I remember playing this game when I was a young girl of about 8 or 9 in the 1980’s – I particularly remember trying to force my dad to leave me to play it on my own! Now I’m looking to re-live some childhood memories by playing this game again, no doubt it will be just as addictive! I recall making every movement with the joystick as I tried to avoid the balloons coming down onto my head (or rather Jack’s!).
Basically, as I recall, level 1 being with 6 blocks I think.
As Jack, you must pull, push, or drop the blocks onto the balloons. Once all the balloons have been squashed, you then move onto the next level. I think the highest level I ever got up to was 27 or something, hopefully now I am (a lot) older, and more experienced in computer games I will be able to get a bit further!!
I had a Commodore Plus 4 machine, so hopefully this will be very similar to that version. I always wished I had a Commodore 64 due to the larger variety of games, at least now I’m going to get the opportunity to download to my heart’s content!
One of the best levels I can remember was called The Towers of Babel. In
this level, you (or rather Jack!) were confined by two towers both sides of the screen, and had to move these pretty sharp-ish before the balloons came bouncing down to squash you! Did I mention that if the balloons land on you they squish you to a pulp, and the noise (and anger) still echoes through me as I remember this… the noise went “dum de dum dum” and you had disappeared from the screen. :-(
There was other challenges as well, for instance after a few levels water appeared in parts of the screen. This meant you had to tactfully shift the blocks onto the water to make land, and if you were good you could squash a balloon into the water at the same time!
All in all, Jack Attack as I remember it was quite a simple little game where you basically had to squash the balloons. However, like all good games, it was really addictive and kept me up late into the night (well late evening) as I tried to take revenge on the balloons that had squashed me to a pulp! Revenge will be mine!
