Bomb Jack

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.

Released: 22 March 1984
Platforms: Amstrad CPC Arcade Atari ST Commodore 16 Commodore 64 Game Boy Java virtual machine MSX Nintendo Switch PC-9800 Series PlayStation 4 SG-1000 Xbox Series X/S ZX Spectrum
Genres: Arcade Platformer
Developers: Tecmo Koei Tecmo Games
Publishers: Tecmo Hamster Corporation
Series: Bomb Jack
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: Side view
Themes: Action Fantasy
Country: Japan
Languages: English

About

Bomb Jack is a 1984 platform video game developed and published by Tehkan for arcades. It was released by Kitkorp in North America as its first arcade game. It was later ported to home systems and home computers. A commercial success, it was followed by several sequels: the console and computer game Mighty Bomb Jack, the arcade game Bomb Jack Twin, and Bomb Jack II, the last of which was licensed for home computers only.

Keywords

never-ending
collection marathon
retroachievements

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Bomb Jack is a hero who can perform high jumps and float in the air. His goal is to collect all 24 red bombs on the screen. The game's antagonists are enemies such as birds and mummies which, once they drop in the bottom of the screen, can morph into enemies such as flying saucers and orbs that float around the screen, making Jack lose a life if he touches them.

Once one bomb is collected, bombs will light up in sequence; if one lit bomb is collected, another will light up. Collecting bombs will increase the bonus meter at the top of the screen (lit bombs increase it more). When the meter is completely filled up, a circular bouncing "P" appears, and when collected, it will turn all the enemies into bonus coins for a short period during which Jack may collect them. Other similar bonuses are the B (Bonus) which increases the score multiplier (up to 5x), the E (Extra) which gives an extra life, and the rare S (Special), which awards a free game.

Reception

In Japan, Game Machine listed Bomb Jack as the third most successful table arcade unit of May 1984. The game topped the UK all-formats software sales chart in April 1986. On the machine-specific charts, the C64 version reached number one, while the Spectrum version was kept off the top of the chart by Green Beret. Two years later, Bomb Jack returned to the top of the UK all-formats sales chart when it was re-released on the Encore budget label.

Crash magazine gave the ZX Spectrum version a 92% rating, calling it "a great arcade conversion, don't miss it", while Zzap!64 was less enthusiastic for the Commodore 64 version, giving it 47%. Commodore User gave the Amiga version 6 out of 10, citing that the Amiga should be well capable of doing better on a then-four-year-old arcade game.

Legacy

Bomb Jack II is a licensed follow-up developed for 8-bit home computers by the British games publisher Elite Systems in 1986. The game went to number one on the UK sales charts, before being replaced by Feud.

Mighty Bomb Jack, released in 1986, is largely identical to the original game in almost all factors, except that the same screen layouts from the first game in the same sequence were now linked in a map-like continuous form by scrolling passages. Mighty Bomb Jack got less favorable reviews than the original game.