ChRiStMaS 2022!

[MtM]

Hello all,

 

Just thought I would start a topic about the above, i.e. this coming Christmas, if anyone has

anything they want to say about what they are doing this year, what it means to them in terms

if MM & JSW, or anything really.

 

Personally, I got my first Spectrum at Christmas 1984, which meant from that time onwards I was

playing MM & JSW and gave myself a royal headache on Boxing Day that year due to staring at the screen

on MM for hours! Great times! But I always have an association of being happy and playing those games at

Christmas, so naturally I will be firing them up this Christmas too.

 

It is a pity there are no Christmas related mods that I can think of to play though I am sure JSWDanny

will correct me if I am wrong about that 🙂 

 

I suppose to broaden it a bit there are other games I associate with Christmas too, not least The Little

Computer People Project, from 1986, I think I had just got a disk drive for my CBM and that was something

I spent a lot of time on.

 

But nothing will ever replace playing MM on a large old CRT telly with the red gun of the crt not working

properly sometimes so the colours being off on Boxing Day 84. As the saying goes you never forget your first time, and

that Christmas playing MM & JSW has stayed with me ever since. Happier, easier times, even if we

were on the edge of a nuclear war with the USA & Russia at the time 😉

 

So in between family time this year that is an important tradition for me firing up those games and experiencing

a tiny bit of the same excitement from nearly 40 years ago. I daresay I am not alone! Strange when MS wrote those

games could he have ever thought all these years later people would still be playing them and writing new ones?

 

Let's hear those recollections everyone has about Christmas and JSW & MM! There must be a lot better tales

than mine!

 

I hope we all have a great Christmas and New Year!

 

Edited December 10, 2022 by MtM

[Spider]

Great story!

Mine arrived October 84

I've recounted the story before so I'll not do it again unless its wanted. 🙂

I do recall having to use a (terrible) ancient 12 or 10 inch BW TV at one point, the one with the single dial tuning on that kept drifting to due a dirty potentiometer track at a guess.

[MtM]

10 hours ago, Spider said:

Great story!

Mine arrived October 84

I've recounted the story before so I'll not do it again unless its wanted. 🙂

I do recall having to use a (terrible) ancient 12 or 10 inch BW TV at one point, the one with the single dial tuning on that kept drifting to due a dirty potentiometer track at a guess.

Yes go on Andy lets hear it!

 

It took several months before I managed to get hold of a colour portable tv for the old Spectrum, my goodness that

was such luxury then it really was. Not sure what people would make of the concept of a portable now, certainly not

a b&w one! I kept that portable for years too it was a Ferguson, great little colour tv.

[Spider]

Will provide my 'story' tomorrow 🙂

[Spider]

On 12/12/2022 at 12:18 AM, MtM said:

Yes go on Andy lets hear it!

10/10/84 (the date is permanently etched into my mind) I got my first Spectrum, a rubbery keyed model (all that was available then!) from the local Co-Op, using my own savings. Obviously Horizons was in the box along with an RF/Antenna/Aerial  lead, a tape lead and a power supply with no mains plug as was quite normal back then...

It came with this 'pack' too:

Turned out that was standard fare for Co-Op at least, other stores varied a bit.

It was a bit faulty actually and we had to return it a couple of times to get one that worked properly as in would load from tape as the first one was completely deaf, I do remember the first erm 'replacement' had a large dent next to the Enter key, indicating it was not actually 'new'. That went back. I seem to recall we tried it and found half the keys dead but the fact it was obviously 'a previous return' did not bode well

One of the very first things I saw once we got a working one (a few days later!) was this... I remember the erm 'excitement' of it drawing the rainbow for the first time

Naturally "through the wall" was one game I played a lot and it was if I recall one of the first programs I edited quite a lot once I'd figured out a few things.

Incidentally through "hell and high water" etc etc , I have managed to retain probably about 60 or 70 percent of my original 'purchased back then' tapes...

[MtM]

Thru the Wall was very good fun as I recollect, yes, I played that too, like you it was a rubber keyed 48k model, never got the Six Pack

you had Andy, but did have a fair few other tapes, mainly originals, I had managed to get hold of, I may have had original MM but I suspect

I had a copy of JSW, or maybe the other way around. I did have an original JSW at one point with the colour code card in it.

 

Although simple that is a really good clear diagram above about computers and how they input and output and would not take

much changing today I think, names are different but the process is the same. I reckon anyway!

 

Thanks for that Andy a great trip down Memory Lane. Anyone else? There must be other good stories out there about

Spectrum Christmasses etc.

