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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS & POKES

The FAQ's will appear here.
When questions are posed and answered in the Discussions page or the MM/JSW club, they will be transferred to here.

• Why so much fuss about this game?
• Is there more than one version of JSW Part One?
• Are there versions of the JSW for other computers?
• Is it possible to compete the game?
• What happens when the game is over?
• How many objects are there?
• How many rooms are there?
• Where are the invisible objects placed?
• Does ever The Yacht sail away?
• Who won the JSW competition?
• What happens in the Quirkafleeg room?
• What the hell is a "Quirkafleeg", anyway?!?
• What does "Nomen Luni" mean?
• Famous bugs and their fixes
• Hacking the game, removing protection, immortality...
• How do I enter pokes?
• What happened to Matthew Smith?

Why so much fuss about this game?

There are several reasons that resulted in the incredible success of Jet Set Willy. Regarding the poor Spectrum's video abilities, the game had a fantastic appearance. It seemed that the game had more than the available 8 colors (that were furthermore limited to only 2 colors per 8x8 pixel block!). The detail of the graphics was just marvelous! There was a plenty of strange, interesting objects - like the swinging ropes that are highly realistic, hopping rabbits, deadly razor blades, wobbling jellies and endless other inventions.

The player can move freely between the linking rooms and work out the structure of Willy's strange house. In keeping with a good adventure, there are some random elements that have been thrown in. In some rooms the hazards may change places, or disappear altogether. Some rooms may not be entered from a particular direction - you lose all your lives, and sometimes that does not happen. In all respects, the creation of all the rooms is exceptional, each with its own peculiarities. Some of them are very hard to solve. All the rooms and trajectories of the monsters are so ingeniously set, that in most of them you have to observe and plan your moves very carefully to reach all the items you have to collect.

Is there more than one version of JSW Part One?

Although there is only one official version of JSW, there are many hacked ones. There are dozens of various known and unknown Pokes for patching errors and obtaining some other features like immortality, passing through monsters etc. It is impossible to tell on the first sight which version is which.

Generally, there is one version that plays a stunted version of "If I Were a Rich Man", which is the original, and the other one that plays the Manic Miner theme, that is BTW a theme called "In The Halls Of The Mountain Kings" by the Norvegian composer Edvard Hagerup Grieg (1843-1907) and it is in fact "Peer Gynt" Suite No 1, Movement IV.

You can download the program and see how the code looks like before hacking, if you press STOP (Alt Gr + A) when the game is loaded. Then you can change the Pokes in the Basic loader before running the machine code.

Are there versions of the JSW for other computers?

JSW was officially converted to C64 and Amstrad. There also have been many versions made for other popular 8-bit computers, and some 16-bit computers, but they were not published by Software Projects. You can find those other versions on the Download Page.

In the C64 version the Attic bug was corrected, and C64 owners laughed at ZX owners for using faulty software, until it was realized that an object in the Forgotten Abbey was unreachable, so the C64 version couldn't be completed either.

Is it possible to compete the game?

No, not without several Pokes! The guys who did it, realized that it couldn't be completed as it stood, so produced the necessary fixes - which then became the official Software Projects Pokes.

What happens when the game is over?

Do you really want to know it and spoil all the fun? Skip this section if you want to find it out by yourself! Otherwise, drag the mouse pointer over the following paragraph.

Well, here you are: After walking into Maria's (and his own) bedroom, you notice that Maria is not there (assuming you have collected all the glasses). You then walk Willy towards the bed. Just as he gets there, the computer takes control of him and walks him double speed all the way to The Bathroom, where he walks into the toilets and sticks his head in it and waggles his legs about in the air. You then have to reload the game if you want to play it again. There is actually a cheat to do this, but I can't remember what it is.

How many objects are there?

There are 83 objects in the game, but only 79 of them are "standard". There is an invisible one in the First Landing that cannot be reached, OR is placed in The Hall and can be reached (if you have the corrected version)! There is also one auto-collectable in the Swimming pool that gets collected as soon as you enter the room, and there is one on the Beach, that counts as two.

How many rooms are there?

