Spectrum Games - Jackal - Classic ZX Spectrum Game

Jackal ZX Spectrum
This was an arcade game that ate a bucket load of my loose change back in the day. I loved it, and I was pretty good at it too :-)

So, when it was being converted to the good old Speccy in 1987 by Konami (who had developed the coin-op version) I was rather excited.

I needn't have been as this game turned out to be a complete turkey...



For fans of the original arcade game the plot will be familiar; drive around in your jeep killing enemy soldiers, destroying vehicles, gun emplacements and buildings.

It was classic run 'n gun action that was simple enough and fun enough down your local arcade.

The squad was a four-man team composed of Colonel Decker, Lieutenant Bob, Sergeant Quint and Corporal Grey sent to rescue soldiers kept as hostages by the enemy. One or two players controlled the teams in an armed jeep, in which you had to venture through several enemy strongholds to rescue your buddies.

In each of the six levels, the goal was to rescue POWs from various buildings and then transfer them to dust-off locations where a chopper would take them to safety.

Once the soldiers were rescues the player(s) had to defeat (in classic arcade fashion) a boss enemy at the end of each level. If you made it to the final level, there were two bosses for you to take out.


As with most arcade games, there was a scoring system that would grant the player extra lives depending on the score attained.
If a collision occured with an enemy vehicle or if the jeep was hit by an enemy bullet, a life was lost. No surprises there.

For rescuing your buddies you could receive various rewards. Some buildings contained one flashing prisoner; if this man was rescued the jeep's primary weapon (a machine gun) was upgraded. In addition, if enough prisoners were rescued, a weapon upgrade was given during the unloading process to the rescue chopper.

The Jeep's initial weapons consisted of a machine gun and a grenade launcher. The grenade launcher was upgradeable into a rocket launcher, which could be further upgraded to shoot long-range missiles, and two kinds of spread missiles.

These powerups were excellent and needed as you progressed through the game.
It should be noted that in the arcade versions I played the machine gun always fired upwards, but there were versions where it fired in the direction the jeep was facing. This method was employed in the ZX Spectrum version of the game.

This all worked well in the original arcade game and for me was up there with Commando and Ikari-Warriors. It's a shame that the Speccy version seems to be a lazy port over with poor graphics, jerky scrolling, stodgy controls and little playability.

The screen moves so badly you can barely see an enemy before it is on top of you meaning you can be shot before you even know where it came from. The graphics are terrible, and the scrolling is more jerky than a slice of beef jerky that is being jerked around by a jerk.

This conversion of a good arcade game was sooo bad it still brings me out in a cold sweat. Yearghs!

On Release:
The original arcade game was never mega-popular but the game was reasonably anticipated and a preview appeared in good old crash magazine. When it was released in late 1987 most mags and gamers noted the game as yet another poor arcade conversion, something which had plagued all of the 8-bit machines. There was nothing worse than a half-arsed attempt at converting an arcade game to a home computer.

The Test Of Time:
Well twenty odd years on and this game is as bad as ever. The original coin-op is still worth a blast but please avoid this one on yer Speccy. Comedy value only.

We recommend getting hold of the real hardware - but if not then download a ZX Spectrum emulator and download anything but this game for the ZX Spectrum. Alternatively you could try and play it online.

GENRE: Arcade Game (Vertical Scroller)
RELEASE DATE: 1987
RELEASED BY: Konami Ltd
DEVELOPER(S): Cyclone (David Whitehouse, Stephen Lockley, Adrian Carless)
PRICE: £7.95 - UK (£2.99 on re-release)

It should have been classic arcade action:


Arcade Games, Classic Games and ZX Spectrum Games

Spectrum game - Jetpac - ZX Spectrum retro game

ZX Spectrum Jetpac A classic ZX Spectrum game from those classic developers Ultimate (Play The Game), Jetpac must be the amongst best games you could get for a 16K Spectrum.

After this game (if my memory serves) Ultimate only developed for 48K ZX Spectrum's (and above - once the later models came out).

