Bomb Jack
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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In Bomb Jack, the player controls Jack, who must collect all the bombs in order to complete the current round and go onto the next one. This sounds easy, right? Wrong! Making Jack's task difficult are numerous enemies such as birds, mummies, turtles, and orbs.

In each round, collecting a number of bombs results in a bonus coin appearing, and collecting this coin will make the player's score increase 2 to 4 times. More often than not, the "power ball" appears, and when you collect this, you can defeat enemies and have more time to collect all the bombs. There is also the "E" coin, which gives Jack one additional life, but rarely does this coin appear.

The more you progress through the game, the more difficult it becomes, as enemies travel more quickly to get you.

Trivia

The A BGM of the original arcade game is in fact a cover of the theme song of the animated TV series Spoon obasan (Mrs. Pepperpot), sung by Mari Iijima.

The Good

When Tecmo released Bomb Jack in the arcades in 1984, it was without a doubt a surprise hit. Shortly afterwards, developer Tehkan and publisher Elite Systems got the license to create and publish the game on the home computers available at the time. These ports were well received, but it was the Commodore 64 version that stood out the most. Not only was the original game very much intact, but the developers put in some of their own ideas so that the game would push the machine to its limits. These ideas worked well, and the Commodore 64 version turned out to be one of the best known home versions of the game. These new ideas include the increase in difficulty level by placing more baddies on screen, a new death sequence (Jack turns upside down with wings coming out of him!), and re-worked music. The idea that worked best was the re-worked music. The in-game and title music are one of the best tunes to come out of the Commodore 64s SID chip... They are just so memorable!

Bomb Jack is a lot of fun. It's simple nature and gameplay will keep you coming back for more. The game itself is very challenging... trying to beat the top score will take you ages! Collecting bombs have never been so much fun!

The Bad

It's not quite like the original. With more baddies on screen, different music and death sequence, you might be disappointed in some way or another.
