jetsetdanny

Post approved 🙂 . I do look forward to your games' releases and I will be happy to playtest them once you consider them ready for release 🙂 .

I also posted this on the “Central Cavern – The Wonderful World of Willy” Facebook group. It got some adverse reactions, and then my post was deleted by the admin. So much for freedom of speech. While we still enjoy it here, I’d like to explain why I posted it — beyond it being a personal way of coming to terms with this horrible event. I believe it offers a moment for reflection and serves as a grave warning. The warning is: don’t treat concepts that can become tragic as a joke. If it happened in “JSW,” the most brilliant of all games, it can happen elsewhere, too. “JSW” is famous for its humour—often described as British or Monty-Pythonesque—and that humour is one of its great assets. I understand that a plane crashing into the upper part of Willy’s mansion is part of that absurd humour. It must have been well received, since DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!! perpetuated it in his first JSW remake, even giving the room an explicit name that ensured the graphic design wouldn’t go unnoticed. However, more than forty years later, a strange twist of fate made this absurd invention tragically real. The images of the Air India engine smashed into a building were so graphic and shocking—especially knowing that people on the ground died, too, perhaps in that very structure. (A side note: the fact that we’re comparing a modern tragedy to a scene from a four-decades-old computer game itself speaks volumes about JSW’s lasting impact and legacy.) So from now on every time I pass through “Under the Roof” and “Nomen Luni,” I’ll think of the poor souls who perished in the Air India Flight 171 disaster—and of the one gentleman who miraculously walked away from the wreckage. I really don’t think I’ll ever be able to avoid that association. In the Facebook group, people freely share real-life photos referring to various aspects of JSW: MegaTrees, Maria, André the chef, and so on—and I love and cherish those discussions. That’s why I was taken aback by some of the group members’ reaction to my post. Then I thought that for those fans, JSW is a cheerful, pleasant subject, and they want it to stay that way. They don’t want to link it to anything sad or unpleasant. That attitude is understandable, but if you really love something, you should love it all: “for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health.” You should embrace it, flaws and all. If you truly love JSW, you should be able to accept its newly revealed, disquieting dimension. If you enjoy sharing pictures of MegaTrees or Maria or André the chef, how can you turn away from the images of a plane engine lodged in a building outside Ahmedabad? There's one other example of a similar warning that comes to my mind. I love old (very old!) U.S. folk music. One of its great icons was Pete Seeger. Among the hundreds of songs he performed was “Old Time Religion,” a humorous take on a traditional church song. It features verses like: “We will pray with Aphrodite, We will pray with Aphrodite, She wears that see-through nightie, And it’s good enough for me.” “We will pray with those old druids, They drink fermented fluids, Waltzing naked through the woo-ids, And it’s good enough for me.” and so on. But then comes the verse: “We’ll do dances to bring water, Sacrifice animals for slaughter, Sacrifice our sons and daughters, And it’s good enough for me.” I’ve always found that verse ominous rather than funny. Child sacrifice was an actual practice in some ancient cultures. When Pete Seeger sang that verse at his 1980 Sanders Theatre concert, some people in the audience reacted with laughter. But imagine hearing news of some kind of weird modern-day religious cult that murdered its own children as a sacrifice — something that’s entirely possible in this strange world we live in — and then that laughter would come back to haunt them, much like the images of Air India Flight 171’s engine driven into a building are something we can’t shake from our minds... Pete Seeger was a genius, and I’ll continue to love his music despite that verse. Matthew Smith is equally a genius in his realm, and I’ll continue to love JSW despite those haunting crash images that I can never erase from my mind. And I just wanted to share this reflection on how we should be careful what we laugh about.

I’m very much looking forward to playtesting the game! Since I’ll soon be taking some time off work, it might be the perfect opportunity to do so 🙂.

