This Week(s) in Retro: Jumping Flash! & Commando (1985)

Good news/bad news, folks: I'm all caught up with writing my columns after my recent illness but my voice is still far from 100%. Fortunately I met this guy outside 7-11 who volunteered to supply his voice as a substitute; all it took was writing out every word phonetically and six hours of non-stop direction. I couldn't figure out how to post multiple "episodes" at once so the attached mp3 contains two columns stapled together. I should be up for reading words aloud by next Sunday, thanks for your patience!

April 28, 1995: Go, Robbit! Jump and go!!

by Diamond Feit

Do you ever wonder about the future of graphics? I certainly used to speculate about what the rapid growth of computing power could mean to video games, but then again I started playing when a simple square could represent a heroic adventurer. Truly, there was nowhere to go but up.

The incredible pace at which technology improved in the 1980s gave people inflated expectations about what video games might become in the future. When companies first began throwing around the term "virtual reality" it felt inevitable that we would come up with a way to fully integrate computer-generated imagery and human sensory perception. Sure, we might never reach holodeck levels of immersion but I figured I'd see interfaces at least as impressive as The Lawnmower Man in my lifetime.

The arrival of three-dimensional graphics on home consoles in my teenage years all but confirmed my assumptions concerning the medium's potential. Never mind stuttering frame rates or low polygon counts; I had the utmost confidence developers would solve those problems eventually, clearing the way for me to fly around a photorealistic Manhattan before my 40th birthday.

Even if that future never came to pass, the 1990s kept surprising me with video games that exceeded my expectations, particularly those on Sony's new PlayStation console. The company prioritized 3D software for the system's 1995 U.S. launch such as Battle Arena Toshinden with its wide-open coliseums and Ridge Racer's intoxicating high speed thrills.

Yet one newcomer took me and my friends by total surprise. Instead of simulating hand-to-hand combat or a high-performance automobile, Jumping Flash! handed us control of a robot—or should I say Robbit—in a candy-colored fantasyland.

An opening cinematic lays out all the backstory you could ask for to enjoy Jumping Flash! A fast-talking narrator explains that an "evil scientist who frightens children" named Baron Aloha threatens the peace and safety of our planet. Through the might of his mechanized army, he pulls a Borg and rips entire cities from the surface into space in order to sculpt "a huge private retreat for himself."

Meanwhile, at Universal City Hall, they respond to Aloha's egregious actions by dispatching a lone robot, Robbit—so named because it resembles a rabbit with big hopping feet and long floppy ears. Robbit comes equipped with a gun and can nab additional, single-use weapons, but its real talent lies in those oversize paws. With a single button press players can launch Robbit high into the air; this obviously aids exploration and movement but landing atop enemies also deals damage.

Jumping, as the title implies, is the primary verb of Jumping Flash! You could technically classify it as a first-person shooter, given the cockpit view of the action, but the similarities between Robbit and DoomGuy end there. Rather, Jumping Flash! focuses on vertical movement over horizontal. Via well-timed inputs players can actually get Robbit to triple jump before falling to the ground again. The environments accommodate this by building up, not out, since players will spend most of their time airborne rather than marching about on the ground.

Jumping Flash! also solves a problem that most first-person platformers struggle with by automatically adjusting the camera downwards while in the air, giving players a proper view of where they are and where they're going. Robbit casts a visible shadow indicating where the robot will land, allowing for precision touchdowns atop even small surfaces.

Baron Aloha has laid out his ill-gotten gains in six Worlds of three areas apiece. Robbit enters each area and must recover all the scattered Jetpods in order to activate the Exit and leap to the next stage. Enemies also litter each area but serve as a nuisance more than anything else; destroying them nets extra points and an occasional item but they respawn indefinitely. Robbit's primary mission concerns the carrot-shaped Jetpods, not combat.

The last portion of each World trades collecting for a boss battle as Robbit engages a monster many times its size. While mobility remains key in avoiding damage, it also aids Robbit's offense thanks to its powerful feet. Launching Robbit into the air, then slamming down onto a boss' head or back while attacking as fast as possible will whittle down enemy health in a hurry. Speedrunners can K.O. bosses in a matter of seconds using this method.

