[Throughout this project, I will be handing over this space to the viewpoints of others for guest posts. This one comes from Josh Bird, who you can find on twitter @DrJoshuaBird]
First appearing in arcade form, the 2D platformer Bomb Jack was to become a mainstay of the early home computer gaming scene. Versions later appeared on the Amstrad, Commodore 64 and Amiga — as well as the Spectrum. It was also eventually ported to Nintendo consoles like the Game Boy and Famicom.
My first experience with Bomb Jack was on a coin-operated arcade cabinet located outside the fish and chip shop in a beachside town a few hours south of Sydney that my family visited in the mid-’80s. The upright cabinet immediately caught my eye due to the captivating image of a horned and masked character – the titular ‘Bomb Jack’ – captured mid-flight, arms raised with flowing cape.
At that time though I was still unsure whether ‘Bomb Jack’ was this individual’s name or his profession. While I now am quite certain Bomb Jack is the main character’s nom de guerre, at the time it did not seem unrealistic for a profession of ‘Bomb Jack’ to exist—something akin to a Lumber Jack, but working in the medium of bombs, I guess.
In the game, one guides the demonic-looking Mr Jack as he leaps across a 2D screen trying to collect the bombs and avoiding the many enemies whose touch means certain death. Little effort is made to explain the context in which Bomb Jack finds himself. Why is he collecting bombs? From where does he gain his super powers? And most importantly, why is he dressed like one of Beelzebub’s minions? We are left to draw our own conclusions.
In his quest to secure all of the bombs and progress to the next level, our devilish friend is able to make use of his cape to float in the air for a few seconds, allowing the player to guide him as he falls. While it does take some getting used to, this mechanic is your key tool to clear the screen of bombs without being hit by one of the various baddies. The enemies themselves are a curious mixture of plodding mummies, emaciated buzzards and—perhaps least threatening of all—a series of dotted spheres.
Perhaps one of the most engaging elements of Bomb Jack are the background scenes. Changing with each level, the background images consist of a series of postcard-like vistas of various locations across the world – the Pyramids in Egypt, the Acropolis in Greece, and somewhat more disappointingly a random office block somewhere. Sadly, in the Spectrum version these are generally rendered in an uninspiring monotone.
Still, for the younger me, the sight of the globe-trotting Jack was enough to conjure up visions of the exotic world that lay far beyond the fish and chip shop in a seaside town two hours south of Sydney.
