Jet Set Willy was one of the games I never completed, but with which always liked to dabble. It's delightful graphical style and humour meant that it still holds up well today. (Even if some of the jumps are a little too perfect.) But in spite of never completing it (or perhaps because of it) I've spent too many hours creating fan art, and fiddling around with this iconic game.
For starters, I built the make character out of LEGO...
Map Viewer
Before creating
ZX Javascript I wrote this demo, to load the binary of the game, Jet Set Willy, into Javascript, and render the rooms as they would have been seen in the original ZX Spectrum version. I liked what I saw, so added a small UI to the page, so you can navigate around the whole mansion with ease.
Big Dynamic
No project stays small forever! So I modified my code to draw, and animate, every room at once! Due to the
size of the total area, you must click and drag in the new window that opens to move the map.
Note: not all rooms in the mansion line up due to the original design, thus gaps will appear
jsw_frame_thumb.jpg
Poster
Whilst happy with the animation, I thought it would be nice to have a poster to generated a single
image, 7500x1500 pixels in size, for printing. This is the result. Or rather, this is the thumbnail of the result!
Click on it for the full version.
Post-it notes
Never one to shy away from creative pointlessness, I decided to remake Willy in post-it notes. Why? Because no one
had ever done so, and because they're square, making the proportion of pixels look right.
My Signed Copy
As you might expect, having been a game developer so many years, I would have bumped into Matthew Smith at some point. Well, I have! Several times. (Not that he ever remembers me!) But no matter; I still got a copy signed, and added it to my frame copy of the game.
External Links
Coming soon...
Marquis de Geek