Bomb Jack
A hero in a blue leotard who flits about the screen, collecting the fuses of bombs set against the backdrop of famous landmarks and dodging a flock of enemies. Bomb Jack from 1984 is one of the most endearing and addictive platformers from the Japanese studio Tehkan, which later became famous under the name Tecmo.
The concept is refined in its simplicity. Twenty-four bombs are scattered across each screen, and your task is to collect them all. Jack can jump high and glide through the air, so you control his flight more than his walk. The real depth lies in the scoring system. If you collect the bombs in the order in which their fuses happen to be lit, you earn significantly more points and trigger chains of bonuses. The chase for a high score thus becomes the heart of the whole experience.
Enemies in the form of flitting monsters and birds roam the screen, and collecting a bonus coin temporarily turns them into harmless coins that you can gather without risk. The backgrounds of the individual levels are decorated with stylized silhouettes of the Egyptian pyramids, Greek temples, or futuristic cities, which gives the game an unmistakable atmosphere.
Bomb Jack became a big hit especially in Europe, where it saw countless ports to home computers like the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, or Amstrad CPC, and it was on these machines that many European players first came to know it. Its success led to the sequel Mighty Bomb Jack and other variations that developed the concept further.
Today Bomb Jack charms with its lightness and almost dance-like movement. Gliding through the air has a pleasant fluidity, and the effort to achieve a perfect bomb chain draws you into a competition with yourself. It's the pure joy of movement and collecting, without a single superfluous element.
Why play: For the light, almost weightless gameplay and the clever scoring system that turns simple collecting into an endless chase for the perfect score.
Game 40 of 258 for Arcade
The same title elsewhere (1)
The Tehkan arcade board handled smooth animation of Jack over colorful backdrops of famous landmarks with swarms of enemies and no slowdown, making the cabinet visually rich for its time. The Amstrad CPC port, released by Elite Systems, ranked among the more convincing home conversions of arcade games in the mid-1980s — the CPC's decent color palette for an 8-bit computer kept backgrounds and characters recognizable, and gameplay kept the pace of jumping and collecting bombs. Even so, backdrop detail had to be simplified and the number of enemies moving at once reduced compared to the arcade so the game wouldn't bog down on weaker hardware. For the smoothest, most colorful experience, the arcade version remains the reference.
