JSW for Camputers Lynx

[Richard Hallas]

Hi all,

I was browsing YouTube recently and came across a video that claimed to demo ALL the games ever published for the Camputers Lynx. Unfortunately it's in French, but never mind. It's broken into chapters and just shows a bitesized bit of gameplay for each game listed. (I'm really not convinced that it's actually complete, as claimed, not least because I know that there were at least three early Level 9 adventures for the machine, and I don't see any of them demoed here, but that's by the by…)

Anyway, to my great surprise, one of the included games is JSW! As published by Tynesoft rather than Software Projects (like the BBC versions), apparently. Until seeing this video, I'd no idea that there was a version of JSW for the Lynx. Indeed, I didn't know of any 'mainstream' games for it – but it turns out that there was a handful of 'big name' games for it, including, notably, Ultimate's Alien8, Melbourne House's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and Mined Out! by Quicksilva, plus a few other familiar lesser ones like Oh Mummy. But the highlight for me was seeing a version of JSW that I'd never previously known existed.

Here's the video, with playback starting at the JSW segment:

JSW for Camputers Lynx on YouTube

As you can see, it's an 'interesting' version: plenty colourful, with quite authentic Spectrum-like graphics, but with some weird differences, such as Willy changing colour in each room (including the hard-to-see blue on black combination), and with AWFUL stepped staircases like in the Commodore 64 version. There's also weird corruption in the lower part of the screen (maybe an emulator issue, maybe not) and the in-game music sounds awful (like it sounds when you've lost multiple lives in the Specturm version, but from the outset here).

A quick search revels that the archive containing the game tape file (and, separately, a disked version) can be found here, in a forum thread:

JSW for Camputers Lynx in tape and disk formats

I don't have a conveniently set up emulator to try these out myself, but I thought I should mention the subject here in case it's useful information. I doubt I'm the only JSW fan who previously had no idea there was a Lynx version. (Shame there doesn't appear to be Manic Miner too.) I previously thought the most obscure versions of JSW were those for Memotech and Einstein machines, but I really didn't know of ANY commercial software for the Lynx until the other day.

UPDATE:

Hm, further investigations suggest that some of the big-name titles (notably Alien8, and probably the Melbourne House adventures from the way they look) may well be modern conversions from the Spectrum originals. I'm not entirely sure. However, the JSW conversion does appear to be authentic, from back in the day…

Edited January 31, 2024 by Richard Hallas
https://www.retrowiki.es/viewtopic.php?style=4&t=200036256 provides information about new games that appear that they may be new conversions. Also, it seems highly unlikely that Ultimate would have supported such an obscure platform as the Lynx.

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks for this info, Richard!

It's weird and amazing at the same time that today there are people who port 30- or 40-year-old then-mainstream games from (what most people would call) an obsolete platform to an obscure and even more obsolete platform, equally old platform. What a wonderful - and bizarre - world! 😉  

[Richard Hallas]

31 minutes ago, jetsetdanny said:

Thanks for this info, Richard!

It's weird and amazing at the same time that today there are people who port 30- or 40-year-old then-mainstream games from (what most people would call) an obsolete platform to an obscure and even more obsolete platform, equally old platform. What a wonderful - and bizarre - world! 😉  

I agree – and it appears that that's what's probably happened with Alien8 and some other familiar titles.

But JSW? Surely that's authentic, isn't it? The scrolltext pictured in the video says that the Lynx port is by Tim Titchmarsh for Phoenixx Softwarre (note the double letters!), and it doesn't appear to be a straight port of any other existing version.

I've tried Googling Tim Titchmarsh in association with Phoenix/Phoenixx and Lynx, and I haven't found any results – which you'd imagine there probably would be if this were a modern conversion. But if it dates from 1984, it's obscure enough to not have been recorded online. Also, the forum poster who provided the tape (and credits the game to Tynesoft rather than Software Projects) refers to having gone through his "old" Lynx tapes and transferred them – and JSW was one of them. (Notably, the other possibly modern conversions, like Alien8, were not from this source.) He also mentions that the tapes are over 35 years old. This all certainly points to Lynx JSW being authentic from 1984.

Was it known about already by any members of this site, or is it new to all of us?

Whether it's really from 1984 or is a more modern conversion is immaterial in a sense, if it's a new platform that wasn't previously known either way; it's one more new version of JSW to catalogue either way. But it'd be quite nice to think that it's a new discovery of a previously unknown yet authentic 1984 conversion, as that'd make it one more platform for JSW to have appeared on back in the 80s.

