Bump 'n' Jump

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"In another attempt to port popular arcade games to the Intellivision, this time Mattel used another Data East title and ported Bump 'n' Jump. I have to admit that I love the arcade game, and this port is quite faithful. The levels are the same, and all the elements of the original arcade game are here. The sounds, graphics, and control resemble the arcade game as close as it is going to get on the Intellivision.
"For those of you who are using a graphical browser, you will notice that there are 27 screenshots total here. I believe this was the first game that William Moeller and I took screenshots of during my second visit. William was taking the screenshots here, and he seemed to randomly press F9 every few seconds. The same was true for Beamrider, but this time I decided to post all the screenshots, no matter how insignificant, because whereas Beamrider has only the blue 3-D grid to look at, Bump 'n' Jump has a wide variety of scenery. I love to advance levels and see the seasons change. Also, on higher levels when the seasons repeat, I enjoy the subtle color changes -- no two levels have the exact same look.
"Of course, in the Intellivision version, one can cheat by jumping off the left side of the screen and positioning the car so the left half sticks out on the right side. Upon landing the car will drive on an invisible roadway, oblivious to everything, including the water hazards. Just be sure to jump back onto the roadway before the level ends. Even with this cheat, I have never made it further than Level 15 or so simply because I have never had the patience to sit and map out the number of water hazards before the end of each level -- and I have owned this game for more than twelve years!
"I see the programmers also knew about the trick to display stationary graphics over a scrolling background. I think it would have been better to display 'Jump OK' when the player's speed reaches 100mph rather than changing the readout from red to black, but that can be easily overlooked. The one major shortcoming on the Intellivision version is that the screen scrolls too 'blockily;' while moving at top speed, the scrolling skips so many pixels at a time that some of the background appears to move up rather than down. This shortcoming could have been used in other games to produce a pseudo-parallax scrolling effect." Rating: 4/5 -- Mike Hayes

• MIDI file of the theme music