Absolutely! 😁

View File GhoST oF WiLLY I am thrilled to announce the release of Carl Paterson's fourth Jet Set Willy game: "GhoST oF WiLLY" 🙂. The plot of the game revolves — obviously — around Jet Set Willy, the legendary adventurer, who must come out of retirement after a curse originally meant for his descendant, Jet Set Junior, falls upon him. Stripped of his physical body and trapped in spirit form, Willy must return to his old mansion — now transformed into a surreal reflection of his own subconscious — to collect sacred relics and break the curse at Queen Maria’s altar. As he navigates twisted echoes of his past, the fate of the entire Jet Set family line hangs in the balance. The player must collect all the sacred relics — the Spirit Itemz — needed to reunite Willy’s mind with his body and lift the curse once and for all. The above is just my summary — please read the original plot in the Readme! The game features: - 61 newly designed rooms, created in Carl's distinct style, with many challenging jumps where a move in the wrong direction or a jump from an inadequate position will cost you a life; - Mostly new and some modified guardian sprites; - A significant difficulty level - the use of some 'assistive tools' — such as saving/reloading snapshots, Rollback or the infinite lives POKE 35899,0 — is highly recommended; - A custom-made title screen, custom font (called "Dead Forest", designed by Damien Guard) and other enhancements; - A new title-screen tune and a superlong in-game tune, 1,536 bytes long, i.e. 24 times as long as the tune in the original JSW, actually composed of a series of shorter tunes, never before used in a JSW game for the Spectrum, all in ternary time signatures, which is a first for JSW48 games; - Something extra at the completion of the game. The ZIP file includes the game in TAP and TZX format (v. 2 - this is the first public release), the Readme and info about the game's credits. Please download and embark on another epic journey through these enchanting new parts of Willy's weird universe that Carl has created. And play the game to completion, but remember (hint, hint!) to save three spare lives before reaching the final rooms... 🙂 Submitter jetsetdanny Submitted 06/15/2025 Category Jet Set Willy [Remakes]  

"GhoST oF WiLLY" will be released tomorrow, 15th June 2025. Those who are based in Europe will be able to enjoy it since the morning 🙂 .

One real-life reference to JSW I hate to see... What a terrible tragedy!

I've started this topic because announcing an upcoming game release in a separate thread in the "Remakes" section would be impractical — after the game's release, if a download is created on this forum, the download topic will be generated automatically, duplicating the topics devoted to that game. Since I believe it's better to leave discussion of a new game for the download topic, this thread is meant to give everyone interested a heads-up regarding any upcoming release. So here's the first announcement: in the very near future (read: days), Carl Paterson's fourth JSW game will be released 😁 (a quick reminder: his first three games are: AmAZiNG WiLLY, WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE, and JeT SeT JnR aNd ThE CuRsE oF ThE PhArAoH). The new game is called GhoST oF WiLLY. The plot of the game revolves — obviously — around Jet Set Willy, the legendary adventurer, who must come out of retirement after a curse originally meant for his descendant, Jet Set Junior, falls upon him. Stripped of his physical body and trapped in spirit form, Willy must return to his old mansion — now transformed into a surreal reflection of his own subconscious — to collect sacred relics and break the curse at Queen Maria’s altar. As he navigates twisted echoes of his past, the fate of the entire Jet Set family line hangs in the balance. The player must collect all the sacred relics — the Spirit Itemz — needed to reunite Willy’s mind with his body and lift the curse once and for all. The above is just my summary — please read the original plot in the Readme! The game features 60 brand-new rooms for you to enjoy, created in what I now perceive as Carl's distinct style, with many challenging jumps where a move in the wrong direction or a jump from an inadequate position will cost you a life. People who don't use snapshot saving/reloading or Rollback will surely consider the game very difficult. The use of some 'assistive tools' is recommended; the infinite lives POKE 35899,0 will probably be a must if you want to complete the game. And it's certainly worth completing, as Carl takes you on another epic journey through these enchanting new parts of Willy's weird universe. And it can be completed... (hint hint) — if you save three spare lives before reaching the final rooms. So please watch this forum for the release announcement — it's coming soon! 🙂

Welcome to the forum, fawtytoo! Thanks for joining! 🙂

Thanks for the update, Hervé! It's thrilling to know that you've got over 90% of the rooms done now 🙂 .

It's great to know about your progress, Hervé! Thanks for the report 😊

Thanks for the update, Hervé! 👍It's great to know you are making good progress on this project 😊.

I've just been able to access zxart.ee without any problems.

It sounds terrific! Thank you for the update, Hervé, and I am looking forward SO MUCH to visiting Willy's Fun Park when it's ready! 😊

Thanks for starting this topic, Willy! Two more music links:

I am a little confused. You say the author of this screen is Mick Farrow. However, the main graphic is the same as the one Byron Needham used for the loading screen of "Manic Miner: The Lost Levels" and Byron mentions in the Readme Credits that "The loading Screen was created in Multipaint by Tero Heikkinen". So who was really the author of this graphic?

Great! 😁

Thanks for your reply, Hervé! It's good to know about the "inner" details of your work which resulted in this excellent game 🙂 . I am sorry about the delay in starting my work on the music. I am now coming to the finishing line of another JSW project I've been working on and should soon be able to turn my attention to "The Temple", which I'm looking forward to very much indeed 🙂 .