Proper accreditation for video games in the 90s was very hit or miss: Publishers reliably identified their own products but if they outsourced the development to another studio, the publishers had to tell you that information first-hand or you'd never know. In the case of Jumping Flash!, we see a credit for "Sony Computer Entertainment presents" at the top, but that follows the standard PlayStation boot sequence which kicks off every PlayStation game ever made. "Of course Sony Computer Entertainment 'presents' this game," I remember thinking in 1995, "they made the console!"

It turns out that the next two words on screen, EXACT and ULTRA, are the names of the studios who actually made Jumping Flash! while Sony served as publisher. Again, as an innocent teenager I merely assumed those were two superlatives, a promise to the player that Jumping Flash! provided top class excitement—a promise I feel they fulfilled, for the record.

Beyond its unassailable entertainment value, Jumping Flash! took us by surprise because it represented a kind of video game that we never even conceptualized before we had access to it, one that could only exist through then-new technology. Many other three-dimensional action platformers would debut in the years to follow, with Mario's first polygonal adventure making quite an impact on the Nintendo 64 in 1996. Yet even that felt like "Mario in 3D" while Jumping Flash! doesn't feel like anything else. Frankly, three decades later, it still doesn't.

Unfortunately, Robbit's success on the new platform didn't last long. A sequel followed barely 12 months later in 1996, but then the series took a short hiatus before returning in 1999 with two games called Robbit Mon Dieu and Pocket MuuMuu. Yet Sony declined to release either of these late PlayStation 1 games in other territories, denying the world any further access to Robbit. Today, Jumping Flash! and its robotic star represent little more than footnotes in Sony's console history; a Robbit cameo in 2024's Astrobot took me by total surprise.

I realize that game development costs more than ever and the Sony corporation would prefer to earn profits rather than bleed cash, but at this point I feel Robbit is overdue for a genuine comeback. We might never have seen a PlayStation 5 if eye-catching unique titles like Jumping Flash! hadn't convinced us to buy PlayStations 30 years ago.

The time is nigh for Jumping Flash! to achieve its ultimate form: A VR-compatible Robbit simulation where players explore and reclaim Baron Aloha's stolen landmarks first-hand. Throw in a special pedal controller so we can use our feet instead of our fingers to send Robbit skyward. I won't buy it because VR makes me queasy but I'll feel better knowing that Sony's teaching a new generation to harvest carrots and distrust nobility.

May 1985: War. It's fantastic.*

I've had plenty of reasons to feel #blessed in my lifetime, but missing out on obligatory military service might be the single biggest one. I know both of my grandfathers fought in World War II and I know my father spent time in an Army training facility but ultimately did not go to Vietnam. By the time of my birth, the United States had abolished the draft, instead relying entirely on willing participants to enlist in national defense.

I never considered the alternatives at the time but this made for an unusual childhood. I traded the fear of getting shipped out to the front lines in a shooting war for the constant fear of nuclear annihilation in the Cold War; once the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain fell in the 1990s, suddenly I was off the hook for any reason to pick up a firearm. This sense of relief helped contribute to the so-called End of History phenomenon where we all just assumed that the worst of our troubles were behind us and mentally prepared ourselves for a Star Trek-style future of idyllic peace.

Despite the fact that I grew up without the specter of conscription hanging over me, American media continued to shower me with none-too-subtle propaganda concerning our troops. Hollywood movies exalted the men and women of the United States Armed Forces as brave and selfless, even in films that questioned other aspects of our past conflicts. A syndicated cartoon created to sell toys also sold children on the U.S. as a de facto police force defending "human freedom" against villains around the globe.

Video games also did their part, with one classic example arriving 40 years ago this month. Although designed and produced by Japanese people, the associated materials clearly present the protagonist as a noble hero of American or European origin fighting a non-descript army in a jungle. Capcom's Commando would kick off a mini-franchise for the company that would eventually spawn one of my favorite video games of all time.

