Twenty-eight years after Willy's Great Adventure was first developed as a ZX Spectrum title, the retro game is finally releasing for the first time ever — not on the old Speccy platform but, with the help of Elite Systems, as a mobile release.
The title was originally developed as an homage to the classic Manic Miner, itself a ZX Spectrum release; however, while the game was never published, developer Terry Lloyd offered the title to Elite Systems — a studio currently working on an unrelated Miner Willy project.
"I can confirm it has never seen the light of day. Unless someone stole it off my computer and put it out there without me knowing," Lloyd said in a prepared statement.
"I've been playing it through again myself to test it, and I have to say I think it's one of the most complete and totally customized mods out there (in terms of all new rooms, tiles and sprites). Although there are some other good ones I've played, a lot of them keep the original graphics and just have new rooms, while some change the graphics but the rooms and map are very similar to the original.
"Whereas Willy's Great Adventure changed about 98 percent of the original stuff. Willy even has a new hat, an Indy style adventurer's Fedora."
Willy's Great Adventure: ZX Spectrum is currently available on the App Store, Google Play and Kindle Marketplace for $2. The game is also being developed for Windows Phone and Windows PC.