Bomb Jack
The digital 80's
I loved games, and in my infancy I used to be an "adult playing observer", passing hours watching people inserting 25 peseta coins for additional lifespan in Gauntlet, or trying to consume all Out Run's in-game melodies and the colorful USA-wide scroll. Defender, Space Invaders, Galaxian or Donkey Kong are the first ones I remember, full of charm, in bars, mini-golf resources, or swimming pools near León, with a delicious smell to tapas.
Bomb Jack (ボンジャック) is an arcade platform game that was released in 1984 by Tehkan (known today as Tecmo). It was followed by two official sequels, the console and computer title Mighty Bomb Jack, and the arcade game Bomb Jack Twin.
The player controls Jack, a superhero who can leap and glide. Someone has planted 24 bombs at famous tourist sites (the Sphinx and Great Pyramids, the Acropolis, Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, and two cityscapes resembling Miami Beach and Hollywood, which appear only as screen backgrounds rather than unique game locations). Jack must fly around the screen to collect the bombs. Each screen uses a different configuration of platforms upon which Jack may run and jump. Eventually, the levels reoccur a number of times with increasing difficulty.
Jack "defuses" the bombs by simply touching them. As soon as he has touched the first, he triggers a sequence in which another bomb's fuse lights up, and so on. A player can score a bonus in each round by touching 20 or more bombs in the correct lit-fuse sequence. Jack may also defuse an unlit bomb by touching it, but this impedes his opportunity to score the bonus for that screen. It also delays the appearance of the game's bonuses and power-ups.
Amstrad CPC version
Commodore 64 version
Keywords:
1984 in video gaming
1985 in video gaming
1992 in video gaming
1993 in video gaming
Acropolis
Amiga
Amstrad CPC
Arcade game
Atari ST
Atari XE
Bavaria
Beatles
Bomb Jack
Bomb Jack Twin
Commodore 16
Commodore 64
Computing platform
Elite Systems
Extra life
Game Boy
Game designer
Great Pyramids
Hollywood
Java Platform, Micro Edition
Jean-Michel Jarre
Killer List of Videogames
Lady Madonna
MSX
Magnetic Fields (album)
Mari Iijima
Miami Beach
Mighty Bomb Jack
MobyGames
Multiplayer game
Neuschwanstein Castle
Platform game
Raster graphics
Sega SG-1000
Single player
Sphinx
Spoon Obasan
Superhero
Tecmo
Tecmo Classic Arcade
Video game developer
Video game genres
Video game publisher
Wii
World of Spectrum
ZX Spectrum
Content extracted from Wikipedia, where you can find its license details.
Ignacio Javier Gómez Rodríguez (igjav). OS developer. Naive power.