The premise of Commando sounds almost as generic as its English-language title: "Super Joe" accepts a special mission to destroy an "evil army" somewhere in an "unexplored region." This matches marketing materials created for the Japanese original, although that version carries the far more poetic title Senjō no Ōkami, "Wolf of the Battlefield."

The sprites don't betray much about either side with our hero wearing a blue uniform and his enemies all clad in gray. However, the official artwork seen on arcade flyers and many subsequent releases show a blond soldier in a green sleeveless uniform, a look often seen in American comic books like Sgt. Rock or Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos.

Commando players fight their way through a vertical battlefield that scrolls upwards as Super Joe advances. Joe carries a machine gun with infinite ammo and a limited stock of grenades, with the latter replenished from stolen supply drops procured on-site. Bullets fly quickly in a straight line but have finite range, while grenades fly in an arc and can hit targets atop walls, inside foxholes, and other spots generally beyond the reach of gunfire.

Unlike most other shooters of this era, players retain full control over when to march forward and when to rest, although with his opponents always on the move it's generally best for Super Joe to never stand still for long. Also unlike most other shooters, Commando largely deals with human beings shooting conventional weapons at other human beings with no aliens or lasers or any layers of obfuscation hiding the inherent violence of warfare. There's no blood or carnage in Commando, but it still represents an early example of a terrestrial shooter depicting "realistic" combat.

The inclusion of human targets in a video game ran afoul of some European distributors, so much so that Capcom created a modified version of Commando called Space Invasion. The main character, jungle setting, and background music remain exactly the same, but all infantrymen are replaced with robots. Konami would repeat this tactic with their own military shooter Contra a few years later.

Commando was but one of two groundbreaking 1985 releases designed by Capcom's Tokuro Fujiwara, a recent hire still in his early 20s at the time. Like 1942 before it, this Japanese-made game starring the American military sold well and ports quickly followed on home computers and consoles, including low-tech versions for older machines like the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision. Capcom notably handled the Famicom/NES port internally, marking a shift for the company after outsourcing earlier arcade conversions.

Other publishers also looked to cash in on Capcom's success, most notably crosstown rival SNK who released Ikari Warriors less than one year later. In a 2003 interview with Continue magazine, Fujiwara said of SNK's quick turnaround, "That’s just how things were back then, so there was nothing I could do." He lamented that Ikari Warriors immediately spawned a series of games for the competition while Commando wouldn't see a straight sequel for five years—one Capcom rebranded in other territories as Mercs.

Speaking of sequels, Commando took some strange turns as video game franchises go. While the aforementioned Senjō no Ōkami II didn't emerge until 1990, Fujiwara created another military-themed shooter in 1987. Called Top Secret in Japan, the game swapped vertical scrolling for horizontal and gave the protagonist a "wire" for grappling and swinging through the fray. For its American release, Capcom U.S.A. retitled this new game Bionic Commando and decided that it again starred Super Joe in an attempt to capitalize on Commando's name recognition abroad.

While these sorts of changes were not uncommon in international companies—Capcom U.S.A. pulled a similar move for 1986's The Speed Rumbler—in this case it did impact another game still in development back in Japan. Alongside the Top Secret arcade game, a separate team in Osaka made a version for the Famicom, one designed for extended play sessions with a larger map to explore and an explicit narrative. In Top Secret: Hittorā no Fukkatsu ("The Resurrection of Hitler"), Super Joe had initially gone behind enemy lines to stop Neo-Nazis from reviving their long-dead leader. With a few edits to abide by Nintendo of America's content guidelines, this game came to the NES as Bionic Commando, now an official spinoff of Fujiwara's original concept.

Even without these subsequent decisions that delivered one of my formative childhood memories, Commando still offers armed amusement to this day. It's got less depth than many of the games that used its concept for their own purposes—you won't find any weapon upgrades, vehicles, or even bosses here—but there's a clarity of purpose that gives Commando long legs. Besides, since the anonymous soldiers you face fly no flag of their own, you can just imagine they're representing a modern form of fascism to make the experience a cathartic one. Proud Boys, alt-right, D.O.G.E., take your pick! Super Joe's not here to debate any of them.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.