Jetpac was the first in a series of arcade games to feature the character Jetman (see ZX Spectrum Game Characters) and was the first game to be released by Ultimate (in 1983).



Jetpac is also a classic game for being one of the first titles to be available on ROM format (ROM's loaded up data to the ZX Spectrum in an instant via Sinclair Interface II)

Now that we've got all that out of the way, onto the game...

Jetpac begins with our space-faring hero Jetman on an alien world. His rocket ship is lying around the wrap around screen in three seperate stages. Deadly aliens roam around the screen and contact with them means instant death - and the loss of one of your three lives.

Three platforms are dotted around the screen which Jetman can stand on. Jetman can walk along the ground and platforms - but by using his jetpac can zip around the screen in all directions quickly.

What was immediately apparent was the nice gravity and inertia effect as you jetted around. With the screen being 'wrap around' if you exited left then you would appear on the right hand side and vice-versa. Pretty neat.

To escape the planet you had to build the rocket by adding the two stages to the base which was parked at the bottom of the screen. Once the rocket was built cannisters of fuel would drop down onto the screen randomly and you had to pick them up (they could be collected in mid-air) and drop them onto the rocket.

The rocket would start to 'fill up' in colour, it took five cannisters to fuel it completely. Bonus items such as gem stones also fall down and can be collected for extra points - but you don't have to pick them up to complete the level.

Once the rocket was fueled you could fly into it and it would take off before landing on the next (identical) screen.



Each screen has different types of aliens to contend with - all with different behaviour patterns (rather than just being different graphics). Some aliens home in on you (annoying buggers!) whilst some rapidly fly across the screen.

Luckily Jetman is also armed with a powerful laser which can be fired in the direction he is facing - and can even be fired 'wrap around' meaning you could fire it to the left 'edge' of the screen and it would appear on the right hand side! Very cool stuff indeed.

The rocket only has to be contructed on the first screen - it stayes together on subsequent screens until eventually it changes into a different model. Now the new model has to be built and stays built until the next one, and so on...

Jetpac is one of those 'never ending' games, eventually you will have seen all of the alien types (if you're a very good player of course) and you begin back with the aliens from level one.

On Release:
When it was released in 1983 Jetpac was a revelation. Ultimate had created a simple platform cum shooter which featured nice gravity effects, basic enemy AI and a superb wrap around screen - all within 16K of memory! Gamers loved Jetpac and it put Ultimate play the game firmly on the map. The follow up to Jetpac was eagerly awaited.

The test of time:
Jetpac is a very simple yet still surprisingly playable game. The controls are nice and responsive and the inertia effect works perfectly. Things can get hectic while you try to shoot the aliens, collect the bonus items, pick up the fuel... All in all, Jetpac is a true classic game and the fact that it was squeezed into a paltry 16K of memory makes us bow down and worship at the feet of Tim and Chris Stamper. Jetman also became a bit of a cult ZX Spectrum character over the next few years. Give it a go - it's still addictive!

Unfortunately Ultimate: play the game titles are not availabe for download - so get yourself a ZX Spectrum and play it for real - you won't be able to play this one online!

GENRE: Platform Game (Arcade Game)
RELEASE DATE: 1983
RELEASED BY: Ultimate Play The Game
DEVELOPER(S): Tim Stamper, Chris Stamper
PRICE: £5.50 (cassette) £14.95 (microdrive) - UK

Jetman builds his rocket and fuels it up in yet another classic arcade game...


Classic Games, Arcade Games and ZX Spectrum Games

ZX Spectrum Games - Jet Set Willy - ZX Spectrum retro game

ZX Spectrum Jet Set Willy
Since we're in platform game mode (looking at Brian Bloodaxe last week), we may as well keep it that way as we look at one of the most famous platform games (perhaps any game) of all time.

Jet Set Willy (or JSW) was the follow up to the legendary Manic Miner (which we looked at back in May) and was released in May of 1984 by Software Projects. Once again programmer Matthew Smith stuck gold with Jet Set Willy which ended up being even more popular than Manic Miner.



In fact, this really is a true classic game that is known throughout the gaming community.

