One of the best known characters from the 8-bit ZX Spectrum days is Miner Willy, who first appeared in the platform game Manic Miner written by Matthew Smith. The game was crazily popular at the time, the simple gameplay involving collecting a number of flashing objects and then making it to the exit point before your air ran out. The 20 levels required a balance of quick reflexes and pixel perfect jumps to complete, and once you had died, it was back to the beginning for you, after being crushed by a Monty Python style foot that is.


Having escaped the mines with all the booty, Miner Willy found himself incredibly rich and bought himself a mansion, which was the setting for the games sequel Jet Set Willy. After having spent the night partying too hard celebrating his new found wealth, he wakes the next morning next to his toilet in the bathroom. Willy just wants to sleep, but his stern housekeeper Maria blocks the way to his bed until he has tidied up the mansion. So begins another round of collecting flashing objects.

Jet Set Willy was the first really popular flick screen platform game. When you reached an exit at one of the edges of the screen, the screen would flick to another screen, and it was completely up to you which route around the mansion you took. A bug in the original game meant the game was apparently uncompletable, but that didn’t stop people playing for hours trying to discover all the different rooms.

Jet Set Willy 2 came later, the story being that Willy had had the builders in, but they had gotten carried away and extended the mansion somewhat. The layout of the mansion was fairly similar to the original, but a whole series of extra rooms had been added, including a desert island and a space station.

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