For some reason, I initially thought this top ten countdown was going to be a pretty straightforward one! Well, as far as what’s being counted down is concerned, it was, but then you start thinking about things, and breaking them down, and checking yourself, and suddenly you’re trying to remember why Manic Miner wasn’t allowed on the list; or what’s really the difference between jumping, gliding, floating and hovering; or does scrolling a tiny bit either side really have to prevent inclusion… Right, once and for all, you’ve got a goal to achieve on one screen that’s fixed and doesn’t scroll, and you need to do it by moving around platforms and jumping between them as required, then once you’re done, you’ll be moved to the next screen. Sorry, that’s not especially eloquent, but I think I’ve finally now got that straight in my own mind, so before it changes again, we’re going to go through my favourites backwards from ten, crown a winner, and do a few honourable mentions, including anything I’ve just ruled out with my draconian policies! And with that, let’s jump (strictly under our own propulsion) into the games…

10. Jumpman (Commodore 64)

As if it wasn’t enough to exclude Miner Willy from the party, now we’re immediately rubbing his nose right in it with his absolute worst, fast and loose platforming nightmare! The intentional imprecision and in-built sloppiness soon become an absolute joy though, and one to be taken full advantage of too because this none-more-1983 slice of cruelty isn’t giving you any other breaks! You are Jupiter Jumpman, and you need to clear bombs from each screen of your Jupiter base, while avoiding aliens, traps and falling from a moderate height. The faster you clear each of its thirty screens, the more points you get before moving to the next, and that’s where things like “grabbing” ledges and running before your really anywhere near them is a real benefit; can save you from a few scrapes too! This started out as one of a hundred Donkey Kong clones (or klones) around at the time, but despite how primitive it looks and sounds (that relentless Funeral March…), and how simple the execution is, there’s also so much personality in the colours and stop-start animation and chirpy sounds and sheer variety here that it’s obvious how it quickly took on a life of its own. It also spawned an excellent sequel in Jumpman Junior that was very nearly here instead! This one just seems a bit more at ease with itself though, with a bunch of different difficulty levels, take it in turns for up to four players, and a randomised level mode so anyone can have a look at what’s beyond the cruel first handful of screens, and it’s definitely worth doing so one way or another because it’s constantly mixing things up and introducing even more danger, but never at the expense of a lot of one-more-go fun!

9. Donut Dodo (Nintendo Switch / Evercade)

A modern game??? Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth! It does present itself as a 16-colour, pixel-perfect, lost arcade classic from the early eighties despite coming from 2023 though, and seamlessly blends influences, shall we say, from at least three other games here, with a subtle dash of at least one more, and a sprinkling of Mario Bros on top… Which you can take as a reverse-spoiler as I’m intentionally avoiding naming any others! You need to run around the level collecting donuts and avoiding the attention of Donut Dodo and his pals, then it’s onto the next. Not easy, even when you think you’ve nailed it because the quicker you do it, the more points you’ll get, especially if you grab the donuts when it’s their turn to flash for a bonus, but then you get complacent and you take risks and you make mistakes and you’ll hate yourself for them! So much fun though – it 99% controls like a dream, moving at a wild pace but it’s very responsive, very precise, and I think also borrows a little bit of that helping-hand philosophy we just saw in Jumpman (albeit far more scripted here), so, for example, if you’re jumping for a head start on getting up a ladder, you’re going to hit that ladder running! Here’s that other 1% though… Once you’re on the ladder, or rope or whatever, you’re on it and you’re committed to getting to the other end of it, with no changing your mind halfway. And once you’re a few screens in or on an unlockable higher difficulty, that can compromise your ability to react to more aggressive dangers, but on the other hand you do quickly learn to adapt. It’s still delightfully tough though, and there’s not an inch of screen-space spared, with plenty of variety in wacky level design and mechanics across its five (and a bit) very unique levels. They are a masterclass in modern, brash, cartoon pixel-art too, and the same for the chiptune soundtrack, which sounds like your memory thinks it remembers it sounding like when you walked into a golden-age arcade! Where it might also think you first played it!