[jetsetdanny]

I believe the various reasons you mention do point to it being 'back from the day'.

It's new to me. But that doesn't mean much, because I focus on the Spectrum games, and while I read information like you have presented here with interest and have a general idea of versions for other platforms, I don't try to keep track of them or have them 'catalogued' in my mind in any way.

But I'm sure others will tell if they've been aware of its existence before. In particular, Andy (Spider) is the person to say if he's seen it already, as he has presented versions for various platforms on these pages (including videos) and seems to be 'in the know' 😉 .

 

[Spider]

Must admit I had not heard of a version for this, at least not an "official" one.

Tynesoft did release as mentioned JSW for other machines:

[Mike]

Hi,

I am Mike who posted the JSW tap file on the other forum. I stumbled across this thread by accident, and thought I'd share my knowledge on the provenance of the JSW software for the Lynx.

The JSW software actually came from a disk image, which a retro/lynx enthusiast had uploaded to the internet for the community. But disk images aren't very emulator friendly or accessible to users, and so I altered the loading program - which was written in Basic - to make it load as a single tap file. At the time, I had been writing a utility to create tap files for the Lynx, and so I had the necessary knowledge.

The version that I uploaded had a menu screen that allowed you to choose infinite lives. So I suspect it was hacked version. Hacked versions were inevitably made "back in the day" to help with playground distribution. But whether this was hacked more recently, I don't know.

The software does show a "by Tim Titchmarsh for Phoenixx Software" message. Why I originally thought it was by "Tynesoft" is unclear. This is probably just my mistake when I was trying find attributions for the software titles.

I've done some investigation and found a copy of an original advertisement for JSW (by Phoenixx Software) - which proves it was definitely of the era and not a later conversion (see attached). The magazine is the Lynx User Group's publication (Volume 1, issue 3, page 15) - which is available online. UKScone's Camputers Lynx Archive

Whether JSW was licensed to Phoenixx, is anyone's guess. But I am confident it is "of the era". I think Richard is right about those other software titles, which were probably later conversions by hobbyists.

There are a lot of similarities (hardware-wise) between the Lynx and Spectrum, and so software conversions wouldn't have been *that* challenging, relatively speaking. But the Lynx market was tiny, so hardly anyone bothered. The graphics were actually better on the Lynx (no colour clash!), but slow, and no good for gaming. The sound was just a simple beeper - like the spectrum.

Mike.

Edited March 16 by Mike

[Richard Hallas]

Thanks ever so much for posting this most interesting reply, Mike – and thanks, too, for your efforts in processing and preserving the software. I love discovering more about obscure old systems like the Lynx and seeing their libraries preserved.

The advert is much appreciated too, and certainly answers the question about the JSW conversion being authentic. I'm also intrigued to read the note saying that the 48K version of JSW has 32 rooms. Presumably that means that you needed a 96K or 128K machine to get the full 60-room game? And, does the preserved version contain the full game or the reduced-size 48K version? I haven't yet had time to try finding/setting up a Lynx emulator to investigate further. I see there's a Lynx 48 & 96 core for MiSTer, though it may still be unofficial. Worth trying, though, when I get time. As for emulators, it appears as though the best option for modern computers is MAME, which is a bit of  a shame. MAME is great, but it's such overkill when a single small stand-alone emulator is really all you need. It's the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a walnut in cases like this. So is MiSTer, of course, but at least with that you have a dedicated core. There are seemingly only two stand-alone Lynx emulators for modern systems, neither of them in active development and neither of them available natively for Mac (and I'm a Mac user by preference).

Anyway, there are options, and that's the main thing. Thanks again for your efforts and for providing further information.

By the way, your assumption that the publisher was Tynesoft was very reasonable, as Tynesoft published all the other-platform conversions that Software Projects didn't publish themselves (e.g. the BBC Micro conversions). The Lynx version appears to be unique in that it's published by a third company that's neither Software Projects nor Tynesoft. But that's probably just another sign of the fact that the Lynx platform was so small and had such a tiny market. Maybe it just wasn't worth the effort for those bigger companies. One assumes/hopes that Phoenixx Software would have obtained the necessary permissions at the time, and it's pretty unlikely that they wouldn't, I think, given that the original publishers were around at the time, and – from the advert – this is clearly official stuff rather than being hacker-based activity. The advert is actually pretty interesting for all the other titles it lists; e.g. it confirms the existence of four early Level 9 adventures for the Lynx (I only previously knew of three; Snowball is the fourth.)