There are exactly 60 "standard" rooms plus 4 more that are not used. Their names are as follows:

 0:          The Off Licence
 1:          The Bridge
 2:        Under the MegaTree
 3:   At the Foot of the MegaTree
 4:             The Drive
 5:        The Security Guard
 6:         Entrance to Hades
 7:          Cuckoo's Nest
 8:       Inside the MegaTrunk
 9:    On a Branch Over the Drive
10:          The Front Door
11:             The Hall
12:             Tree Top
13:         Out on a limb
14:         Rescue Esmeralda
15: I'm sure I've seen this before..
16:   We must perform a Quirkafleeg
17:       Up on the Battlements
18:           On the Roof
19:       The Forgotten Abbey
20:          Ballroom East
21:          Ballroom West
22: To the Kitchens    Main Stairway
23:           The Kitchen
24:     West of Kitchen
25:            Cold Store
26:          East Wall Base
27:            The Chapel
28:         First Landing
29:        The Nightmare Room
30:        The Banyan Tree
31:           Swimming Pool

32: Halfway up the East Wall
33:           The Bathroom
34:           Top Landing
35:          Master Bedroom
36:     A bit of tree
37:             Orangery
38:          Priests' Hole
39:        Emergency Generator
40: Dr Jones will never believe this!
41:           The Attic
42:          Under the Roof
43:         Conservatory Roof
44:          On top of the house
45:           Under the Drive
46:            Tree Root
47:          [
48:            Nomen Luni
49:         The Wine Cellar
50:           Watch Tower
51:            Tool  Shed
52:          Back Stairway
53:             Back Door
54:            West  Wing
55:     West Bedroom
56:          West Wing Roof
57:    Above the West Bedroom
58:             The Beach
59:            The Yacht
60:              The Bow
61:       [unprintable]
62:       [unprintable]
63:       [unprintable]

Click here to download a program for making a room connection list.

Room no. 47 ("[", above the conservatory) can only be accessed by using the cheat. It is inaccessible when playing the game normally, but you're not missing anything since it is completely empty with a yellow border. Rooms 61-63 are complete garbage.

Room 47 was re-coded by hairy hacker Dave Nichols in Your Spectrum 18 (the *April* issue!) as a new room, which was called April Showers. Your Spectrum ran a competition to find this new room (it was above The Beach) and the April fool joke was that we were all playing JSW again, months after it was released. Download it here.

Where are the invisible objects placed?

One invisible object is in The Hall, but to reach it you must use a poke that will place the object to the proper location.

Originally it was placed in the First Landing, where it was impossible to reach. Be sure to check whether your version has that poke, or otherwise you won't be able to complete the game and I'll keep receiving letters that start with: "Help me, I cannot find the invisible object...". That poke was released by Software Projects with some other official bug-fixes.

The other invisible object is in The Pool and gets picked up as soon as you enter the room.

Does ever The Yacht sail away?

There were some rumors about JSW that said if you wait long enough on the Bow, a raft comes and takes you away to a desert island. Were those rumours true? Yes, but only partially! In the JSW Part One absoultely nothing happens, no matter how long you wait, but in the JSW2 (The Final Frontier), the author inspired by those rumors made it possible! To get to the Desert Isle, you must go to the Trip Switch room, turn on the switch, and then make it back to The Bow without loosing a life!

This is, of course, virtually impossible, so another way to get there is to use POKE 30027,80. You'll find yourself in a room called Cheat left of which was the Deserted Isle.

You can also reach the Desert Isle is by using POKE 31224,201 which makes you absolutely invulnerable. Now you can go to the Trip Switch room, turn on the switch, and can come back to the Bow without dying (thanks to the POKE). Collect the object on the Bow and the one in the Yacht, and then follow the saw. When you come to a certain point, the Yacht will sail away!

Who won the JSW competition?

The JSW competition was won by Ross Holman and Cameron Else. Ross then became a writer for the illustrious Your Spectrum, before it became crap. (In a funky skillo sort of way.) I don't know if they got the chopper ride, or met Matthew Smith, but they *did* get the champagne.

Ross & Cam hacked JSW, realized that it couldn't be completed as it stood, so produced the necessary fixes - which then became the official Software Projects Pokes - and then completed the game, phoned up Software Projects, told them that Willy went to commune with the Great White Telephone, and that there were 83 objects.

What happens in the Quirkafleeg room?

You die as soon as you enter the room only if you've visited The Attic. This is the infamous, nay, legendary "Attic Bug". It came about from some corrupt sprite data, from the centipede, which corrupted a few other screens.

Software Projects released a statement telling people how to MERGE the loader and add 4 pokes to cure it, which was reputedly the first (and only?) time a software house had done so. Software Projects actually admitted this in an advertising campaign, and claimed that the rooms were filled with poison gas, and it was a "feature" to make you go back to the Master Bedroom through a harder route.

• Moving an invisible object from the First Landing to The Hall (42183,11)
• Removing a killer object from the Conservatory Roof (60231,0),
• Changing a block in the Banyan Tree to a walk-through type (56876,4)
• The Attic bug fix Poke (59901,82).

