Yoomp! 64, developed by Zbigniew Ross, is a three-dimensional jumping game released for the Commodore 64. The objective of the game is to bounce a ball through 23 three-dimensional textured tubes and collect as many points as you can without falling off the edge.
When you kick off the first level, the classic Trailblazer will immediatly hit your thoughts as first lay your eyes on the game’s checkered tile landscape. As you grab the joystick to control your ball you will then also be reminded of Gyruss in respect to the circular field of movement within the game.
Yoomp! 64 plays at a very good speed thanks to its innovative smooth texture mapping that ensures that the player always has a sense of awareness as to the tiled landscape and its traps that lie ahead. This allows you to plot your path forward ahead of time as you try to position your ball in the best position to navigate your way through the various hazards. To help you with your quest, you are provided three long jumps (invoked by pressing the FIRE button before you bounce) to help overcome some last second tricky situations you might find yourself in.
In addition to the bottomless chasms, Yoomp! 64 tubular levels features over a dozen different bonus and hazard tiles to hit and avoid. These include speed up tiles, force left or right movement tiles, earthquake tiles and booze tiles (which make you lose control over you ball temporarily).
As impressive the game’s graphics are, Yoomp! 64’s greatest strength is it pumping psychedelic soundtrack, by Michael Brzeski. It fits the overall game play perfectly and is quite soothing and somewhat therapeutic.
The key to progressing through Yoomp! 64 will be your ability to memorise the tile layouts of each tube. Due to the interesting graphical style on offer and the hypnotic nature of the backing soundtrack, replaying levels until you had become familiar with the playing field never felt like a chore. For those of us who are time poor, Yoomp! 64 contains a password system, avoiding the need to constantly replay the early levels over and over again just to progress to new levels.
Yoomp! 64 bucks the current trend of platformers that have proliferated the current C64 gaming scene. While the overall game play variation may be a little limiting, what is on offer is highly addictive, technically impressive and a pleasure to play. Definitely one of the stronger titles of 2018.
To learn more about Yoomp! 64, check out the show case video link below.
The digital download version of Yoomp! 64 is available from RGCD Itch.Io page on ‘Name Your Own Price’ basis and we hope the C64 community supports the developer by voluntarily donating at least a couple of dollars as a thank you for producing a quality product for us to enjoy. Unfortunately for our North American readers, Yoomp! 64 is only PAL compatible but can be played on real hardware using 1541 Ultimate II, Turbo Chameleon or SD2IEC devices. RGCD has also confirmed that Yoomp! 64 is compatible with THEC64 Mini.
For those who like to collect psychical editions, RGCD is selling the cartridge edition (bundled with a vinyl sticker, an A3 poster, full-colour manual and a postcard) for 28 Euros from their web shop. While Psytronik Software is selling the disk edition for £6.99 (budget version) and £13.99 (premium version) over at their Binary Zone store.
Review Score
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Gameplay - 7/107/10
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Graphics - 7/107/10
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Sound - 8/108/10
Summary
Referring to Yoomp! 64 as ‘Trailblazer in a tube’ is underselling what the game offers, which is highly addictive experience set in a technically impressive backdrop that is topped of with some of the best music soundtrack to ever hit the SID. Game play variation may be lacking but there is no doubt that the game offers quite a bit of fun.