of my playtest is attached below. What are your plans for "Manic Jet Set Willy", Norman Sword? Are you going to develop it further, or is it a finished product, information about which could be added to JSW Central? MV v. 1.1 - Daniel's playtest.rzx

Thanks, guys! 🙂 The next video I will be posting is actually the most labour-intensive one so far (that's not counting the initial learning curve, I guess). Nothing extraordinary, it's just that it's got two parts (and various intros) and I decided to combine them all into one video. It'll soon be coming to the JSW Central YouTube channel... 😎

Bob The Polar Bear released a new variant of his game yesterday, called "MANIC-minor", aimed at "Ages 6 to 12 (and the young at heart)". The direct download link is here. A release in the TAP format is still pending. I will add the game to JSW Central after some time has passed since the release (it's only mentioned in the Chronology section for the time being). I will probably convert the current "Manic-4-Noobs" page into a page embracing both incarnations of the game ("Manic-4-Noobs" and "MANIC-minor").

Today the pages of We Pretty and Jet Set Mini have been modified to include embedded videos from the JSW Central YouTube channel. A screenshot gallery has also been added to the page of We Pretty. Manic Mulholland has been added to the list of Games of MM and JSW interest. Chronology has been updated. Please let me know if you should notice that anything is missing from this Chronology update (or its earlier content). I would like to note that I have changed the information on the We Pretty page. It used to state that all 64 rooms need to be visited in order to complete the game. However, when I was working on the screenshot gallery, I noticed, with some surprise, that I had completed the game in my RZX walkthrough without visiting the room "T HE HOL LOW M O O N" (25). So I adjusted the information on JSW Central accordingly.

JSW Central YouTube channel has just been updated with two new videos. These are the walkthroughs of: "Jet Set Mini SE" "We Pretty" .

This leads to some surreal scenarios. People designing free MM/JSW games and releasing them clandestinely, masking their IPs, etc. - not to make any profit, but at the same time to remain anonymous and free from possible prosecution. The alleged copyright holders chasing them relentlessly, following their digital fingerprints, etc. The former living in fear, lurking in the MM/JSW underground, suffering from PTSD, but still determined to carry on their sacred mission of making new MM/JSW games and offering them freely to the whole world. The latter wasting their time and resources on persecuting poor souls who have only poured some financial resources into their endeavours (such as finding slightly expensive ways of purchasing GameMaker licenses anonymously), never made any profit... What a world to face! I hope it's just a figment of my sick imagination 😆

"Manic-4-Noobs" has been added to the list of MM games, along with an individual page featuring a complete screenshot gallery and embedded YouTube videos of an RZX walkthrough. An embedded JSW Central YouTube channel video has also been added to the page of "What Willy Did Next".

In case you do not frequent the Central Cavern - The Wonderful World of Willy Facebook Group, a new remake of "Manic Miner" has been discussed and announced over there earlier this year. It is called "Manic-4-Noobs". Its final version was released at the end of May 2021. It was created by "Bob The Polar Bear" (the author's real name can be found on the FB group easily enough, but he prefers to be credited by this pseudonym). He is currently working on another remake, called "MANIC-minor", which IIUC is meant for younger players/kids. The author's link to download the game is here. I have also added it to the list of MM games on JSW Central and created an individual page for it, with a complete screenshot gallery and links to videos of an RZX walkthrough. However, before watching these spoilers, I would strongly encourage you to play it, as it's got great graphics and various interesting technical features, it's a lot of fun to play and it's not too difficult! 🙂

JSW Central YouTube channel has just been updated with two new videos. These are the walkthroughs of: "Manic-4-Noobs" "What Willy Did Next" .

Welcome to the forum, SymbolShift! 🙂 First of all, my kind suggestion would be to change the title of this thread to e.g. 'Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy Copyright', or something like that, to delete the word 'infringement'. You haven't been accused of copyright infringement yet and neither has anyone else around these parts. Let sleeping dogs lie... Secondly, there has been some discussion recently regarding MM/JSW's current copyright in this thread. It won't help you much, but might be of some interest. Thirdly, my personal suggestion would be to go ahead, design and release the game for our enjoyment 🙂. Make it free, of course, make sure you don't make any money on it whatsoever. I would think that the more the game is MM/JSW-inspired (rather than copying the original content), the better. Please note I am not a lawyer, just a MM/JSW enthusiast, so I am not giving you advice based on any legal foundations. Having said that, I am not aware of anyone making free MM/JSW remakes being prosecuted to the point of having to pay anything to the alleged copyright owners and I hope this situation will continue, as we are on the scene not for profit, but for the love of these extraordinary games and the inspiration they give to create more weird (and free!) Willy's worlds. A couple of further ideas: The person you contacted mentions an "evaluation" of "the likely commercial impact of your proposed activity". I would understand it as follows: if your "activity" impacts their company's operation negatively in the commercial sense, they might go after you. If it doesn't, they shouldn't. I would think that the negative impact could theoretically be that instead of buying their product someone might buy your product (which will not be the case if you offer your game for free) or that by enjoying your free product someone would desist from buying their commercial product, thus stripping them of some hypothetical income. I am not sure if the latter could be proved in court in any way, but just to err on the side of caution, when you release the game, why don't you put links to their commercial products in the Readme / on your website / wherever pertinent, encouraging people to buy them (something along the lines: "if you enjoyed my game, don't forget to buy the current official version of MM/JSW which you will certainly enjoy even more"). I'm not sure if this would be helpful from the legal point of view, but, if it came to the worst, you could make an argument that you actually advertised their products, so you acted in their best interest, aiming at boosting *their* sales, without making any profit yourself. Just an idea... 🙂