Jet Set Willy speedrunning videos

[RuffledBricks]

Hi all,

So as discussed in the Nightmare Edition thread, I'm a Twitch streamer and I've spent a lot of the last year speedrunning the Miner Willy games on stream. I'm currently registered as having world records for speedrunning both JSW and MM in all categories on speedrun.com (AKA SRC). My profile can be viewed here: https://www.speedrun.com/user/RuffledBricks

I have videos of all my best speedruns on my YouTube channel. Here are my current PBs to date in the four categories on SRC for speedrunning JSW:

Any% (complete the game in any way you can):

Max Lives% (complete the game without any unnecessary life losses) - this is probably the tightest of the four speedruns here:

Warpless% (complete the game without using any unintended 'warps' in the game, e.g. Rescue Esmerelda to Ballroom East):

 

And finally, as already discussed briefly in the Nightmare Edition thread, WRITETYPER% (complete the game with use of the room select cheat code). Probably my proudest achievement, this one:
 

As you'll see, the different rules make for very different routes when optimising each category.

I didn't know about this forum at the time when I was recording all these, so I would imagine there are some players around these parts who would probably be able to beat these times or, at the very least, spot some tricks I may have missed here and there. I've vowed not to try and improve on these times any further unless I know I can shave at least 15 seconds off, because I've spent a LOT of time figuring these routes out. So if anyone knows of any ways this could be done, I'd be very interested to hear them.

Also, I recorded a 7 part JSW speedrunning tutorial to try and encourage more people to have a crack at speedrunning the game:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqNObzuH834dePmD1qt7cY82QilYsF66e

Since doing so, a couple more players have added runs to the SRC leaderboard, so it's helped to create more of a speedrunning community around the game. But again, I'm sure the strats that I've shared in this tutorial can be improved upon.

 

I haven't shared my Manic Miner video in this thread because the one I have on YouTube is a bit outdated in terms of optimum strats (and suffers from a few dropped frames here and there), so I'm currently in the process of trying to record a better one.

Anyways, would be interested in everyone's thoughts on Jet Set Willy speedrunning and to know if anyone else has had a crack at it. So let me know!

[MtM]

Top work there RB, you are clearly someone who practices a _lot_. I think you should definitely mention this in an interview, you never know, the person interviewing may be a JSW / MM fan 😉

 

In truth, I don't think I could do a speed run. Although I am competent, I do not have the time to practice really. Maybe MM, but not JSW,

certainly not JSW2. Very entertaining and instructional though, please keep posting your videos!

[RuffledBricks]

1 hour ago, MtM said:

Top work there RB, you are clearly someone who practices a _lot_. I think you should definitely mention this in an interview, you never know, the person interviewing may be a JSW / MM fan 😉

 

In truth, I don't think I could do a speed run. Although I am competent, I do not have the time to practice really. Maybe MM, but not JSW,

certainly not JSW2. Very entertaining and instructional though, please keep posting your videos!

Thank you very much!

Yeah, I've not really tried speedrunning JSW2 yet. There's a couple of very short Cartography Room categories I've done speedruns of, but I've yet to try any where you actually complete the game. I wanted to get the first two completely out of my system first before I attempted to learn a game with such a notably different jump dynamic (and also much faster!).

The other main speedrunner of Miner Willy games on the SRC leaderboard is a streamer called DigitalDuck, and thus far he's only been willing to speedrun JSW2 in the revamped 2+ e.22 form just because of how much more forgiving the death system is in that game. And I'll probably follow suit to be honest - I might attempt an Any% run of the original JSW2 at some point, but I can't fathom trying to do a 100% run.

[andrewbroad]

14 minutes ago, RuffledBricks said:

There's a couple of very short Cartography Room categories I've done speedruns of,

By “categories”, do you mean clusters?

I love the concept of clusters in JSW, although too much of the original JSW (and JSW II) is one big cluster.

[RuffledBricks]

3 minutes ago, andrewbroad said:

By “categories”, do you mean clusters?

I love the concept of clusters in JSW, although too much of the original JSW (and JSW II) is one big cluster.

Not really sure what you mean by clusters. Can you elaborate?

By categories, I mean for speedrunning goals. If you look on SRC, there are categories called Cartography Room and Cartography Room Item:
https://www.speedrun.com/jet_set_willy_ii_the_final_frontier#Cartography_Room
https://www.speedrun.com/jet_set_willy_ii_the_final_frontier#Cartography_Room_Item

The former category is for runs where you try to get to the Cartography Room as quickly as possible, whereas the latter is for getting the item in the Cartography Room as quickly as possible. I did runs in both of these categories just because I wanted to have *something* on the leaderboard for JSW2, and these were the simplest options. Plus they're quite fun to route too.

[andrewbroad]

23 hours ago, RuffledBricks said:

Not really sure what you mean by clusters. Can you elaborate?

A cluster is a group of rooms positioned closely together. I can’t define it precisely, because it is a matter of opinion. For example, I might divide the original Jet Set Willy into the following clusters:

• The Kitchen [Rooms 22–24, 27–30, 33–35]
• West Wing [Rooms 25, 30–31, 36–37, 42–43, 51–60]
• The Forgotten Abbey [Rooms 4–6, 19, 45–46, 49]
• The MegaTree [Rooms 0–5, 7–9, 12–13]
• The East Wall [Rooms 10–11, 20, 26, 32, 38–41]
• The Roof [Rooms 14–18, 20–21, 42, 44, 48, 50]

[RuffledBricks]

1 minute ago, andrewbroad said:

A cluster is a group of rooms positioned closely together. I can’t define it precisely, because it is a matter of opinion. For example, I might divide the original Jet Set Willy into the following clusters:

• The Kitchen [Rooms 22–24, 27–30, 33–35]
• West Wing [Rooms 25, 30–31, 36–37, 42–43, 51–60]
• The Forgotten Abbey [Rooms 4–6, 19, 45–46, 49]
• The MegaTree [Rooms 0–5, 7–9, 12–13]
• The East Wall [Rooms 10–11, 20, 26, 32, 38–41]
• The Roof [Rooms 14–18, 20–21, 42, 44, 48, 50]

Ah okay, thanks for clarifying.

No, I didn't mean clusters! 😅

[Spider]

One thing I did want to mention and its not actually that important, I did note I could not find any BBC or Amstrad SpeedRun's for JSW or MM 🙂 I may of missed them however. The former is of interest to me.

Perhaps that's my que! 😮 😄

[RuffledBricks]

1 minute ago, Spider said:

One thing I did want to mention and its not actually that important, I did note I could not find any BBC or Amstrad SpeedRun's for JSW or MM 🙂 I may of missed them however. The former is of interest to me.

Perhaps that's my que! 😮 😄

Do it!

[Spider]

Only problem no "rollback" with it , and its -much- more difficult than the ZX version!