UK magazine alert: "Jet Set Willy: A Guided Tour"

[andrewbroad]

Issue 201 of Retro Gamer magazine has a ten-page article, "Jet Set Willy: A Guided Tour", which includes a map of the mansion, and room-by-room comments by its author, Matthew Smith.

For each of the 60 reachable rooms, there is a screenshot, and a few lines of Matthew's comments (sometimes in the form of questions and answers).

Matthew admits that he didn't have the time or energy to fill in the vast empty spaces in some of the rooms, because of pressure from his colleagues. For example, he was planning to do more with "East Wall Base", as the gap in the right wall implies.

But where he did put the effort in, he came up with masterpieces such as "The Nightmare Room", "The Banyan Tree", "Orangery", "Tool Shed", "The Wine Cellar", "The Forgotten Abbey", and the most iconic "To the Kitchens Main Stairway".

Matthew mentioned the four "lost rooms" in the context of "Tree Root", which has its unreachable right exit set to the empty room "[". "I seem to recall they were up on the roof somewhere, but maybe there was one off here... I think there was a chimney stack in one of them, and I was going to have another room on top of that."

I'm guessing that the chimney stack would have been above "Rescue Esmerelda" rather than "The Watch Tower".

Matthew identified some of the sprites, which have been the subject of much debate in the MM/JSW community. For example, the one in "The Bathroom" is "two Earths rolling after each other", the vertical guardians in "At the Foot of the MegaTree" are "a bear, wearing overalls, like Rupert", the bald guards in "Rescue Esmerelda" are future Ocean boss Dave Ward, and the heads with six legs in the Ballrooms are a "Bug-Byte bug".

Discussing the rumour that a raft would appear in "The Bow" at 11:45pm and take you to an island, he said, "I did think about having stuff happen at different times, like the graphics changing when it got to night, and the Off Licence closing."

I could go on and on, but I have now exceeded my quota of MM/JSW activity for the year, and it's not even Christmas yet...

Edited December 20, 2019 by andrewbroad

[IRF]

the vertical guardians in "At the Foot of the MegaTree" are "a bear, wearing overalls, like Rupert"

 

 

Interesting - I had those down as bats, flapping their wings up and down. Their ears turn around as well, as if they're navigating using sonar.

 

It's funny how people come up with quite different interpretations for some of the sprites - on the Yahoo Group, someone described that same guardian as a 'woodcutter'!

 

Anyway, I think I'll stick with my interpretation for my project 'Willy's Recurring Nightmare' (if it ever emerges), because

some of the bats turn into vampires...

 

Edited December 20, 2019 by IRF

[Spider]

I recalling reading the article in Crash many many many moons ago , and Quirkafleeg was still at that stage called 'Gaping Pit' , at least from my memory. It was a preview type of article.

 

Will look at the RG issue in question to see, thanks. :) There was something I think in about Iss 5 (I can't check at the moment) discussing JSW in a few pages too.

[IRF]

There's a preview of a few pages of RG201 available online, including the first two pages of the article which Andrew mentioned - and I noticed that a certain Mr Gromann of this parish puts in an appearance!

[IRF]

Conservatory Roof: "Those are probably little bears holding bottles" (as per my avatar). That corroborates my theory that they should all be paired up (Fire cell adjacent to collectable item), and any fix for the uncollectable item in there which doesn't pair them up is unsatisfactory.

Edited December 21, 2019 by IRF

[Spider]

I'd never really realised in "To The Kitchens..." the item/object was a hatchet / meat-cleaver! I does actually look like one too!

[IRF]

I'd never really realised in "To The Kitchens..." the item/object was a hatchet / meat-cleaver! I does actually look like one too!

 

Didn't we figure that out during the development of 'JSW: The Nightmare Edition'?  I seem to recall relocating one or two of them, to ensure that they all had a solid block to their left (in which the cleaver is embedded), rather than 'floating in mid-air'.  :P

[Spider]

Didn't we figure that out during the development of 'JSW: The Nightmare Edition'?  I seem to recall relocating one or two of them, to ensure that they all had a solid block to their left (in which the cleaver is embedded), rather than 'floating in mid-air'.  :P

Now you mention it, that does sound familiar! :)