‘Jet Set Willy’ stands alone in gaming’s beautiful incoherent age
Jet Set Willy belonged to a wild, unnerving and playful gaming era unrecognizable to young people today
Next year it will be 40 years since the release of ‘Jet Set Willy’ on the ZX Spectrum. An event that helped inspire one of the most deliciously moreish eras in gaming.
‘Jet Set Willy’ emerged amidst a sort of bewildering whirlwind in the early 1980s. A moment that appeared almost out of nowhere and one that is difficult to put into words.
Video games pulsated with a kind of electric life force charged with a nervous energy. The squirrely sounds and moving images on the loading screens, almost confrontationally synthetic, felt like making contact with an alien lifeform.
The sheer feeling of just being there in this new realm was outrageous. As if stepping inside your own computer. An interior world that seemed both bizarre and utopian. It was as though we were witnessing a hidden reality that had somehow been here all along, even if we hadn’t been able to see it.
And at the center of it all, there appeared ‘Jet Set Willy’, as if some sort of entity from an alternate dimension.
Willy himself seemed like an essentially kind, polite, slightly serious character, trapped inside his own sealed world. A tightrope walker in the outer realms where everything is bathed in an irresistible neon glow.
It is hard to get a sense of just how unsettling and emotionally blissful this was. Strange entities ensnared in unending repetitions gave the impression of an eerily earth-like quality. The amalgamation of suffering, humor, and absurdity woven into a bright digital tapestry was mesmerizing.
It was really a peculiar masterpiece with a kind of psychedelic residue from the 1970s reimagined in the technological wonderland of the 1980s.
And the effect of all this was staggering. A triumph of free expression which seemed at the time like a sort of gaming Woodstock. It stood as an audacious and blistering quantum leap in game design.
Despite its binary surface, ‘Jet Set Willy’ also managed to speak to something bigger. Here was Willy, a solitary figure navigating a labyrinth of interconnected chambers, where each abrupt transition offered a moment of euphoria, swiftly replaced by the tease of what lay ahead. It was a testament to our ceaseless craving for the uncharted.
In a way, we find ourselves both in the role of Willy, but also in the very looping relics that held him captive. We too are trapped in our own meaningless loops. Part of something bigger, equally meaningless, but nonetheless fascinating.
These partially realized beings seemed to gaze back at us, their repetitive movements in an ageless void, hinting at our own entanglement with the cosmic indifference of the universe.
Needless to say, there appears to be a bit of existential unease to all this.
At which point, it’s worth acknowledging the creator of this digital hallucination — Matthew Smith. A man bearing an aptly unremarkable name, who appears to have said relatively little about his creation. It’s conceivable that he may have never ventured down this path had he been burdened with the task of articulating it.
Seen only in glimpses of rare interviews, he comes across as a sincere, if slightly withdrawn and unsettled character. At times, he exudes an altogether confusing demeanor — something slightly disturbing yet undeniably refreshing.
This appears to be someone who, at that time, may not have been pegged down by the narrative, who regarded the complex entanglements of structures and societal expectations with a bemused shrug of the shoulders.
And as such, he stands as a curious figure. His apparent detachment from it all seemed to serve as the bedrock for his unassuming yet remarkable vision.
Perhaps amidst his embrace of ambiguity and uncertainty, lies the essence of ‘Jet Set Willy’ — a kind of thoughtful incoherence that is nevertheless maximally insightful and interesting.
Maybe by doing away with all the embellishments and elaboration, we end up with greater tone, sensation, and connection. A place somewhere on the edge of conceivability, where the mind is free to indulge in the simple thrill of the spectacle, and explore and interpret things in its own way.
And this could be something that is worth noting, a subtlety that gets slightly lost in the modern cacophony of technology, convention and culture.
Gaming as a spectacle seems to have shifted over time. It feels a little too tight, as if it is trying too hard, looking for the answer where there is none. The industry’s ambitions may have grown bolder, but it has lost a bit of that raw sensitivity.
The initially appealing hyper-polished veneer often feels heavy, monotonous, or easily dismissible, far removed from the free spirit of the early ZX Spectrum games.
Perhaps it is really just the difference between raw authenticity and something else that, while meeting surface-level expectations, winds up leaving less of an emotional impression.
‘Jet Set Willy’ basically excelled at simulating an immersive experience from the sparsest means. There was a sweet undercurrent flowing through the visual abrasiveness. A sort of outer space weightlessness to it all. Simple game mechanics dancing in perfect harmony with the limitations of the technology. It was really a kind of accidental minimalism for the industry.
Perhaps ‘Jet Set Willy’ resonates with something that has gradually faded over time. His was an era marked by a different kind of emotional resonance; warmth and personality coming not from frictionless perfection, but a sort of unannounced and disorientating tease.
Graceful and gentle coexisted comfortably with dark, difficult and harsh. The scarily sped-up music laced with mischievous undertones was somehow all the while welcoming. The chambers adorned with wallpaper-like checkerboards, became a spectral stage — a curious and spooky snapshot into a far away reality.
In its pursuit of refinement and acceptability, gaming appears to have drifted away from all this, towards a certain sterility, almost as if confined to its own airtight world with limited room for the unexpected.
Perhaps our craving for certainty nudges us to steer clear of uncertainty and ambiguity. We end up making a story to simplify everything. But when these stories become too closed or too rigid, we inadvertently build a sort of self-imposed prison.
Mathew Smith, by keeping the world at a distance, was able to carve out a space without any clear sense or meaning, yet something that allowed us to switch off our minds a little and just feel the moment.
There may be more games of high visual impact now; but few untamed talents, digital experiences with the type of brilliance that whisks you away into strange and unfamiliar places. Willy was undoubtedly one of these.
