ARCADE ACTION CLOSE-UP BUMP 'n' JUMP

ARCADE ACTION CLOSE-UP BUMP 'n' JUMP

FEATURES

Speed is king in racing. If—at those blinding and illegal velocities—one happens to collide with a brick wall, it's adios, Charlie.

The Demolition Derby—the most dubious and American of all sports—on the other hand relies upon collisions. Ramming into other junkheaps creates a special kind of energy and an escape valve in an auto-obsessed world. You can get it all out of your system, crashing a hunk of steel evilly into the turkey in the next lane driving backwards.

Pul them together, and you have Bally's Bump 'N' Jump, a video race game with the capacity to bump and rebound from the other cars on a scenic unpredictable track.

Oh, one other thing. When you punch the jump button, your car flies.

In most videogames, touch alone can be deadly, not only with brick walls, but even with friendlier substances, like people. Carried over into life, this can be an unhealthy attitude, particularly when polite social gatherings or procreation are involved.

In Bump 'N' Jump, touching is allowed. You're free to bong into other vehicles without exploding. The point, however, is to try to shove other cars into the brick walls, so they explode and your points accumulate.

Most videogame races simulate life in the fast lane, giving the illusion that the player sits in the driver's seat and life is passing him by...very, very quickly. Bump 'N' Jump, as a road race and elbow room game, gives a bird's-eve-view of 32 seasonal, winding, treacherous courses. The landscapes of those courses, the action of the race, and some strategies are described below. But first, some playing eccentricities should be explained.

Certain macnines may be programmed to allow the game to continue on the same course where the final car exploded. Although there's only about six seconds time for you to stuff your hand into your pocket, fish around for another quarter, jam it in the slot, and punch the "one player" button, these machines are still preferable to those which are set always to begin again at beginner's course numero uno. Not only do you then have the option of learning, step by step, the ins and outs of many different courses, the machine also will keep track of how many quarters you've spent to get to that level. "Credits 28, Course 8," it will read, meaning you've spent exactly seven dollars and you still can't jump over the complex system of canals.

Every so many points (70,000 on the machine I favorj a new car is awarded, but how do you get points? Smashing otner cars is one way. Basically, there are three different bounties for forcing vehicles off the track, and it's a bump or be bumped world. For 200 points each, there are three kinds of clunkers in your way. One of them looks like a tractor. For 300 points, five different jalopies share the track, including an ugly green custom job, a boy scout derby, a treaded Caterpillar, ana a dump truck. That dumpster drops its load right in your path for a painful smashup, so beware.

And for half a grand, two monster jalopies ore coming at you. One's a sleek racer; the other wears a death's head on its hood.

All three values of the competition bump off the road with about the same amount of ease, so when you decide to get aggressive, go for the death's heads and racers.

You may not, however, wish to get so pushy. Nothing on the board rules informs you that you earn a bonus 50,000 points if you successfully make it through an entire course without smashing any cars. In the first two or three rounds, that may be the best approach to take. (Maybe it's best always to try to get through peacefully. You'd have to smash at least 50 cars to earn that much in a round.) Of course if you slip, causing even the most rickety heap to total, your point score is going to look pretty silly at race's end. But if you make it, 50,000 is a quantum leap, almost a bonus playing car in itself.

Getting through the course at all, with or without any pileups, earns bonus points. For every car forced into oblivion, an additional 300 to 500 points are racked up. "Congratulations! You smashed 6 cars!," the pit stop greeting proclaims.

THE ACTION

The jump button in Bump 'N' Jump adds an entirely new dimension to the racing game. Flying is a more accurate term for what happens when you find it necessary or convenient to rise above the mundane crowd down on the cluttered roadway. The car elevates, maintaining speed but giving you freedom to soar across the board to land at the spot of your choice. It's the kind of flying sensation associated with weird dreams, Freudian and fascinating.

No other cars share the atmosphere with you when you're jumping. Jumping is another way to earn points, too. When you land on another car, it gets smashed. Amazingly, you survive and go or to kill again.

Your digital speedometer signals the velocity in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Every race begins at 20 mph, with a top of 220. An eight-directional joystick directs the car left, right, diagonally, forward for faster, and backwards to slow down. Whatever speed is attained can be maintained by setting the joystick in the center for cruise control (□ risky leisure to attempt].

At speeds over 100, o "Jump OK" sign flashes directly above the speedometer. If you smash up without using your jump capacity, the sign scolds out a beep. When some obstacle is approaching—a lake or narrow passageway—another yellow warning sign flashes and beeps in advance. Depending upon the level ofthe course, you may want to leap at the first signal, wait for a last-minute flight, or ignore it entirely and drive slowly and carefully around the problem, if possible.

Certain islands appear in the game. The driver can choose to leap onto and off of them with whatever accuracy he can, or sometimes he can choose to take the slow narrow path along the side. If he opts for the islands, 1000 point bonuses can be earned at certain levels.

Sometimes there is no choice but to jump. In certain levels you are forced to spend a lot of time in the air. Many players, however, choose to stay in the air as much as possible, jumping whenever it's convenient to avoid crashing cars (if they're going for the no-smash bonus), and to avoid careful steering through trees and horse paths.

Every jump loses approximately 30 mph upon contact with the earth, and every up does hove its down. That being the case, it would seem that a speed of 130 would be necessary in order to do the necessary double-jump through tricky multiple island terrain. But, if you punch jump IMMEDIATELY after landing, without letting the car lose speed due to friction, you can mole an immediate rejump. Eventually, this method slows down too, and you have to race alonq the around to reqain speed.

