Well this is fantastic news as a classic 1980s retro title has finally made its way to the Commodore VIC-20! Jet Set Willy, the legendary platformer originally built for the ZX Spectrum, has been ported to the unexpanded VIC-20 with a disk drive thanks to Kweepa. While almost every British home computer from that era received an official version of the game, VIC-20 owners were historically left out. The system simply lacked the required memory, and floppy disk drives were highly uncommon in the UK market at the time.
Having managed to fit one playable screen onto an unexpanded machine for an earlier project, the developer realized the VIC-20 could handle Jet Set Willy if the individual levels were streamed directly from a disk drive. The transition required overcoming a number of technical hurdles, particularly adapting the gameplay to the VIC-20's narrow 22-column screen width. Shrinking the environments worked smoothly for Manic Miner, but Jet Set Willy introduced a new obstacle: ramps. Because long diagonal ramps consume vast amounts of horizontal screen space, several rooms required careful redesigns to ensure the levels still connected logically. Memory limitations also proved difficult when implementing the game's iconic swinging ropes. To fit the tight hardware constraints, the developer had to completely re-engineer the rope delta tables to match the restricted screen layout.
Thankfully everything has worked out however, and as you can see, it's now possible to play Jet Set Willy on your unexpanded Commodore VIC-20 with a disk-drive.
Amazing stuff from Kweepa!
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