It's truly mind blowing - thanks for sharing it! 👍What an enormous amount of work must have gone into preparing the best route and then practising its execution! Chapeau bas! 🙂 I have made a note of the link to add it, in the future, to the page on JSW Central dedicated to the original JSW. That page is really a stub, I never included a description of the game, as it didn't seem necessary at the time (EVERYONE knows it!!!), and my attention was always focused more on the remakes and new games than the original. However, I will need to prepare a good description to place on this page at some point, and when I do, I will add various (probably quite numerous) links related to it. That's something to do in the future, though, because it will require time to do well, and my immediate JSW priorities are different. Thanks again for the link, though - it's really impressive! I just hope Matthew Smith has seen it, and I don't think he imagined something like this was possible when he coded the Writetyper cheat 😊.

Thanks for this review! I have just added a link to it on the game's page on JSW Central.

Thanks for your progress reports, Hervé! It's good to know you are progressing with your games 🙂 . I trust they will all be great fun to play and extremely valuable contributions to Willy's universe 🙂 . I will be happy to playtest them when time comes for it and make any contributions I can. In fact, I am currently drawing close to finishing work on another long-overdue JSW project (I can't reveal its exact nature right now, but it's about adding some finishing touches to someone else's game) and I should soon be ready to start work on the music for "The Temple" 🙂 . Do keep us updated on the progress of your projects! It's always a joy to know about it! 🙂

It's great to hear that "Mansion" is at such an advanced stage of development! 👍I will be happy to help playtest it thoroughly when you have a release candidate 🙂 . Also, thanks to Lemmy for helping Willie with the music. In fact, I may soon be asking for Lemmy's help in that department myself...

Thank you, Willie, that's a good start! 🙂 I haven't seen most of these games ever mentioned before. Since this is a thread dedicated to JSW Central, at the weekend I will move your information to a new thread that will be dedicated to creating an all-encompassing list of MM/JSW games and their remakes for all platforms and let's see if people add to it 🙂 .

Thanks for the feedback, Willie! 🙂 Expanding and reviewing the "Links" section is the last one among my 'Higher priority' tasks for the future. I am aware of the fact that some links are outdated, and I do have various other links to add. I will definitely work on this, although I don't want to make any commitments as to when. Let's say, later this year... 🙂 Regarding the non-Spectrum MM and JSW games, here's what the situation looks like from my point of view: My primary interest are MM and JSW games for the ZX Spectrum, i.e. mainly games using the MM and JSW engines. This means that other platforms are not among the priorities. Please note also that - strange as it may sound - my primary interest are *games* using the MM and JSW engines (preferably: *new games*, not just minor mods of the originals), NOT the original MM and JSW themselves. In other words, I'm really interested in *new* MM & JSW games that people create for the ZX Spectrum, NOT in MM and JSW versions created for other platforms or their remakes. Please note I've talked about my primary interest and priorities. I would *not* discard devoting some time and attention to MM and JSW and their remakes for other platforms in a hypothetical future. However, I want to dedicate my time and energy to my priorities. And the problem is that I have so much to do regarding the Spectrum games that in the foreseeable future I don't see how I could spare any time for non-Spectrum stuff. My general attitude to the passion that MM/JSW games are for me is one of doing things very seriously. If I record an RZX recording, I want it to be very good; I will re-record it and re-record it again if I see reasonable room for improvement. If I prepare information about a new game, I want it to be accurate and well written. It takes me a long time to prepare it. All this takes a lot of time, and I get frustrated when I don't have enough time for doing things I really want to do. If I decided to add a list of non-Spectrum MM and JSW games to JSW Central, I would want to do it well. I would *have* to devote a lot of time to investigate this subject, and that would take time away from my Spectrum-related priorities. I am not willing to give up the time I want to devote to my priorities to use it for other things. So the only way I could think of that a non-Spectrum section could be added to JSW Central in the foreseeable future is that it would have to be the fruit of a community collaboration. I would be willing to host a list of non-Spectrum MM and JSW games on JSW Central if I don't have to devote too much time to preparing it, and if I believe the list is good enough to be hosted on the site. The request you've made has been expressed before. Apparently, many people would be interested in having a complete, all-platform list of MM and JSW games. If enough people are interested and willing to collaborate, they could start creating such a list on this forum. Perhaps it will be perfectly enough for it to be hosted here, and if there is still interest in its being posted on JSW Central, I could certainly add it to the site once it's "complete enough" to be considered a serious product. Of course, due credit would be given to those who have contributed to the project, and I would make sure to emphasise that it is a community project hosted on JSW Central. So there...