Monster Farm Jump (Playstation)

 This game also has a western release renamed Monster Rancher Hop-A-Bout, but that name is terrible, plus the Japanese version is the one I picked up dirt cheap a few years ago, and it's the one I've played most of, so that's the title I'm going to use. It's from that brief time that Pokemon was so popular that even the also-rans in its wake had enough residual popularity to get their own weird spino-offs, and in this case it is, of course, a weird spin-off from Monster Farm/Rancher.

 

Not just weird because it's a platform spin-off from a monster raising/training game that's mostly about crunching numbers and such, but also weird in its own right. Tecmo really came up with a somewhat unique idea for a platform game and had such little confidence in it that they attached it to an existing series. Which is fair, to be honest. The game takes place in short stages made up of floating islands high in the sky, and you control one of four monsters picked from the Farm/Rancher besitary on a pogo stick. You're constantly bouncing and you've got to get from one end of the stage to the other.

 

The islands in the stages are themselves constructed from square tiles, and after a couple of stages, not only do you hav to avoid falling down the gaps, but you also have to take into account many kinds of special tiles. Some increase or decrease the time remaining, some give or take lives, some send you bouncing in a specific direction, and some even turn into a little flying platform that you can control for a few seconds. You start each stage with three lives and ninety seconds. If either run out, it's game over.

 

But! The game doesn't have an arcade-like structure (there is an arcade version of the game, though, but surprisingly, it seems like it came after this version, not before), and the only penalty for getting a game over is that you have to start the stage again, and you can't progress to the next stage until you've finished your current one. As far as I can tell, it's not actually possible to try an arcade-style "survival" run through the game, unless you just start a new save every time you get a game over.

 

After about fifteen stages, the dificulty really starts to ramp up, and the game really starts to get interesting. You'll probably die a lot from this point on, but really, that's what's fun about the game. Because your character is constantly bouncing, you never have completely precise control over them, with momentum playing a big part in how far they go with each bounce and how easy it'll be for you to change their direction. So as the stages get more complex in their layouts and more treacherous in the placement of negative tiles, you've really got to master the touch you need to "suggest" your character lands as close to where you want them as possible. It's frustrating, but in a way that'll make you laugh, rather than make you angry. Or at least, that's my experience of it, anyway.

 

Monster Farm Jump is an interesting and unique game, and it's a lot of fun to play. It's not some great forgotten classic or anything, but it is a game that I load up every few months to try and get through a few more stages each time. It's definitely worth your time.