Reviews

Jumping Jack was one of the first games I ever played on the Spectrum. Simplistic but classic early 80's gaming from a time when instructions and redefinable keys were unnecessary. You get the idea of the game within 2 seconds of gaining the controls and then it takes about 2 hours to walk away. With rose tinted specticles pushed firmly onto my face, this is an original and classic piece of early spectrum gaming.

1983 Imagine Software (UK)
by Albert and Stuart Ball

I always remember playing this game for about 2 or 3 plays and them resetting the computer, it was so frustrating it really got on my nerves! So patience is REQUIRED to play this game.
Nonetheless it is a Spectrum classic, helping jack jump up the floors 'til he reached the top, thru all twenty screens.
In each screen Jack regains a rhyme of a poem and has to recite it in the end! Jump, Jack, jump! Aw, shucks! *reset*

3,5 points

Hard on both eyes and ears, this pathetic excuse for a game wasn't already good in its own time, now it's absolutely awful.

If your idea of fun is to wait 15 minutes or so staring at a mess of crude, color-clashing sprites, for the "right" time to jump through a hole in a platform, just to see another hole opening under your character's feet and being forced to start all over again, then this piece of garbage is for you.

Jumping Jack? Jumping Cack, I'd say.

Simple but effective game ... love the iconic main character.

You cannot have more fun with less elements.

Many games afterwards where inspired by this title.

Not superb but quite good.

The classic 'jump em up' where you have to reach the top of the screen avoiding the approaching hazards and not slipping through the holes as the ascend and descend towards you.

Simply drawn, clever premise, with a simple addictive hook of revealing the poem.

It is hard to separate out the nostagia when reviewing this one, but I'd say it remains very playable - a feeling that is backed up by the many remakes.

The author authorised a tribute port made for sale on Andriod recently expressing his charm and delight at the work (rather than crushing the project as other lees open coders may have chosen to). As a consequence the game is finding new favour from retro and new gamers, with strong reviewer approval for the game on the Android Play site.

Simple, fun and frustrating. It's a bit too simple to hold my attention for very long and you can spend ages at the bottom of the screen waiting for the first gap to appear.

Jumping Jack is quick and bold with skill his story will unfold...

Skill hmmm yes, and a nice portion of luck occasionally as well.

Jumping Jack is literally a game where the basis is "simplicity is key", the game is very simple indeed....Very simple.

So you are Jack our friendly neighbourhood bulbous headed stickman, and in all your creepy faced glory you have to make it to the top of the screen several times in order to read the poem that the game gives you roughly a line of every time you complete a level. After the first stage Jack is assaulted by a rather random selection of hazards. These hazards range from giant squids, witches, trains, and angry hillbilly types with shotguns to name a few.

As the game progresses more of this myriad of oddball enemies are added til' you get to the point where there's so many onscreen no matter how far you make it up you're likely to spend more time flapping around on the floor and falling back down to the bottom than anything else, as your ears are assaulted with the painful sounding crunches of enemies running over you, and the cascading beeps of you dropping and flailing around rather pathetically on the floor. All can be going so well then one mistake and the whole lot goes completely tits up!

Anyway the graphics are simplistic as I have already stated Jack is a rather portly bonced stick man with a bit of a peado face, and the holes in the floor are well just that holes in the floor. The enemies are quite simplistic too, but represent their character quite well regardless. Basically I guess I'm saying you can tell what the majority of them are supposed to be.

The game is fun, and addictive, and does have that one more go factor, well it does until you get flattened a few times then you might find you want to punch the screen through instead. The only problem I really have with the game is sometimes as you ascend through the holes the extra holes that are generated sometimes appear right behind you, and you drop before you have a chance to react. This isn't so bad on the first few levels, but it gets a little shall we say shady when practically every inch of the screen is out to get you. Annoyingly enough this little problem can occur on the very first screen with the very first hole you jump through pretty much meaning you make 1 move and die, as falling to the very bottom causes you to lose a life. You get an extra life every 4 or 5 screens or so, but once you get about 4 or 5 screens in this doesn't really help too much.

Anyway frustrations aside this is still a pretty sound idea for a game, and it's as fun as it is annoying. I often revisit this game and have done since I first played it about 30 years ago or so, so it can't be that bad can it?

It's a simple game and a very annoying game. There's not a whole lot you can say about this to be perfectly frank, expect you'll either spend ages trying with hope of reaching the top or you'll quit within ten minutes.

Continuing with the category of games that embarrass gamers, I can think of jumping Jack.

Although this is not exactly a bad game, rather an old one and with limitations.
Indeed many users are ashamed by Jumping Jack but there are much worse games out there. At least, I would put it in the most top side of the 2/5 games.
It is also a classic in the Spectrum platform land for 16Kb