Our hero Miner Willy had become very rich due to his discoveries in the lost mines of Surbiton - his exploits as a 'manic miner' had paid off. Willy was now living the high life in a huge mansion which boasted more than sixty rooms (game screens - clever eh?) and had just thrown a huge party. The guests had left the place in a mess and Willy's housekeeper (the fearsome Martha) would not allow our poor tired hero get to his scratcher until the whole house had been tidied up.

And so begun Jet Set Willy....

Jet Set Willy managed to capture the magic of Manic Miner and added on more style, more locations and more fiendish puzzles to overcome. This arcade game featured the same wacky humour (such as rooms called 'we must perform a quirkafleeg' and the 'nightmare room' where Willy turned into a bat!)

The game also featured the usual strange range of nasties to avoid such as 'killer jellies' and rogue penguins - with each screen usually having it's own unique set of enemies adding more variety to the game.

Making the game a flick screen adventure was a good move by Smith too - a lot of the fun in the game could be had by 'going exploring' and trying to work out how to reach certain rooms. As usual your character could move left and right and could jump.

On at least one screen there was a swinging rope - a novel twist - which you had to 'jump' onto and use it to swing across the screen tarzan style. All of these touches made Jet Set Willy on the ZX Spectrum even better than the already classic Manic Miner.

This game also goes down as one of the first to feature 'anti-piracy' coding. Once the game had loaded you were presented with a screen asking for colour codes to be input - and the codes were stored within the cassette inlay card.


Jet Set Willy was a very addictive and innovative game when it was released and became one of the most talked about and POKED games in the history of 8-bit gaming. The game featured a yacht which was spread over two screens (Willy was VERY rich!) and rumours were spread about how you could activate a secret switch to make the yacht sail away to a tropical island! It was of course not true - but Matthew Smith would actually put this feature into the follow up Jet Set Willy II.

Unfortunately JSW was actually uncompleteable in it's original form. There were numerous bug throughout the game that made it impossible to collect all of the items - meaning you could not finish the game. The most famous of these was the 'Attic bug' - whenever you entered the room 'the attic' all other screens that you visited from that point onwards were corrupted. Software Projects quickly released POKES (the only way to 'patch' games back in those days) to fix all of the bugs in the program. Once the game was POKED it was possible to complete it.

Plenty of home users POKED the game themselves and a various editing tools became availabe allowing anyone to alter existing rooms and even to create new rooms and sprites. This made JSW last even longer for lots of gamers - an almost endless variety of rooms and nasties could be created this way.

On Release:
Jet Set Willy was the talk of classrooms, offices and homes up and down the land when it was released in 1984. Many had doubted that Matthew Smith could live up to his classic Manic Miner (a sequel to a true classic is never easy) - but despite the bugs in the game (people tended to 'not mind' these things back then if the game was good!) he did manage to surpass the first game in every way. The graphics were improved overall and sixty screens to explore was quite a feat back then. This and the imaginative rooms and nasties made JSW a top, top game. Crash Magazine smashed it, awarding JSW as whopping 95%.

The test of time:
Playing this game again brings back all of those memories - the room names come flooding back to you as you make your way around the mansion. It's never going to hold your attention for hours like it did twenty five years ago, but the old magic is still in there. JSW reminds me of a time when lots of locations in a game was totally impressive and a lot of the fun was simply finding new screens. Here in Spectrum Games we reckon (probably along with everyone else!) that Jet Set Willy is a true classic in the platform genre, and even a classic in the arcade genre.

We recommend getting hold of the real hardware but if not then download a ZX Spectrum emulator and download Jet Set Willy for the ZX Spectrum. Alternatively you could try and play it online.

If I was a rich man, dubba dubba dubba dubba dubba daahhh....

GENRE: Platform game (Arcade Game)
RELEASE DATE: May of 1984
RELEASED BY: Software Projects
DEVELOPER(S): The legendary Matthew Smith
PRICE: £5.95 - UK

Willy begins a long, long night in Jet Set Willy:


Classic Games, Arcade Games and ZX Spectrum Games