[jetsetdanny]

Regretfully, I don't have any ZX Spectrum story explicitly related to Christmas going back to the "real hardware" days. I am sure Christmas and the holidays around it was a happy time for me back then as I could spend a considerable amount of time playing on the Spectrum-compatible Timex computer I had (still have, in fact). However, I don't have any specific recollections.

My generic (non-Christmas 😉) story of involvement with the Spectrum and JSW goes back to 1986. My parents bought me a Spectrum-compatible 48K Timex. "Jet Set Willy" happened to be one of the first (if not *the* first) games I ever loaded into it, and I fell in love with it right from the beginning. I only played "Manic Miner" after playing "JSW". I also loved "Jet Set Willy II", I spent a huge amount of time exploring it and trying to finish it without an infinite lives POKE (I remember that back in those days I never figured out how to reach the Deserted Isle). I also remember playing "Manic Miner 2". Come to think about it, it was related to my first attempts at editing, as I translated the German room names into Polish. I also designed a loading screen for "JSW", which years later (in 2007) I recovered by transferring it to emulator format. I may still use it one day in one of the "modern" projects, as a little historical curiosity.

For the context, all of this took place in Poland, which was under the communist regime at the time. My Timex was purchased, together with a tape recorder, at a a special hard currency store for $130, while at that time, due to the way the finacial and social system were structured, a monthly salary in Poland averaged the equivalent of US$30 (people who could would travel to do some physical work, like pick berries, in the summer in Germany or Scandinavia, and after returning to Poland they could live comfortably for the next year... or buy a personal computer). I never had a colour monitor back then - I used a Polish-made monochromatic (greenish) monitor (the first time I played JSW or MM in colour was years later, on a PC, already in the emulation era). Later on, my parents also bought me some additional hardware, expanding the Timex's memory (to 128K, or perhaps 256K, I can't remember exactly), a 3-inch floppy disk drive and a printer. I still have all this hardware, as well as all the software tapes I had back then. The last time I used them was in the summer of 2007 when I transferred all of the software I had written back in 1980s to the emulator format (and submitted the two games I had created in BASIC to the Crap Games Competition (C.S.S.C.G.C) - you can check out the two parts of the infamous "Spider Attack" here and here 😄).

After I stopped playing on my Timex some time in the early 1990s, I was blissfully ignorant of the existence of ZX Spectrum emulators for PC computers until 2001. Then I suddenly became interested in the subject, for no apparent reason, and I also discovered and downloaded the already numerous fan-made MM and JSW games. I had a brief look at them, arranged convenient shortcuts to them in my Windows start menu with the intention of playing them at some point, but then, after having to reformat my system HDD, I let them slip into oblivion again.

At the beginning of 2004, after another reinstallation of my operating system (Windows 98 SE, back then), I fired up John Elliott's JSWED v. 2.0.3 and played around with it for a while, designing a room which later became "Jump'n'Jive". And then I started working on another room, and then another, until I realised I wasn't getting enough sleep and I was definitely neglecting my family... And then I knew I wanted to finish and release my first JSW game, which I did in November 2004, when the world was stunned with the launch of the original edition of "Willy's New Mansion" 🙂 .

In the years since, the Christmas period has sometimes been a time of intense work for me in order to finish some projects and have them ready for release before the end of the year. That was the case back in 2005 (Sendy's and my "Jet Set Willy: Mind Control" was released on 30th December), in 2010 ("Jet Set Willy: The 2010 Megamix" was released on 29th December) and 2016 ("Willy Games: The First 30 Years Quiz" was released on 30th December).

And finally, when I think of JSW and Christmas, this room from Steve Worek's "Jet Set Emily: Baby on the Go" invariably comes to my mind:

[SymbolShift]

I don't really associate many Christmas memories directly with MM or JSW. I was an early adopter of the ZX Spectrum. Must have been late 1982, or early 1983. My dad came home a shiny new ZX Spectrum 48K, but it just sat in the box for ages. We were not really excited, since I was young and not even 100% sure what a computer was for, or why you would even need one. We tried some of the bundled games it came with, but there were not great. Also, the thought of reading a thick manual or programming code didn't really appeal to kids back then (does it now?). That said, I did own a Big-Trak already, so I knew programming had potential.

This all changed when MM was released (Summer 83). I remember playing MM at first on a tiny B&W TV. When we switched to a colour TV, I was blown away by the vibrant colours! Oddly, I soon realized that I was not very good at playing MM, and my brother was much better. I was content with watching, and helping him to progress through the levels. We never actually finished it, but I remember getting pretty close. Annoyingly, you only had a few lives, and had to start over and loose all your progress. I was very impressed by the simplicity of these games, that got you coming back for more.

