Dragon User


Jet Set Willy

Author: Jason Orbaum
Publisher: Software Projects
Machine: Dragon 32

 
Published in Dragon User #026

I have never before felt the compulsive urge to rave about a game to everybody, but now...

Jet Set Willy, is simply the best thing since The King. In fact, it's better. The game is a work of art, and epic, and any other great praise that I can think of.

There are several reasons for buying this game. It is a better follow up the brilliant Manic Miner than anyone could have assumed possible. It is challenging, combining beautiful elements of adventure (strategy and planning) and arcade (simple controls, everything graphical). The graphics are the best I have ever seen in PMODE4; there is one Demon who is simply brilliant. It gives a great chance to gloat at your Spectrum owning friends. Ring them up and invite then round to play the game. When they arrive have the game already loaded but leave the title page going, allowing them to see the joystick option (Strike One). Start playing and soon they will pipe up with "But it's only in Black and White!! That's not up to much is it?"

At this point proceed to "The Guest Room", "The Games Room", and the rest of the fifteen extra rooms that the Dragon version has, being careful to point out that these rooms have all been fitted into 32K as opposed to the 48K it took to write their smaller version.

Jet Set Willy

Take them to lie down somewhere - due to the small size of their brains, which have been numbed by the fact they haven't programmed anything since they bought their Spectrum, they will almost definitely be frustrated and confused,

If we all buy this one, then Software Projects will write another one, and another one, and another one...

There's no point in trying to copy it; it contains the best set of anti-piracy devices I have ever seen (including a chart that would surely take months to copy out!!).

Jet Set Willy

The game has one annoying bug - when the player dies the new life starts at the place that the old one finished, which can occasionally be directly under a creature (i.e. chainsaw, mad monk, giant ice-cream, spinning razor, silicon chip, etc...) causing the loss of all eight lives (yes, you need them all!!).

If you don't have a copy of Hunchback then don't panic, you'll find four screens from it on the roof of the house, along with lovely screen names, one of which sounds like an extract from Jabberwocky, but isn't!

What else can I say? Beg, steal, borrow, do anything but get enough money for this game... you will never regret it.

Jason Orbaum

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