Retro spotlight: Jumping Flash!

The first 3D platformer was something of a Playstation tech demo, but also a ton of fun in its own right.

This column is “Retro spotlight,” which exists mostly so I can write about whatever game I feel like even if it doesn’t fit into one of the other topics you find in this newsletter. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

By the time 1995 rolled around, the concept of 3D gaming wasn’t new. It had existed in various forms, which included subgenres like super scaler arcade games produced by the likes of Sega (OutRun, Super Hang-on) and Taito (Night Striker), while the Super Nintendo’s Mode 7 allowed for games like Super Mario Kart to feel like they were 3D, even if, like the super scalers, it was more faux than anything, a very convincing programming trick. Even first-person shooters like id’s Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM and Heretic weren’t true 3D: they were 2D games seen from a first-person perspective, in an environment designed to simulate otherwise. You can play the entirety of them from the overhead map, as they don’t take place within an actual 3D environment, but an even more convincing fake one than what had come before.

The need for faux 3D began to disappear as hardware became capable of producing actual 3D. The SNES’ Super FX chip allowed for polygons and actual 3D on 16-bit systems, like with Star Fox and Stunt Race FX. Sega got Virtua Racing working on the rival Genesis with their own pricey cartridge chip, though, we’ll leave discussions on the quality of that project for another day. The 3DO, Sega Saturn, and Sony Playstation all coming to market at the same time that PCs received a significant boost ushered in the 32-bit era, and subsequently, the rapid rise of 3D gaming. Descent, developed by Parallax Software — a predecessor of Volition — released in March of ‘95, and was the first FPS to feature true 3D graphics. It was a six degrees of freedom shooter — meaning, you could actually move within a real 3D space — and a technical marvel. It started out as an MS-DOS release, but would make its way to the Playstation a year later, as well, in an excellent port that felt like it was made for the hardware.

Shortly after Parallax Software and Descent showed what could be done with this powerful new system, Sony released their own impressive showcase: Jumping Flash! This title first came out in Japan, less than two months after Descent, and would reach North America by November. Developed by Extra and Ultra — later known as MuuMuu — and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, Jumping Flash! was the first 3D platformer, and you can tell it was first because people weren’t even sure of how it was supposed to play when given the chance.

Image credit: MobyGames

That’s according to the development team themselves, specifically, director Koji Tada, who said in a 1996 interview about the development of Jumping Flash’s sequel that, “last year during Golden Week we had an event, and some people weren't jumping at all, they were just firing their gun. If players just run around they'll never understand how fun the jumping is…” Jumping is right there in the name, though, and it’s what you’ll spend most of your time doing, as it’s far more of a requirement to completing the game than shooting is in every non-boss level.

Let’s set the scene: you are a rabbit robot named Robbit, and you’re on the search for jet pods that have been spread around the game’s world by its antagonist, Baron Aloha, who could not lean into this moniker more given the monocle/Hawaiian shirt outfit he’s seen in. There are four jet pods in every non-boss level, and 18 levels total across six worlds: two platforming stages and one boss per world for the first five worlds, then one platforming stage and two boss stages for the sixth and final one. When you’ve found every jet pod in a stage, you can access the exit, which is usually high up and out of reach, higher and more out of reach the deeper into the game you get.

You move through the environment by running around a bit, sure, but jumping is the main way to get around. You have a triple jump, but getting it to work is all about the timing: if you wait too long to press the button for the second jump or the third jump, you won’t pull it off, which means you won’t be able to ascend like you’d hoped. It’s not that the timing is difficult, it’s just key to remember that you can’t, say, fall and fall and then jump at the last second: you don’t “store” your additional jumps like that, to be deployed whenever, but they’re instead used more for continuing to move upward. Once you’ve got that sorted in your head, no platform will be out of reach for you, no matter how high up in the sky it’s floating.

The timing is actually a bit tougher to pull off in the original Japanese release: the North American version is the ideal way to play the game, as the developers took time to refine the timing of it, and then used that edition of Jumping Flash, specifically, as the base for Jumping Flash! 2 — planner Toshimitsu Odaira went so far as to call the North American version “Jumping Flash 1.5" in that same interview referenced earlier. Getting the game ready for a new audience was a much bigger job than just localizing it, but an extension of the development cycle itself.

The game moves well, only very rarely being impacted by slowdown of any kind, and the issue of attempting to accurately move through a 3D space that plagued so many future platformers or past isometric ones wasn’t a problem here, thanks to how the jump system worked. That first jump was made without you being able to see what was directly under you and where you were going to land, sure, but the levels are laid out so that you’re going to end up using, at minimum, the double jump pretty much always. And when you use the double jump, Robbit’s view shifts to more underneath his body, revealing his shadow on the landscape below: you can easily figure out where you’re going to land, and plan your movements to actually land where you want to and mean to, by utilizing the double and triple jump to trigger the change in view. Jump once, and you can fire while shooting — useful in fights — but jump a second time, and your view changes to below you. Which can also be useful in fights, if you jump over a foe instead of to their level, as you can both fire down upon them, or straight-up jump on their heads like you would a platform — remember that for boss fights, especially.

