Welcome to what will hopefully be the first of many reviews for what we consider to be great classic games. We are not trying to be the first, the only or the best classic reviewers around. We understand that we cannot make everyone happy. Bearing this in mind, we’re here to write about our experiences playing these games and can only hope to influence people who have never heard of or played these games to enjoy them as much as we have. So without further ado, we’ll get this started with Jumping Flash.
To say that Jumping Flash was weird is an understatement. The first time I played this game was on a PlayStation demo disc. First-person was still relatively new to me outside of shooters like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. Nevertheless I was suddenly thrust face-first into a world of floating islands, gigantic frying pans with eggs and a carrot-shooting mechanized rabbit called a robbit. This was an age when jumping three consecutive times was all but unheard of. After my initial shock I was quite pleased to hear that the music was awesome and that exploring the vivid worlds would be an immersing experience, instead of a mind numbing trek through lifeless realms. There are blimps with adverts, dragonflies and even windmills all in the first level of the game.
The background story for the game is pretty strange as well; an evil Baron has stolen large chunks of land from the surface of your planet and is using them for his own nefarious purposes. You must board your mech-like robbit and use it to fight against the Baron and his henchmen to free the ill-gotten land from his floating space-octopus…thing and return it to where it came from.
I can only speculate as to the state of mind of the folks who created this game, but I’ve always imagined that the planning meetings went something like this:
Developer 1: “Hey man, why don’t we put frying pans on top of the floating islands?”
Developer 2: “That’s a great idea! The frying pans could have eggs cooking inside of them!”
Developer 1: “Do you think we should call them skillets instead?”
Developer 2: “Nah, it’s too late for that. Get this down to the artists!”
..Or something like that anyways.
I had all but forgotten about Jumping Flash until a couple years ago. When I remembered how much I enjoyed the game I immediately set out to procure a copy so that I could play it, but was met with defeat time and again as I checked all of my usual used game outlets. Even the shop that usually carried rare (see: expensive) games hadn’t ever seen a copy of the game come through their doors. When I found out that this game was available over the PlayStation Network I glanced down and noticed that my wallet had somehow made its way into my hand. If you’ve never played Jumping Flash before, or just can’t find a copy anywhere, it’s well worth the couple dollars it would cost you to download through PSN.
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