Hopping Mappy (1986)

Look: 7/10 Cute. Not a favorite or anything but had the nice, cute colors and Look it was going for.

Sound: 7/10 Catchy but nothing special. I didn't mute it at least. Some of the tracks were somewhat striking too, but not really.

Play: 7/10 I would've loved diagonal movement, tho I suppose then enemies would have to have that, too, and the whole dynamic would change. The collision masks were a bit wonky, but just one of the quirks of the game (edit: and indeed, it was proven to for sure be an intentional quirk of the game since the last 15+ levels entirely relied on the mechanic :-p) And honestly proved super useful once I got the quirkiness down where it was safe to land despite technically running into the enemy. (it seems landing right at the same time as them is the trick? Also sometimes moving mid-air, like backtracking/changing mind about the jump, helps when jumping perpendicular to the direction the enemy is coming... hard to explain. You just have to play around with it. It's funny cuz before getting the mechanic down for the later levels, I had written, "I love the mid-jump "woops nevermind" ability." So, not only did I like that for "ah!!!" moments, but also you literally had to get used to the mid-jump movement in order to dodge mid- and late-game enemies.

Feel: 8/10 Between Round 12 and 13 I stopped doing the Bonus Rounds, tho I was having fun I just wanted to get all 31 unique rounds done! It was time for movie/bed time when I got to Round 23! Ah! I felt like I was getting a hang of the quirks and wanted to finish it tonight, especially since a busy week is about to start (wrote this first part on a Sunday). So it goes. If only I hadn't wasted so much of my night trying OSRS pvm that I'll never be good at >.>

Next day: As usual with arcade games, very tight and responsive controls means last second dodges that are always delicious when they happen, heh. Holy crap Round 29 is hard. And of course the quirks I noticed, namely mid-jump movement and quirky collision masks where you technically can hit them but something about a specific timing makes you safe, becomes the whole focus of the later levels. It seems literally all early action and platformer games do this: they have some sort of gameplay mechanic quirk that they then exploit in the later levels to reward people who don't just use logic, but rather game logic.

Attachment: 7/10 Yay! An actual "set ending"/Clear, which probly annoyed arcade players who like exorbitant scores and re-cycling style action games, but I love it because it felt truly completed, and a hi score lover could always replay to try to earn more points within those 31 Rounds. I almost got sucked in the OSRS boss again, but luckily resisted... well, after I had a BS death lol. Oh that game... Anyway, my score is quite low cuz I stopped doing Bonus Rounds, but definitely some replayability in this for hi score chasers, and I think it was a cute fun action platformer, even if the quirk it relies on for later levels was a bit frustrating at times, I can't deny I felt pretty uh cool when I mostly got it down :-p

Completion: Clear, Score 9,506 (lol. I was just striving to survive all 31 rounds, tho then a person could replay--by choice rather than usual arcade recycling silliness--to try to use more of the powerups and not just survive but rather thrive lol aka get a hiscore) Playtime: ~45 mins