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The best 400 kb of Rock'n'roll and FX there was
In 1968 The Rolling Stones recorded a certain rock and roll recording then called "supernatural Delta blues by way of Swinging London", or as we now know the groundbreaking hit song, Jumping Jack Flash.
In 1990 Infogrames released a maybe-not-so-groundbreaking, but definitely a rulebreaking little concoction of cutesy graphics, superb music and in-your-face rock attitude called Jumping Jack'Son.
In 2008 a spark that had been on its way for these some 20 years finally reached the light bulb in my head, making me realize there's a little more kinship between these two than just the seemingly accidentally similar names... (Although I must say my mite lengthy "ignition leads" were spurred by the absence of the game manual explaining all of this).
The title screen tune is indeed the musician Stephane Picq's hearty homage to the 'Stones hit song with the chords following the original quite 1:1! And the music is the thing about this game on more than just one level!
... It's a gas, gas, gas!
In fact, music is THE thing on every level of the game (lousy pun intended). You are Jumping Jack Son, the last hope of Rock'n'roll in a world where classical music and its evil cronies have taken over.
In order to save the day, you must fight fire with fire and outplay those fidgety fiddles and dreary trombones with a good, fat, selection of rock music!
Now all you need to do is to find those albums and carry them to the nearest LP player and sweet tunes start to wash away the classical grime in no time. Now, how to do that? A picture is worth more than thousand words:
The starting level. Things are easy, enemies scarce and the colors peachy.
The guy with the over-developed nose and an apparent jumping leg syndrome, that's you! You see those colorful blocks amidst the normal grey tiles? You need to turn a group of those blocks into the same color by jumping on them in order to obtain an album of that color. Then carry the album into a player with the matching hue. Easy?
Not for long. After the prelude, you are gradually introduced to a symphony of destruction with an assorted jumble of evil instruments, teleports, invisible tiles, and if you're lucky, hidden levels with the possibility to acclaim a much-needed password to skip right to higher levels. All this conducted by lightning-shooting tuxedo-wearing classical-snobbing... conductors.
Watch out for the double bass lurking in the corner. He's really nasty.
Luckily our bouncing buddy has an array of countermeasures against the agents of antimusic. By default Jack'son carries three C-cassettes, apparently full of Alice Cooper and sorts, as instant barricades that can hold the baddies at bay for a while. These won't help for long though, but thankfully random items appear on the level on fast pace and they are all helpful, among the best of them the extra jukebox, which allows you to haul around more than one album at a time. The rest of the artifacts... let them be mysteries for you to discover. It's more fun that way!
Music to your ears... and eyes
Original is the word to describe this little jewel of a game. In the time of ubiquitous platformers and shoot-em-ups with the ambitious adventure games as the creme de la creme, few games dared to be different. OK, as a game as such, JJS is not that revolutionary, some puzzles, fast reactions and occasional item-hunting. But the details rock! (pun intended, again.)
For instance, the idea of not only seeing your progress, but also hearing it is marvelous! With each album you begin to hear more of the killer tunes of the game: The first LP gives you drums, the second bassline and so on. I bet I'm not the only one who didn't wish to finish the level right away, but instead retired to a safe spot to rock to the tunes that range from heavy to 50's laid back doowop.
100+ colors to spare. the candy-colors look yummy.
Also, on the graphics section, things are looking good. The game ad boasts 27 colors on the main game screen and 100 colors on others. The combo of bright and pastel colors works well here and adds to the cartoonish feel. And for my special fetish, yes, the variety of those wonderful little objects, power-ups and such make me hum and vibrate with joy.
Sometimes along comes a game that has a certain kind of theme but manages only to pull it halfway through, being nothing more than a mediocre, half-hearted try to have a special twist. Thankfully there are also those games that go all the way, making every last little nibble of detail its own.
With all its LP's, cassettes, trombones and jukeboxes Jumping Jack'Son is one of those games. A fun little piece of music that is enjoyable even after a couple of decades.
Just like the Rolling Stones song that inspired it!
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The big eyed potato nose is
darn sympathetic.
I feel genuinely sorry every time
that mean old bass gives him a beating.
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Wa-wa-wa-buli-wa
Wa-wa-buli-wa-wa
Everybody
body body
buli body
Need I say more!
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The controls are snappy, the eccentric sound effects give a pleasing response to your actions and the easily eluding element of fun is definitely there. The only minor gripe is that in some levels you can get stuck with nothing to do except to run..er, jump straight to your death in the form of the awaiting horrible cymbals.
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A bit short and although the later levels' difficulty curve goes up a
little too steeply, it doesn't
stop you from jumping with the Jack Son all night long.
And cranking up the vol. |
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Get Amiga Forever with pre-installed Workbench, games, applications, and much more.
It also contains the original Amiga ROM-files, 100% legally!
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