It’s a convenient way to work around the fact that this game released for a system with a controller that did not include analog sticks, and before user-controlled cameras in 3D games had figured out even their most basic forms. There are still some little wrinkles that show off the game’s age, sure, like how little control you have over the direction your character and therefore the camera is facing while jumping, and how slowly the camera does turn, but for a tank-control-adjacent first-person platformer released seven years before Metroid Prime, there’s hardly anything to complain about on those terms. The game just works!

While you have your standard pea shooter and a power-up pill that makes you briefly invulnerable and unleashes some sick guitar playing, there are also limited-use items you can pick up and store, three at a time. Most of them are fireworks — cherry bombs, Roman candles, rockets, spinners — but you’ve also got a continually firing laser that will incinerate whatever it touches, and is great for clearing out a room or platform full of enemies before you land. These carry over from stage to stage, and you’re probably going to want to have a full slate of them for the boss fights, so don’t forget to pick up items before hitting the exit in stage two of the first five worlds. The bosses aren’t particularly difficult or anything, but being able to throw a cherry bomb at them as they gear up for an attack and then immediately triple-jumping to find a new safe spot is both useful and funny.

Image credit: MobyGames

There’s a bonus room hidden in some stages, and if you successfully complete it, you’ll receive an extra life. There are a few 1-ups scattered elsewhere around the game, so this isn’t the lone source of them, but it’s the most reliable one. Each bonus room is a platforming challenge centered around destroying all of the balloons before the timer runs out: some are much easier than others, but at the least, you’ll be able to refill your power-up supply, or, if you want to be aggressive to go for that extra life, you can also aggressively use all the power-ups you find in these bonus rooms to pop those balloons in groups when possible instead of attacking them individually.

While you get plenty of time to complete a stage on the standard mode — 10 minutes — there’s an Extra version of each level that unlocks after completing the game. In this, you get just three minutes to find the four jet pods and make your way to the exit. Which is real easy at first, when levels are small enough that, even with the kind of draw distance you’re working with on the Playstation is involved, most of the stage is visible from wherever you stand. As stages get bigger and the outside portions of stages are hidden completely from view by not being loaded up in the first place, given your distance from them, that three minutes is going to feel real short. But at least you’ve already completed all of these stages before: all that’s left is for you to do it again, but with the pace fully picked up.

Dying sends you back to the start of the stage — there are no checkpoints in Jumping Flash’s level. A game over sends you back to the beginning of the world you’re in, which is a real bummer if you were close to completing the second level within it or were facing the boss, but Jumping Flash! also isn’t known for its difficulty. Ultra and Exact weren’t trying to scare away gamers here, they were trying to make what was, essentially, a game-sized tech demo. That’s not meant to be said in a disparaging way, either: this was both a demonstration of what the Playstation can do, and also meant to be a full experience on its own, not merely a demo showing you what the hardware was capable of. The game had to work, and without being too cruel, lest it sour people on the concept of 3D platformers from the outset.

While the graphics are simple — in the sense that backgrounds aren’t animated, skies are static, and so on — everything has real personality. The frogs hopping around and the bugs crawling on the ground are all trying to kill you, sure, but they’re as cute as they are simply drawn, and the game is full of bright lights and colors that add life to it all. Combined with the upbeat — and damn catchy — soundtrack composed by Takeo Miratsu, and you won’t care at all about the draw distance or the fog or any of the very 1995 bits that are contained within. There’s just too much to love happening where you can see it or hear it to worry about that stuff.

Jumping Flash! would spawn a couple of sequels and a spin-off, and Sony has done a pretty good job of keeping the original alive throughout the decades, as well, even if the series itself has been dead for ages. It was available digitally through the Playstation 3, and is currently free for Playstation Plus subscribers on Playstation 5, or for $10 for non-subscribers. Sony also included it in the Playstation Classic mini console, which is impressive because the list of good decisions associated with that thing is a short one, but don’t worry, that managed to be a problem, too: Jumping Flash! is, regrettably, one of the PAL releases included in the North American Playstation Classic, so the timing is all off and it runs horribly, thanks to being designed for 50hz monitors instead of 60hz. At least PS5 owners can avoid that being their lone way of playing the game, though, and if you already nabbed it on your PS3 years ago, all the better. (And if you haven’t picked it up on your PS3 yet but it’s still hooked up, both that and Jumping Flash 2 are $6 each, but you miss out on some modern emulation features this way, as well.)

If you’ve never given Jumping Flash! a play, it’s an important part of Sony’s and 3D gaming’s history, so you should change that. And if you’re already familiar with it, well, it’s still a blast to play all these years later, so what’s the harm in hopping around Robbit-style once more?

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