THE STRATEGY

Jumpin' John (that's you) has to maintain a fairly high speed. Slow drivers with careful steering may have a crack at crashing more cars (which seem to multiply like fruit flies, materializing out of thin air), but there is too little control when travelling under 100.

Slower speeds are sometimes necessary. The more accomplished the player and the higher the course of play, the greater the necessity to pay very close attention to the speedometer. A jump triggered at 220 might overshoot and land the piayer in the Atlantic, while tricky side-to-side leapfrog jumping done at 150 might be just the requirement for a finished course.

Once you've caused any other car to smash, try to smash as many others as possible, particularly the death's heads and racers. There Is no fuel limitation or time restriction in finishing a course, so maintaining a safe competitive speed—trying to stay closest to the center of the roadway—will give you the best advantage for slam-driving.

One high scorer initialized the number one spot staying within only the first three levels, merely by bumping as many cars as possible and driving defensively through the familiar patterns.

Make use of the narrow one-lane paths. If, while flying above, it looks like you don't have enough oomph to land on the other side of the island, veer over and skid down to the narrows. This will save you more than once. !f, however, you get stuck behind a dump truck going 55, you might find no way out of becoming part of the roadside rubble.

Watch out for the race start. It happens fast, and a crash-up can occur before you've got your bearings. If you're trying to avoid smashing any cars, your game can be shot in o blink. In some patterns, the 8th for example, your car begins in a narrow wooded strip, sometimes directly behind a dump truck. You must accelerate from 20 to 100 quickly, without crashing into the sides, and then jump free of the obstacle.

Bump 'N' Jump signals a return to the basic, simple control game. It can be learned quickly, and mastered somewhat easier than learning to play the piano. The jump button allows for strategies not available in single control games, although no contortions or using your nose to hyperspace are necessary either. Pac-Man made its mark on the world by combining ingenuity with ore single control mechanism. Uncomplicated but involving. Bump 'N' Jump isn't simple-minded; just simple. It mixes rood fever witn the fun of flying. No speeding tickets. No skyrocketing Insurance ra

MR. DO—Welcome to the strange cosmology of Mr. Do, a magician with a penchant for plucking cherries and dodging the Sir Isaac Newton apple. If he does get clobbered by the falling fruit, he spins uncontrollably, lands on his head, turns into a mortal, and swears a tiny square word. This Dig-Duggian maze game has several variations, including a Kruli-like flying frisbee which the Do tosses at his enemies. It bounces off the sides of tunnels until it destroys something, then it returns to the chewing magician. When he snarfs up the bonus appetizer in the center of the screen, out come big blue munchies, the only characters capable of eating right through the apples in pursuit of Mr. Do. Because no one But Mr. Do can dig tne tunnels, and no one can escape from these seff-maae paths, it is up to the player to create routes that land the bad guys beneath the smashing apple. Either a burrower or □ lander be.

FRONT LINE—How's your body count? This unhealthy game gives the player a workout; three arms would help tremendously. While aiming and firing with the click knob in the right hand, you must also maneuver your lonely soldier with a left-handed joystick, around obstacles, away from boulders, and through neatly sculptured shrubbery gardens. War is hell, neatly trimmed. With the third control button (located to the right of the right-hand knob), unlimited grenades can be pitched in the direction of the gun. They blow up tne enemy, tanks, boulders, but not ugly shrubs. Look out for snipers hiding within. Your rifle fire, amazingly, can stop oncoming bullets, but if misaimed you'll simply kill the opponent at the same time he shoots you down, and both soldiers on the screen writhe in o leap of death and collapse to the dust. Where are the reinforcements? Forget if; you're on your own.

MS. PAC-MAN—What is this old girl's first name, I wonder? Barbara? Joanne? Raquel? She may be coy, but she gets around, you've got to give her that. In spite of eating habits which would make even a Beverly Hills dieter queasy, her pursuers are persistent. Slinky won't give her a moments rest, Pinky may be fey but he wants to go all the way, and Inky may be stinky but he wants to hold her ribbon. As for Sue, she's as ardent as the rest, even though we don't like to talk about it. Fruit and pretzels have certainly made Ms. Anonymous Pac-Man popular. Also kind of, well, round, wouldn't you say? Maybe it's those little yellow and pink pills she keeps popping? It's an addiction, I'm sure. I've seen her go to every corner on tne block for just one more, that sleazy lady.

BABY PAC-MAN-The kid's alright. Because he's underage, the ghosts are merciless in their attacks, the lecherous beasts. But, pacifier and all, the littlest Pac-Man learns his land legs on the pinball machine, just like the rest of us did. It's a simple (and short) arrangement: If you spell out his surname by punching flags, you win much-needed energy dots. You can also get them by batter-ing another ball trapped inside a semi-circle loop. If you flipper through the left-handed lane, you spell out "fruits," which then appear on your video bocrd. If you flip through the right enough times, you'll open up video tunnels. When you lose the boll, it's bock to basic maze. Every Baby in the game is allowed one crack on the pinball training ground, but you have to crawl through an escape tunne in order to initiate it. Since the video board is a hard road to handle, it's recommended to start flippering as soon as possible, and let the NoillwrioRR 9,98icrlicskto you later. You have to roll before you wrangle.