I must try to find a bit of time to set up an emulated Lynx and try out this JSW…

[jetsetdanny]

Welcome to the forum, Mike! 🙂 And thank you for this information - it's very interesting! 👍

[Jet Set Willie]

Thank you very much, Mike! It was very interesting to read your info! 🙂

What´s the year of this Phoenixx Software´s advertisement?

[Richard Hallas]

3 hours ago, Jet Set Willie said:

What´s the year of this Phoenixx Software´s advertisement?

I looked up the source of the above advert – thanks, Mike, for the link. There are some pretty interesting-looking Lynx newsletters to be found in the archive. Unfortunately, there's very little to go on in terms of dates, and this newsletter (Lynx User Group, volume 1 issue 3) contains no such information that I could spot.

However, having said that, I've concluded that it comes from 1985. Looking through it, I was interested to discover a review of the Lynx version of Jet Set Willy on page 3. I suppose it's quite possible that other such newsletters will have reviewed the game, but this is, to date, the only review of the Lynx version I've seen anywhere, so I thought it might be interesting to reproduce it here.

Interesting points to note:

1. Apparently the game took a year to appear on the Lynx after its release on the Spectrum. JSW was released in 1984, so I presume the game and this newsletter must have been published in 1985.

2. The Lynx version was apparently supplied with the Spectrum version of the cassette inlay!

3. From the reviewer's experience, the Lynx version is more demanding than the Spectrum original (which can only mean that its collision detection is less precise, since the Spectrum version is pixel-perfect), and apparently contains a bug in the Wine Cellar which is not in the Spectrum original (though Spectrum bugs are not reproduced on the Lynx either).

Anyway, here's a transcription of the review. It's been done via OCR (I didn't retype it!), and the formatting maintains the single-column presentation of the original (from page 3 of the newsletter). The text is unedited, except that I've corrected a small handful of typos.

JETSETWILLY
***********

Many popular home computer magazines voted
JETSET WILLY the Spectrum game of the year in 1983,
which shows how far behind the LYNX tags behind in
the software stakes. Still, it’s a ‘classic’ game,
and none the worse for its age a year in home
computing is a long time! JETSET is actually the
‘sequel’ to MANIC MINER, but many people rate it a
better game. The object of the game is to guide the
hero, Willy, around his mansion after a party,
collecting all the glasses, and having done so,
Willy will be allowed to go to bed. This sounds
simple, but little could be farther from the truth!
The game has umpteen screens, each of which roughly
corresponds to a “room” in Willy’s mansion, and
allowing for walls and stairs you can move between
them quite freely, you don’t have to complete one
room before moving on to the next (as in MANIC
MINER). The rooms are full of moving objects and
characters, touching any of which will lose one
life. Sometimes things you think are objects, turn
out to be fatal. Using the arrow keys for left and
right and RETURN to jump to manoeuvre around, leap
between platforms and over moving objects. Timing
successive leaps to avoid numerous objects moving at
differing speeds and judging exactly where to jump
from, to land on very narrow platforms becomes more
and more complex the further you go in the mansion.
Sometimes rooms seem impossible at first and require
careful thought, timing and dexterity!

If you are completely stuck, ask a Spectrum
owner, but beware! There are subtle differences
between the LYNX and Spectrum versions, generally
that the LYNX is less forgiving and stricter. Some
rooms which are absurdly easy on the Spectrom
version, require care on the LYNX, personally I
think this is a bit of an improvement. There are,
hovever, annoying situations where the LYNX just
won’t let you survive some things you can get away
with on the Spectrum.

A final note is the inlay card, it is the
Spectrum version. The software protection scheme
includes a little card which talks of the Spectrum
colour keys—ignore it and use the LYNX colours, they
of course work.

Oh, and there is at least one bug in the LYNX
version, in the wine cellar....This bug is not in
the Spectrum version, although the Spectrum bugs
seem to be absent from the LYNX.

A first clue, you have to jump THROUGH
staircases, and you have to be in precisely the
right place to do so....numerous other problems are
up to you!!

VERDICT: Absolutely recommended. Easily a year
ahead of any other LYNX game. After a month I still
haven’t explored the whole mansion and I haven’t
even considered starting to collect any objects yet!
Rating 10/10, this should have happened more than a
year ago!!

PS: When will we see Knight Lore/Atic Atac/
Sabre Wulf....not to mention graphics design and
other utility software???

A. Bolton