Jetpac (ZX Spectrum)

For many people, their first brush with the ZX Spectrum game Jetpac will be through its unusual inclusion in Donkey Kong 64. As the first game from the developer that would become known as Rare though, it’s earned itself a spot in their hearts and has cropped up every now and then whenever they choose to celebrate their roots. Regardless of where a player finds it, it’s always interesting to see the first title a famous game company created and see if it shows any hint of the what the company would grow up to be.

 

Back when they were known as Ultimate Play the Game, Rare made this rather straightforward and simple space game. The goal of Jetpac is always to take off in the rocket to leave the current screen, but the task requires a few steps to execute. First, Jetman must assemble his rocket, dragging the pieces together or letting them drop into a stack from above. After that, it’s all about getting the fuel needed to launch, and for a few stages, your rocket will remain in-tact and the goal will be to grab the fuel without getting destroyed by whichever weird alien type is in that level. Every four levels though, you’ll need to construct a new rocket before you can fuel it up and repeat the process. It’s a simple arcade style of play that suits the game fairly well, although the game does run out of enemy types after the eighth level and starts repeating them, but this is a game that is made to loop until you lose so such a thing is inevitable.

The controls are probably where most of the challenge in Jetpac comes from. To use your jetpack, you hold the button down, and to descend you release it. There are a few platforms to rest on, but most of Jetpac is about getting used to the force of your thrusters and the impact gravity has after you turn them off. It’s a touch finicky, but after a little time with the game you’ll get the hang of how it works enough that mistakes are what leads to deaths rather than control issues. Extra lives come fairly regularly and there are optional collectables in each stage to bolster your score, but outside of the fuel collection your main task during play is shooting down the aliens that are trying to kill you. There seems to be no real reason not to always be shooting your weapon though and it has a very long reach, meaning the only aliens you really have to worry about are the creatures with odd diagonal paths since they aren’t guaranteed to hit your lasers before they hit you. Your alien enemies usually have something that makes them difficult enough that you can’t just ignore them, such as crowding the lower half of the screen, grouping up on the edges, or coming at you with weird movement patterns. Their strength mostly comes from great numbers that make it a challenge to react to every enemy coming towards you.

 

Still, even with some tricky enemies, Jetpac is a fairly slow game. Waiting on fuel to drop into the ship and the next one to appear means there are quite a lot of periods where you’re just standing and shooting at enemies who aren’t too dangerous. Some item drops will be in dangerous areas that require you to be a little smarter with how you deal with enemies so you can find the opening to fly in and grab the fuel, but the side of the screen wraps around so you won’t ever find yourself boxed into a corner.

The endless nature of Jetpac is probably what works against it most. The gameplay is enjoyable and has just enough going for it that you’ll want to see what new aliens wait on the next planet, but the game having to repeat them and not putting in enough challenge to prevent you from hitting that loop makes the Jetpac experience sadly a bit too samey. Unless you really want to go for a high score, this is the kind of game where at some point you have to tell yourself you’re done and kill yourself to wrap things up. It’s not so easy that you won’t be dying by the game’s design along the way, but the gameplay is simple enough to master and the obstacles lose their freshness quickly, meaning you know how to deal with everything in front of you after your first few brushes with the enemy types. This is definitely not an issue unique to Jetpac, many old games that looped face the issue with balancing game variety with the inevitable repetition. While Jetpac’s low skill ceiling means it’s not good for sustained play, its design and difficulty are solid enough that a brief brush with the game is enjoyable. If there had been some demarcation indicating to the player that they had experienced the whole of the game and only had to continue if they wished to hit a high score, Jetpac would at least be able to get away with its design better and could have kept most players in a zone where their skill in the game isn’t so honed that the experience dries up.

THE VERDICT: Ultimate Play the Game’s first title has a sound base, but Jetpac’s simplicity is a bit too apparent to be ignored. While colorful and kooky alien enemies and the shifting space ship designs add visual variety, repetitive gameplay comes quickly and the game doesn’t have the proper difficulty to inspire the player to keep pushing through repeated screens. It never quite hits the point that it feels bad to play, but the initial promise of the design is lost when it’s so easy to learn the tricks to survive with the threat of a Game Over nearly disappearing once the mechanics are learned.

 

And so, I give Jetpac for the ZX Spectrum…

An OKAY rating. A so-so first outing for the company that will become Rare, Jetpac flaws don’t really hit the buttons needed to bother a player. Repetition is contingent on your desire to keep playing, and since it’s not too hard to get to the point you’ve seen all Jetpac has, it also doesn’t withhold content to make you feel bad for stopping. High score junkies might find the easy loop appealing as they rack up the points, but for the most part, the ease of shooting enemies and collecting fuel is discouraging to a player who needs something besides more of the same to drive them forward. If enemies had been more dangerous or your weapon had some drawback to prevent its constant firing, then the game could have had a tenseness that makes every level beaten a level earned, but as it is, Jetpac’s challenge is only enough to catch slip-ups rather than encourage the player to play in a more interesting way.

 

Jetpac was quite well regarded on release for the things it did right and the early parts of the game do seem to set it up for greatness, but Jetpac sputters out well before the player will, turning it instead into a decent start for a later legendary game company.