What the hell is a "Quirkafleeg", anyway?!?

A Quirkafleeg is the act of lying on the ground, in the presence of small dead furry animals, kicking your legs about and shouting "Quirkafleeg!". Don't believe anyone who tells you it's a Swedish rain dance or a type of pizza or anything, coz their wrong!

It originally came from a comic that Matthew Smith used to read, called "The Furry Freak Brothers", and for those of you who want to try and get a hold of the issue in question - it was in issue number five. And here is the original scanned picture (37KB) that inspired Matthew!

What does "Nomen Luni" mean?

"Nomen Luni" is a play on words of "Nomen Ludi" which appeared on the inlay card text for Zzoom (Imagine). Zzoom was all about shooting planes out of the sky. The joke is that one of the planes from Zzoom has crashed into the Willy Mansion. On the Nomen Luni screen you see the tail of the plane and on the screen below (Under the Roof) you can see the front of it (wings, propellers and cockpit). A rough translation by someone who has done O-level Latin results in "The Name of the Game".

Famous bugs and their fixes

There were four famous bugs in the program, and Software Projects announced 4 pokes to fix it. For more details, see section What happens in the Quirkafleeg room?.

Hacking the game, removing protection, immortality...

Jet Set Willy is probably The most hacked game ever. It had a copy protection system consisting of colours on a piece of paper, which had to be entered as a number sequence once the game loaded (called Padlock). There was a crack consisted of 3 pokes that would bypass the protection.

A simple way to instantly reach any room is to type in WRITETYPER when standing on the floor of the Fist Landing. This allows you to flick between rooms by holding down various combinations of numbers. Use key 9 and combinations of 1 to 5, which actually correspond to the binary code of the room number. Unfortunately, on the emulators (e.g. Z80) this won't work for all the combinations, since the emulator cannot scan more than a few keys at the same time...

There are also many other Pokes, like the one for an infinite number of lives, walking through monsters, removing monsters, jumping from any height and many others, that can be found in the [Cheats & Pokes] section.

How do I enter pokes?

There are several ways of entering pokes, depending on whether you are running program on an emulator, or on a real Spectrum.

A) On the Z80 Emulator

After you started Z80, press "F10", then "H" (Select hardware), and switch the Multiface ON by pressing "M". This procedure needs to be done just once, after starting the emulator.

Now load the wanted snapshot and every time you press "F5" a simple utility appears that allows you to enter pokes. Just press "T" (tools), then "SPACE" to enter wanted address and a value. To return to the program, press "Q" and "R" (return).

B) On the real Spectrum

1. Type MERGE "" and load the first (BASIC loader) part. You should get "0 OK, 0:1" message.
2. List the program. The general loader program should be something like this:

     10 INK 7:PAPER 1:BORDER 1:CLEAR 32767
     20 PRINT "JSW is loading"
     30 LOAD ""CODE
    100 REM POKES after here
    110
   1000 RANDOMIZE USR 33792

   Now simply enter all the pokes you want to, just before the RANDOMIZE USR line, and type RUN to load the rest of the program.

What happened to Matthew Smith?

There is a dark cloak of conspiracy built up around Matthew Smith, the creator of Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner. His photo was never published and he never showed himself in public as The Guy Who Wrote Jet Set Willy. The people started to rumour that he didn't actually exist, and that Matthew Smith was merely a clever code name for a Tandy computer, on which Miner Willy was born. True or not (most likely not true), the story still lingers on as an interesting legend.

The general feeling, gained from the previous times that people have attempted to look for him, is that he does not want to be found. Some rumors say that he made a lot of money on Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner, and then unfortunately got into drugs, ending up in a mental institution... The guy who claims that he saw him at the end of Summer 1995, said that Matthew lives now in a commune in the Netherlands and works as a motor bike mechanic, trying to put his life back together after spending some time being treated for "psychological problems". More about this case, and regular updates on Matthew Smith spotting, on the Where is Matthew Smith? page, maintained by Stephen Smith (stevo@jonlan.demon.co.uk)

There was also an interesting interview with Matthew Smith published in Sinclair User, in December 1984 issue, and you can find its transcription in [The Matthew Smith Mystery...] section.

Jet Set Willy Cheats and Pokes - All the pokes you could ever think of...
This page is a part of the JSW Ultimate Fan Page - The most comprehensive one on the Web

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From the original location of Gawp's Jet Set Willy Pages

Last updated: September 12, 2001.

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