Some other games from that period I have fond memories of are... Ant Attack, Oracle's Cave, 3D Maze of Gold, Chequered Flag, Ground Attack, The Horace trilogy, Jason's Gem, Lunar Jetman, Moon Alert, Maziacs, Stop the Express, Time-Gate, Zzoom.

I remember going to places like WH-Smith's, Woolworth's (even Boots!). Those places back then were a wonderland for kids, and had a good selection of ZX tapes, and would lure you inside with amazing toys and new technologies. We would always get new cassettes for Christmas, and then spend endless hours trying to figure them out. The tape player's would always drive us crazy. Either the game would refuse to load, or the tape would get chewed up.

I remember going to some other kid's house (must have been around 1985) and finding out about the 6031769 and WRITETYPER cheats. This was exciting stuff! We had not played MM/JSW in ages, and then discovering that cheats had been built into the games all this time, without any Pokes!

I kept with the ZX Spectrum through most of the 80's (my brother got a Spectrum+, then I got a +2), but they started to collect dust after a while. I bought a friends CPC-464 around the late 80's, which was pretty neat and the audio being superior to the ZX. By 1991, I had moved onto Amiga's, and by 1995 I was using a combination of Amiga & PC's.

I would say that some of the best memories I have are that of the ZX Spectrum and playing those early games. My brother has lots of the old ZX tapes we used to play, but I kept hold of MM and JSW.

 

[MtM]

On 12/16/2022 at 5:49 AM, jetsetdanny said:

Regretfully, I don't have any ZX Spectrum story explicitly related to Christmas going back to the "real hardware" days. I am sure Christmas and the holidays around it was a happy time for me back then as I could spend a considerable amount of time playing on the Spectrum-compatible Timex computer I had (still have, in fact). However, I don't have any specific recollections.

My generic (non-Christmas 😉) story of involvement with the Spectrum and JSW goes back to 1986. My parents bought me a Spectrum-compatible 48K Timex. "Jet Set Willy" happened to be one of the first (if not *the* first) games I ever loaded into it, and I fell in love with it right from the beginning. I only played "Manic Miner" after playing "JSW". I also loved "Jet Set Willy II", I spent a huge amount of time exploring it and trying to finish it without an infinite lives POKE (I remember that back in those days I never figured out how to reach the Deserted Isle). I also remember playing "Manic Miner 2". Come to think about it, it was related to my first attempts at editing, as I translated the German room names into Polish. I also designed a loading screen for "JSW", which years later (in 2007) I recovered by transferring it to emulator format. I may still use it one day in one of the "modern" projects, as a little historical curiosity.

For the context, all of this took place in Poland, which was under the communist regime at the time. My Timex was purchased, together with a tape recorder, at a a special hard currency store for $130, while at that time, due to the way the finacial and social system were structured, a monthly salary in Poland averaged the equivalent of US$30 (people who could would travel to do some physical work, like pick berries, in the summer in Germany or Scandinavia, and after returning to Poland they could live comfortably for the next year... or buy a personal computer). I never had a colour monitor back then - I used a Polish-made monochromatic (greenish) monitor (the first time I played JSW or MM in colour was years later, on a PC, already in the emulation era). Later on, my parents also bought me some additional hardware, expanding the Timex's memory (to 128K, or perhaps 256K, I can't remember exactly), a 3-inch floppy disk drive and a printer. I still have all this hardware, as well as all the software tapes I had back then. The last time I used them was in the summer of 2007 when I transferred all of the software I had written back in 1980s to the emulator format (and submitted the two games I had created in BASIC to the Crap Games Competition (C.S.S.C.G.C) - you can check out the two parts of the infamous "Spider Attack" here and here 😄).

After I stopped playing on my Timex some time in the early 1990s, I was blissfully ignorant of the existence of ZX Spectrum emulators for PC computers until 2001. Then I suddenly became interested in the subject, for no apparent reason, and I also discovered and downloaded the already numerous fan-made MM and JSW games. I had a brief look at them, arranged convenient shortcuts to them in my Windows start menu with the intention of playing them at some point, but then, after having to reformat my system HDD, I let them slip into oblivion again.

