|
Jinks
Perhaps best known for its sampling of speech from the arcade game Gauntlet on its title screen, Jinks is an odd game that can best be described as a side scrolling Breakout with enemies and obstacles. While this may sound like an interesting and novel idea, it isn't implemented particularly well and plays rather sloppily (a sin for a Breakout style game). Jinks contains four different stages, each with its own theme although they pretty much play exactly the same.  Although Jinks is clearly inspired by Breakout, the goal of the game isn't to destroy all the bricks on each screen as you might think. No, the goal of the game is to simply get the ball all the way to the right hand side of the stage and through the exit portal. Hitting bricks will score you points, but is not required to win (not that there's an ending or anything). On each screen there are a variety of enemies and other obstacles that hinder or hurt the player in some way. The harmless strange shapes will only block your ball but enemies like Chattering teeth will actually eat your ball leading to you losing a life. You can gain extra balls by hitting strange glowing symbols (which kind of look like a ball with an umbilical cord attached), but these extra balls are only good for the level they're earned on. The player must also watch out for drills and other vertically moving objects which will reduce the side of the paddle. If the paddle is damaged the player can restore it by hitting one of the small triangles that move about the levels with the ball. If you're hit while in a damaged state you'll lose a life so be careful! Some levels also have other obstacles such as suction tubes that can move the ball around the screen. Once the player reaches the end of the level they're brought to the level select screen where they must bounce the ball into the number for the level they want to try next. While keeping with the spirit of the game, this level select screen is harder than it should be and doesn't work nearly as well as it should (which is also in keeping with the spirit of the game). Each time the player replays a stage it gets harder with more enemies and obstacles. In addition to being able to move the paddle around the screen instead of simply left and right, the player may also press the left fire button to invert. Inverting the paddle (which is shaped like a triangle) allows the player to deflect the ball at different angles (well in theory anyway). The player may also press the right fire button to 'shake' the screen in order to get the ball out of a repetitive sequence. Interestingly it appears that at one point in development the player was able to change the gravity and speed on an options screen which was removed from the final. There are still references to selecting these options in the original mockup of the manual (see below). Although it was a thoroughly average game at best, Jinks was scheduled to be released for all of Atari's major systems at the time including the Atari 2600, Atari 8-Bits, and Atari ST. While the 2600 version has never surfaced (if it was even started) the Atari 8-Bit and ST versions were scheduled to be released in Europe by Rainbow Arts. While the ST version was released in small quantities the Atari 8-Bit version went unreleased. AMC-Verlag (who coded the Atari 8-Bit version of the game) managed to get the rights back from Rainbow Arts and released it on disk rather than the originally intended cartridge format. The biggest problem with Jinks is that it's boring and monotonous. There's no real sense of progression, you just pick a level (or rather try to), play through it and pick another. There's no ending or goal, just repeat the same four levels over and over again until you get bored or die (or both). While Jinks's graphics aren't the worst on the 7800, they certainly don't show off any of the 7800's power and the color schemes are questionable at best. The programmers did the best they could with the 2600 sound chip they were stuck with, but the sound effects tend to be muddled and there's no in game music except for a short tune between levels (one has to wonder how they pulled off the speech on the title screen). Despite all its lofty ideas Jinks was destined to be game library filler, and not even good filler at that. Fire it up to hear the title screen speech then go play something better.
|
