Jumpman, the 1980′s Atari/Commodore/Apple platformer, is being brought back to life by Davis Ray Sickmon Jr and his team at Midnight Ryder in the form of Jumpman Forever.
For anyone cursed with the ignorance of youth, Jumpman was released in 1983 for the Atari 400/800 by Randy Glover and Epyx. The eponymous Jumpman is tasked with defusing Bombs by getting to them without being killed by falling from the precarious levels or flying darts. Also the bombs were placed on Jupiter by terrorists.
What set Jumpman apart from other platformers of it’s time was a mixture of clever level design, balanced controls and a bigger and more varied catalogue of levels than games like Donkey Kong. Different enemies and obstacles appeared on different levels including malfunctioning robots, vampire bats, disintegrating platforms and invisible levels. For a lot more information, and a proper love letter to Jumpman check out the Kickstarter.
I’ve been playing about with a very early preview build of the game the last few days and it’s becoming fairly addictive. I like a good puzzle game, especially one that has the right balance of frustration. I like a game that frustrates me somewhere between giving up and walking away and smashing my keyboard through my wall.
Whilst some of the frustrations do come from some gameplay issues, this isn’t even a beta version of Jumpman Forever, so it’d be unfair of me to criticise them. Despite the nagging shortcomings (again, it’s pre-beta) when I did understand the abilities of my own pixelated bomb disposal expert the gameplay is simplistic enough to learn but I imagine that mastery of the mechanics take many years. It is pleasantly retro in it’s sound design and appearance and has real potential as a viable source of entertainment/justification for smashing keyboards.
I played the PC preview and I get the feeling that Jumpman Forever will be best suited to anyone that has a joystick or for a mobile game. The retro graphics and the engaging puzzles would be really suited to a smartphone with a decent sized screen or a tablet. Until you throw your phone at a wall/floor/fellow commuter. Not because it is bad. But because you haven’t mastered it yet.
The Kickstarter only has a few days left to run, and is very close to it’s $20,000 target. The ultimate aim to have a multi-platform release for Jumpman including joystick support and releases for Ouya, iOS, Android, Mac OS X as well as Windows.
If you’re interested in the Retro Revival and/or have fond memories of Jumpman check out the Kickstarter, Midnight Ryders website and Davis Ray Sickmon Jr. on Twitter.