At the beginning of 2004, after another reinstallation of my operating system (Windows 98 SE, back then), I fired up John Elliott's JSWED v. 2.0.3 and played around with it for a while, designing a room which later became "Jump'n'Jive". And then I started working on another room, and then another, until I realised I wasn't getting enough sleep and I was definitely neglecting my family... And then I knew I wanted to finish and release my first JSW game, which I did in November 2004, when the world was stunned with the launch of the original edition of "Willy's New Mansion" 🙂 .

In the years since, the Christmas period has sometimes been a time of intense work for me in order to finish some projects and have them ready for release before the end of the year. That was the case back in 2005 (Sendy's and my "Jet Set Willy: Mind Control" was released on 30th December), in 2010 ("Jet Set Willy: The 2010 Megamix" was released on 29th December) and 2016 ("Willy Games: The First 30 Years Quiz" was released on 30th December).

And finally, when I think of JSW and Christmas, this room from Steve Worek's "Jet Set Emily: Baby on the Go" invariably comes to my mind:

That is a good story Danny, really good you had a Timex and it got you into the MM/JSW world, and you have never looked back!

Your knowledge of all the different versions is a constant source of amazement, and I imagine like the rest of us you probably

never thought all these years later since the 80s you would still be so involved.

 

I hope I can do like you did and one day and the time to use an editor and release a new MM and then a JSW mod. We live in

hope! it is a labour of love though and you know you will not make any money off spending all that time writing it, i can't really

afford that at the moment.

 

I have downloaded JSW Baby on the Go to give it a go and find that screen at least! So thank you for that.

 

 

[MtM]

On 12/16/2022 at 9:42 PM, SymbolShift said:

I don't really associate many Christmas memories directly with MM or JSW. I was an early adopter of the ZX Spectrum. Must have been late 1982, or early 1983. My dad came home a shiny new ZX Spectrum 48K, but it just sat in the box for ages. We were not really excited, since I was young and not even 100% sure what a computer was for, or why you would even need one. We tried some of the bundled games it came with, but there were not great. Also, the thought of reading a thick manual or programming code didn't really appeal to kids back then (does it now?). That said, I did own a Big-Trak already, so I knew programming had potential.

This all changed when MM was released (Summer 83). I remember playing MM at first on a tiny B&W TV. When we switched to a colour TV, I was blown away by the vibrant colours! Oddly, I soon realized that I was not very good at playing MM, and my brother was much better. I was content with watching, and helping him to progress through the levels. We never actually finished it, but I remember getting pretty close. Annoyingly, you only had a few lives, and had to start over and loose all your progress. I was very impressed by the simplicity of these games, that got you coming back for more.

Some other games from that period I have fond memories of are... Ant Attack, Oracle's Cave, 3D Maze of Gold, Chequered Flag, Ground Attack, The Horace trilogy, Jason's Gem, Lunar Jetman, Moon Alert, Maziacs, Stop the Express, Time-Gate, Zzoom.

I remember going to places like WH-Smith's, Woolworth's (even Boots!). Those places back then were a wonderland for kids, and had a good selection of ZX tapes, and would lure you inside with amazing toys and new technologies. We would always get new cassettes for Christmas, and then spend endless hours trying to figure them out. The tape player's would always drive us crazy. Either the game would refuse to load, or the tape would get chewed up.

I remember going to some other kid's house (must have been around 1985) and finding out about the 6031769 and WRITETYPER cheats. This was exciting stuff! We had not played MM/JSW in ages, and then discovering that cheats had been built into the games all this time, without any Pokes!

I kept with the ZX Spectrum through most of the 80's (my brother got a Spectrum+, then I got a +2), but they started to collect dust after a while. I bought a friends CPC-464 around the late 80's, which was pretty neat and the audio being superior to the ZX. By 1991, I had moved onto Amiga's, and by 1995 I was using a combination of Amiga & PC's.

I would say that some of the best memories I have are that of the ZX Spectrum and playing those early games. My brother has lots of the old ZX tapes we used to play, but I kept hold of MM and JSW.

 

I remember all those games SS, some classics there, and I remember going into retailers like Woolworths etc to buy Spectrum Stuff. In fact if you remember John Menzies, they used to have big shops in town centres, a year after I got my first Spectrum I had saved up my Christmas money and Menzies was the only place

that had a Microdrive and Interface 1 in stock near where I live, I think it cost £95, but briefly I had a colour portable, an int 1 and micro drive, an amazing set up!

 

But I took the micro drive back and got a CBM128 instead - but that is a different story. But I can relate to going into the likes of Boots, WH Smiths etc to buy

Speccy games, as well as issues of Crash of course too. Great times! Thanks for telling us about them.