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Willy the Miner is at it again! Having made his fortune underground in Manic Miner, he bought a mansion and threw a party. The mess afterwards was terrible and his wife, Maria, refused to let him go to bed until the house was tidied up.

This was the scenario for the first Jet Set Willy which was demonically difficult and probably accounts for the reason why Willy found himself in hospital, nursing plans for home improvement.

To this end he employed a team of little green men to extend and improve the residence and Willy II takes up the saga on the day of his homecoming.

Presumably this cover story has been invented by Software Projects to excuse the release of this 'new' game which is, in fact, the same old Jet Set story with extra locations. The main change is the reduction of the difficulty level from impossible to extremely hard.

The idea of the game is to direct Willy around the rooms of the house collecting all the rubbish from the various platforms, avoiding the staggering array of beasts who are out to get you. With over 100 rooms to visit, and each room requiring a different strategy, it should take several weeks to complete your task.

On reaching the roof area, there is a certain resemblance to another game involving a deformed French campanologist but perseverance brings you to the rocket room and the game literally takes off.

The destination is an orbiting spacecraft which, when mapped, forms a shape not unlike the USS Enterprise. Mapping is relatively easy because the mansion forms a fixed grid, with a couple of areas which do not fit the grid.

One of these areas is the sewer which can be escaped from but another area, reached by trying to vault the lavatory in the first room, leads deeper and deeper underground and appears to be inescapable. It's worth seeing once and then avoiding like the plague. This will not guarantee safety though because there are several other fatal zones.

Jet Set Willy II is a vast improvement on its predecessor and a worthy successor to Manic Miner.