Back in the days when most games relied on pretty-much identical graphics all the way through the game, a platform game called Manic Miner was released on the Spectrum which took the unusual step of using unique graphics for each and every of its twenty levels - or "lethal caverns" as the game termed them. The game was a great success, and a later sequel called Jet Set Willy provided more of the same, but in a free-ranging structure where you could wander from room to room and had to plan out your route across a massive game structure. Manic Miner was virtually impossible to complete. Jet Set Willy was much harder. You also had a time limit to contend with, just to make matters worse (and on the BBC Micro version if you actually did get near completing it then the game crashed with a "Bad Program" error...).

Jet Set Willy 2 is a later version of Jet Set Willy, rather than a completely new game. And, thanks to Darren Salt, you can now play it on your 32-bit Acorn. Not only has he done a perfect job of the porting the game, but he has also provided an extremely comprehensive desktop design tool which lets you create your own games completely from scratch should you so wish, or modify the existing levels. He's also provided some such extra sets of levels for you to try. I guess he must be a huge fan of the game, since I dread to think how much time he must have spent writing this software! The graphics have also been recoloured (as opposed to the single colour originals).

There are plenty of options to fiddle with, including several display options, and the game fully supports the different screen modes required for various monitors.

ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/archimedes/games/jsw.zip

32-bit Acorn Gaming is sponsored by