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Re: UK magazine alert: The Making of Jet Set Willy

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Yes takes me back. I can remember seeing photos of the time of the trs 80 
that he was using.
 I was not aware it was ported to non z80 computers though, I have to say. I 
do have a memotech somewhere and an atari as well.

Brian

"Andrew Broad" <broada@mailandnews.com> wrote in message 
news:ad75c79b-b629-4923-b031-1a66abad9861@googlegroups.com...
> Issue 150 of Retro Gamer magazine has six pages devoted to Matthew Smith 
> and his classic Spectrum games Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy.
>
> "Matthew Smith's Greatest Achievement" is a two-page article about Manic 
> Miner, featuring a short but glowing review of "one of the greatest games 
> of the 8-bit era", and quotes from:
> * Derrick Rowson (coder of MM, JSW and JSW II for the Amstrad CPC with 
> Steve Wetherill);
> * Chris Lancaster (coder of MM for the Commodore 64);
> * Roy Coates (coder of MM and JSW for the Dragon 32/64).
>
> Derrick Rowson said, "Matthew could code as the normal person talked", 
> i.e. he could write code very quickly, and it would usually work at the 
> first attempt.
>
> There is also a four-page article, "The Making of: Jet Set Willy", written 
> by Martyn Carroll, based on an interview with Matthew Smith.
>
> Matthew wrote JSW in eight months in 1983/1984, while he was one of the 
> directors of Software Projects, along with Alan Maton and Tommy Barton. He 
> worked from home, and admitted that he might never have finished JSW 
> without Alan frequently coming over and breathing down his neck. It sounds 
> like it was a very difficult time for him. Sadly, he has never finished 
> either of the two sequels that he started: The MegaTree, and Miner Willy 
> Meets The Tax Man.
>
> Matthew started work on JSW by creating the swinging ropes, which are what 
> he likes most about JSW. The first rooms that he wrote were "The Bathroom" 
> and "Master Bedroom". With the ending in place, he then expanded the map 
> without any predefined plan, "based on what I thought a country house 
> would look like... I spent a lot of time designing the rooms, trying to 
> think up new ways of challenging players."
>
> He actually wrote 64 rooms for JSW, typing in the data on his Tandy TRS-80 
> Model 4, but unfortunately, it kept overwriting four rooms with its 
> hard-disk driver, and with time being tight, he ended up ditching them. 
> "The lost rooms were above The MegaTree. It was supposed to be taller and 
> have more branches."
>
> He admitted that he didn't have time for a complete playtest, hence the 
> bugs that would necessitate the four official Software Projects POKEs. He 
> did know about the infinite-death scenarios, but thought, "Well, it 
> doesn't matter."
>
> Software Projects refused to pay £36,000 to the copyright holders of the 
> in-game tune, "If I Were A Rich Man", but changed it to "In the Hall of 
> the Mountain King" for later versions.
>
> Matthew never got any royalties from JSW at the time, but has finally 
> earned some through his partnership with Elite Systems.
>
> Matthew always preferred MM to JSW, because of the quality of the rooms. 
> He talks highly of Jet Set Willy II (which was originally written for the 
> Amstrad CPC by Derrick Rowson and Steve Wetherill, and then converted to 
> the Spectrum by Derrick), because it has twice as many rooms, some of 
> which are set in outer space. However, he is proud of the "nice clean 
> design" of the original MM and JSW.
>
> Personally, I love MM and JSW almost equally, but I have to give the edge 
> to JSW, because it allows free exploration, and is more atmospheric. JSW 
> II may be faster and have twice as many rooms, but its game mechanics 
> aren't quite as exquisite as the original MM/JSW, and it lacks my most 
> beloved quirky features.
>
> The article has a sidebar titled "Nightmare Rooms", with tips on "The 
> Banyan Tree", "The Wine Cellar", "The Nightmare Room", "The Forgotten 
> Abbey", "Priests' Hole" and "Under the Drive".
>
> The article has another sidebar titled "Conversion Capers", with brief 
> reviews of the official JSW conversions released at the time:
> * Amstrad CPC (74 extra rooms);
> * Atari 8-bit;
> * BBC Micro;
> * Commodore 16 (replaces "The Nightmare Room" with "The Pantry");
> * Commodore 64;
> * Commodore Plus/4;
> * Dragon 32 (fifteen extra rooms; has been converted to the Spectrum and 
> Archimedes);
> * Memotech MTX (two extra rooms: "The Courtyard" and "The Front Lawn");
> * MSX (the Tatung Einstein version is identical);
> * MSX (Bee Card) (released in Japan by Hudson Soft).
>
> --
> Dr Andrew Broad
>
> P.S. I'm posting this with an invalid email address.

-- 
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This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
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briang1@blueyonder.co.uk
Blind user, so no pictures please! 

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UK magazine alert: The Making of Jet Set Willy Andrew Broad <broada@mailandnews.com> - 2016-01-09 16:15 -0800
  Re: UK magazine alert: The Making of Jet Set Willy "Brian Gaff" <briang1@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2016-01-10 08:25 +0000
  Re: UK magazine alert: The Making of Jet Set Willy Duncan Snowden <duncan_s@talktalk.net> - 2016-01-10 16:34 +0000

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