Jumping Flash! (PSX)

Wow, a 3D platformer on the PlayStation, released the year before Super Mario 64. The signs aren't good, but maybe it'll surprise me.

I left the menu on for a while and it started flashing up handy advice. Grab carrots, go to goto exit. Got it.

It's nice enough to run through the controls with a quick demo too. It's a shame more games don't do this. The only other one that springs to mind is Ranger-X on the Mega Drive.

This is an especially ancient PSX game though, so no analogue control.

The game starts with a rendered FMV intro, with a voice over explaining how this guy (Baron Aloha) is a bit of a bastard.

He's put into a motion a sinister scheme to send his robots out to swipe huge chunks of this world to use in another, equally sinister, scheme. (He's going to turn them into private resorts.)

It seems like he's really carved the place up, he's even taken the clouds! But then again those chunks being carried away don't actually seem that big. Plus it's called 'Crater Planet', so maybe it looked like that to begin with.

This looks like a job for Robbit, heroic bunny robot spaceship! Personally I would have gone with 'Rabbot', because Robbit sounds more like a name for a robot frog, but whatever.

Well it looks nice enough for a early PSX game. Oh shit, a robot frog!

Uh, how do I steer this thing?

Never mind, I've found the main guns instead. Crisis averted! I even got a time stop power up for my trouble.

The game's played in first person only, and there's no strafe button. I'm stuck manoeuvring Robbit around with just the d-pad, which is made even more awkward by the painfully slow turning speed.

Despite flying around in the intro, in game Robbit walks around on foot. This is a platformer, not a Star Fox style shooter.

Holy crap the guy can jump though. He has double jumps actually, and on the second jump the camera spins around to point downwards so I can see where I'm landing. It's actually a pretty clever system and it works so well I'm surprised I haven't seen any other games do it.

Also while I'm in this view the d-pad strafes instead of turning, so I can fine tune my landing. I didn't even notice at first because of how natural it is.

One problem though.... where the hell are these other jetpod carrots I'm supposed to be collecting? The level isn't much bigger than what you can see here, but it's big enough for things to drop off my radar.

I guess I'll just go bouncing around these floating platforms until a yellow 'JETPOD' marker pops up on screen.

Ah, there's one of them, on that floating island over there. Now I just need to find the floating island path that leads over there.

You know, the graphics in this remind me of Katamari Damacy somehow. It's got a similarly bright angular cartoony style to it. And the music... well, it definitely suits the game.

And little Robbit himself looks like a terrified Pikachu. Awww.

All jetpods collected, and I reach the exit with time to spare. Lots of time in fact, which suits me just fine.

It's already a bit of a pain in the ass to hunt all the carrot pods down, so I'm glad there's no pressure to rush it.

Wow, level 2 is set in Morrowind. No change to the gameplay here, I've got to grab four more carrots and get to the exit.

Hey, I've collected another special weapon from somewhere... and it's pushed one of the ones I already had right out of my inventory. Doesn't matter, I have no idea what any of them do anyway. All I know is that I'm jumping on a giant bouncy fried egg being cooked over a volcano in a massive floating frying pan. Also it hurts so I should probably stop doing it.

Oh, one other small thing I've figured out. Robbit doesn't actually have a double jump, he has a triple jump.

I've reached level 3, and... this is new. I think I may have reached my first boss fight. It'd definitely explain why a boss health bar has just appeared on screen.

He likes to breathe fire, but that's okay, I've got some fireworks of my own.

Like these rockets! I just knocked a clear fraction of his health off with this bombardment. I only get to use each special attack once before it's used up though, and I can't help but notice that my health is still lower than his.


SOME HOPPING AROUND AND SHOOTING LATER.

The dragon boss explodes, and the last connection is severed. Now the islands are free to... I dunno, float in space aimlessly I guess? Robbit doesn't seem to care much, he's already on his way back to the mothership to fly off to the next batch of levels.

Sucks for everyone left trapped on them I guess. But Baron Aloha can't set them up as resorts now and that's the important thing.

World 2, level 1 is Egyptian themed. Baron Aloha even swiped the Sphinx. What a total bastard.

I found a bonus level while jumping around. I've got to burst every balloon to win apparently.

It was pretty weird to start with already, and this psychedelic power up pick up I just picked up isn't helping. Or maybe it is helping, I haven't got a clue what it does except make the screen go trippy.

Well I fucked up that bonus stage... whoa what's wrong with it's face? Oh, I guess this is what Baron Aloha looks like when he's not menacing people from the shadows.

You know what, I've changed my mind about this particular slice of land. He can keep it.

The next level mixes things up with an enclosed maze of corridors with low ceilings to stop me from jumping. Suddenly it's turned into a mediocre first person shooter with slow turning and no strafing. Plus these damn enemies take way too long to kill so I'm just going to ignore them and run past.

And now one-way conveyor belts make their first appearance, just to make it that little bit harder for me to find these damn jetpods.

Awesome, the carrot is finally mine, and I'm within sight of the exit!

Unfortunately I've only got 3 out of 4 jetpods, so now I have to backtrack to find the last one. But first, I've got to find my way around these conveyor belts again. Damn, this might actually be the first level I run out of time on.

At least it's made me appreciate the jumping levels more.

Oh hey, it's the Egypt world boss! It seems these things are on every third level. Time for him to feel the full force of my firework, uh, lasers!

Well that was a total waste of a perfectly good special attack. I think I need to aim for a weak point.

Oh great, now he's firing bouncing energy balls at me and there's nowhere I can hide. I can't even dodge them properly, because they can just bounce off a wall and hit me from behind.


TWO LIVES LATER.

Screw it, I'm just going to jump on him and shoot down at his head. It is a platform game after all.

Jumping on enemies a few times sometimes kills them, sometimes hurts me. In this case it doesn't seem to be doing anything, but the guns are definitely hurting him.

My tactics actually worked, and now I'm at world 3! You've seen 3-1 in that screenshot of the demo already, so here's level 3-2 instead.

I tried saving the game and loading it again to see how well that worked, and found out it only saves the world I reached, and nothing else. So I had to play through the first level again, and my score and lives counts were reset. I only had one life left though so I'm not complaining... this time.

Sadly that Ferris wheel in the background doesn't turn, and it's a bitch to jump up because I keep bashing my head against the cars above me.

Hey, the rollercoasters work! Wait a minute, this is just another damn conveyor belt in disguise. Where's the way off?

The world 3 boss is... weird. But definitely imaginative.

As the cups spin around the outside of the level, different parts of the boss appear from them. Sometimes a punching arm rises out, sometimes an arm covered in spikes that fire out, and sometimes a head or two. Which fire rings at me from their mouth.

Wow, my old tactic of jumping on them works pretty well here too. Yay for downwards facing camera angles.

I lost a life between screens, but it wasn't my fault! Well it wasn't entirely my fault. I kind of walked off the level by accident. Instant kill.

His other cups shattered, the evil genie pulls himself together and makes one last attempt to kill me. Do I have what it takes to defeat him in his final and most deadly form?

Yeah I did actually. But I think I'm done with the game now.


You know, that really wasn't so bad. It's slick, well made and imaginative. But most of the challenge so far has come from searching the levels for carrot jetpods rather than dodging the enemies or negotiating the level, and that just isn't much fun to me. It's a shame though because otherwise this actually isn't a bad game. It seems like the kind of thing someone else could really get into.