My treasured original copy of Jetset Willy 2Yes, that really is its name. Jet Set Willy 2 was released for a variety of 8-bit computers and was a huge hit in the 1980s. There are versions for the ZX spectrum (pictured) and Amstrad but also unofficial ports for other now-vintage devices. It’s a platformer where Willy must explore his own house (how does he not know his way around? Actually that’s explained somewhere) and collect the flashing items strewn about. This sequel added many more rooms and a whole section in spaaaace complete with teleport and homages to other games and TV from the era.
The blue cassette in all its gloryMy copy has survived reasonably well in the circumstances. Yes, the paper inlay looks dreadful but there’s a good reason for that: copy protection. Games were frequently copied (look for archive photos of hifi systems containing two tape decks for tape-to-tape copying - they were everywhere) so to combat this a page of colour codes was included. When the game loaded you had to enter the four colours at a particular page, row and column (J7 on page 4 for example). Colour copiers were very scarce and digital photography a distant dream so the colour sheet was nigh-on impossible to reproduce. All that removing and replacing the inlay to find the colour codes has mangled the paper. I daren’t even remove it any more as it might fall to pieces.
Version 2+
There’s a fabulous site dedicated to JSW2 maintained by Julian Wiseman that I recommend visiting. It contains something even more fabulous: an updated version of the game released in 2016 that fixed some problems and added even more rooms. It’s well worth checking out!
