I'm standing in a museum. Specifically, the York Castle Museum, around the middle bit of 2008. On my tongue is the faintest trace of mushroom ketchup, Exhibit A.

Exhibit B is a family photograph circa 1984, but blown up, exploded in full 3D, complete with woodgrain microwave. I've been here, I realize. Most gamers haven't.

Exhibit B is missing this: the baige box, stamped big blue C and two pointed polygons, the symbol of the Commodore 64.



I don't know when my childhood became a museum piece, realistic 80's apartment in situ. Not long ago, I think. But then, we stuff things wholesale into museums far faster these days. The world is a collectible, complete with authenticating stamp packed in plastic. TV has whole shows devoted to "Remember Optimus Prime?" as if the very act of recollection is comedy gold now. Today is so last year; the meme is the new yesterday.

This isn't the first time I've felt old, felt stained in faux woodgrain. I feel old every time I think about that baige box. The subtle vvv noise it made against the hum of the attachable disk-drive, the forked TV connector cord with a TV/CPU switch, the disks that wobbled.

Floppy disks used to wobble. Actually, forget that. People used to USE floppy disks.

So. Here it is then. Jumpman Jr. Jumpman is my Optimus Prime. My 80's exhibit. And, after all these years (more than 20 years, me being an old, old man), the Jumpman series sits at somewhere vaguely around number one on my top 10. That's games of all time. It could be also slotted into the top 50 things of all time for me. That's what the old games mean to a materialistic geezer like myself. Why you probably don't bother to ask?



In order to explain why I still put Jumpman and his lovechild at the top of my video Game top 10, I have to do more than just put the words AWESOME in huge glowing block letters. And I don't mean glitter. I have to set the scene of that photo, pull it into three-dimensions, slap on a fourth, if that's your thing, dynamic, fully interactive apartment in situ.

My apartment was not an apartment. It was a group home, a state-run house for kids whose parents abandoned them or stabbed people. My parents ran the place. That meant about 2 important things (possibly more, I'm not a "math guy")

A) They couldn't have a vacation. At least one had to be in the house at all times, unless (in rare cases) there was a trusty shmo who really felt like babysitting 8 teens or so, each of whom hated a significant portion of the universe and was being forced to hang out against their will.

B) We had a lot of cool stuff to keep the kids from killing/sleeping with each other too often.



Now imagine me. Or you as me. Or you. You're a kid. You're somewhere between 1 and 4, or even 4 and 3/4. Back when you counted your age in quarters. Games came in narrow plastic sleeves at Zellars. Games of the not-Pong variety had just made it to TV, or in the last couple years anyway. I wan't really following sales records at the time.

I was also the only toddler, and the only real child of my parents, parents of half-a-dozen or so mal-adjusted teens.

You can imagine. Imagine your little brother that your mom and dad love, and they don't love you. The girls thought I was cute. The boys made me wrestle. The vast majority had moments of "lock him in the closet" and "GET OUT OF HERE!"

One things the Big Kids kicked me out of more than any other was their video games. The Commodore, stationary, baige, big magic. Huming magic. Crinkling, bip and bopping magic. Big Kid magic.

Now I'm not going to bore you with the whole story. There's a lot compressed into those early years, a world inside a house, a house inside a whole world. I could mention how small it looked when years later I brought us cycling past. It was still there, still a white-picket ward of the state, crowded with old weeds that crept along the murky soil. Rules said we couldn't go in. Couldn't see what they had in there now, probably something with 'station' in the title, maybe a '2' after that.

But the games of the Big Kids, that blue C were special. It's like the roller rink or the Big Kid school. Secret Big Kid things.

I only vaguely remember the time one of the Big Kids asked me to walk across the keyboard which he'd laid out on the carpet as a toy. It was only later that, in front of my folks, he blamed me for the broken 7-BLU button, a scheme it took me nearly 20 years to work out.

Suffice to say the C64 was capital "C" Cool. And it was Jumpman Jr. where I was first given a try and where I first beat a level. It was my first very public victory. I made the guy move!



Jumpman is vaguely based on Donkey Kong, but instead of 4 levels, there were 30. I didn't play Donkey Kong for a year or so later. It was my first taste of a game being better than another.

Jumpman wasn't just 30 levels of the same tired gameplay. It was 30 drastically differing levels, each with distinct physics, rules, laws and enemies. It was like navigating Randy Glover's brain. Which other game where they add and subtract basic skills like shooting, jumping and walking from level to level, and make it work? I mean like really mess with you. Make the platforms you're staning on fall under or onto you without so much as a "In this level we do that" warning.



Every level was a new challenge, and every level in the sequel, Jumpman Junior was just as original. And I just don't mean "Look, jumping in an FPS" original. I mean, make it up, happened years later in Megaman original. I have no idea how many ideas were invented by Jumpman, but it was probably less than I led myself to believe. Nonetheless, I'm pretty sure it did these things first, or pretty close to first:

-Enemies that make the main character jump (like later enemies in Megaman)
-Flying ladders built during the process of the level
-A completely invisible level that appeared as you played it
-A level with fully deformable ground that blew up when you jumped
-Enemies that can temporarily freeze the player
-Doppleganger enemies that follow the player's exact movements

And more.

I don't think I can express how fundamentally this single game defined my personality. The sheer level of creativity beside jump-and-run clones, racing titles and nearly identical action-shooters was an inspiration. I still search for games that can replicate that kind of brazen originality. In terms of new ideas to old, I'm not even sure Super Mario World measures up. And maybe I shouldn't care. And maybe I wouldn't. But Big Kids have magic. Their mysteries were my magic.



I read books, looking for new ideas. I write, searching for new ideas. I am a juggler. An actual ballclubring juggler, and I can't master any single skill because all I care about are the new, creative, innovative and innovative Jr. Ideas.

Jumpman destroyed me. I destroyed myself. And I love it.

Jumpman may not be the original masterwork that I remembered. It might load slow, have primitive graphics, even by the standards of the time, and the gameplay may not be all that compelling, but the idea, the idea that you could bend and break rules chapter by chapter fit with how I saw the Big Kids and how they saw themselves. I was one of the first little kids to see games do that. To make people the way great stories can.

Now I'm standing beside my wife. We're observing the brownness of the 80's. I don't know who thought that was a good idea. The 80's are the ancient of the old, and the 90's are almost there too. Optimus Prime, Rainbow Bright, Prog with funny hats, Jumpman.

I step away from the exhibit, and leave that photo behind.