8. Burger Time (Arcade)

As much as I always liked the look of BurgerTime when it arrived in town with the travelling funfair a couple of times a year, it was always competing with Pole Position and a proper steering wheel for those fleeting few minutes of my attention when we were allowed in its classically smoke-filled, seedy arcade. Reckon I’ve made up for it since though! It was originally by Data East in 1982, when it first went by the name of Hamburger in Japan. You control a little chef called Peter Pepper as he runs around six increasingly challenging mazes of ladders and platforms, creating dirty hamburgers by stomping all over the ingredients lying around on the floor while avoiding (or limited-use pepper spraying) various enemies, including the dastardly Mr Hot Dog, Mr Egg and Mr Pickle! You create the burger by getting to the platform where one of the buns, patties, tomatoes and so on is placed and then trampling over its full length, which will cause it to drop to the level below, and the same for any it lands on beneath it, until you’ve got them all piled up on the bun at the bottom. Stack up all the burgers on the screen and you move to the next level, and don’t worry about there being only a few because you’ll be doing well to see half of them – this gets very tough very quick, and not just because there’s none of the forgiving movement of the last two games! The enemies are relentless, and to get anywhere, you need to work that in your favour, leading them on a merry dance away from the ingredient you’re currently after to give you a run at getting it, although if you can get one of them right behind you as it falls they’ll go with it, and you can also take them out by dropping ingredients on them from above. This all makes it way more strategic (in a very Pac-Man-like way) than a simple test of reflexes and precise control, and gives it almost as much personality as the primitive but character-filled sprites and delicious-looking burgers, although not so much one of the most irritating little tunes you’ll ever hear in an arcade game playing in background! The level designs are superb too, full of variety, constantly keeping you on your toes, and constantly demanding one more go!

7. Popeye (Arcade)

When I previously did a deep-dive on this wonderful old Nintendo arcade game from 1982 – which would have been Donkey Kong had they secured the license quicker – I mentioned I was originally planning on leading with the Atari 2600 port I knew and loved better from the time instead. Which is even more so the case here, since I now have my own cartridge and it’s rarely out of my 2600+, but the original really is something else, so to avoid stacking them up one after the other, which would probably be the reality of my top ten if I wasn’t avoiding repetition, I just wanted to give it a special mention first! Either way though, it’s a three-screen, platform and steps and ladders game by a fellow called Shigeru Miyamoto, and you’ll be getting plenty of use out of those too because unlike the game it inspired that then inspired it once they did get the license, Popeye can’t jump! What he can do, though, is run around collecting love-hearts or whatever else Olive Oyl is dropping from the top of the screen for you to try and collect a certain number of before they sink into the sea at the bottom or Bluto (or Brutus) gets his hands on you first! You start in the docks, then outside a seaside apartment block thing (which also introduces trampolines), then on a big sailing ship, where you have sliding platforms as well as Sea Hag’s pet vulture to contend with. You’ve also got Sea Hag herself, Swee ‘Pea and Wimpy making appearances, and the the characterisation couldn’t be more authentic, with all the right details and all the right colours, and there’s slapstick animation for everything, which might be bounded by the era it comes from but it also goes way above and beyond expectation for 1982, and although the sound is a bit more functional, if you’re a Popeye fan, it all elevates the gameplay to a whole new level… Just like the can of spinach you can occasionally pick up, which offers brief, power-pill-type respite from so many hazards and so much going on aside from your love-rival’s attention! The difficulty curve is fantastic though, and once you have the timing down and worked out a few tricks, you might start looping it too, but you can never stop concentrating for a second, and that’s also when the high score table becomes irresistible… Even if you are having to write down your best ones because the 2600 can’t save them!

6. Miner 2049er (Atari 8-Bit)

An almost identical conundrum here with the Atari 2600 version of this, and maybe even more so when you throw in the sequel, Bounty Bob Strikes Back, then take your pick from several versions of that too, but especially the Atari 5200 one. Miner 2049er is just more immediate though, and I love the pacy smoothness and presentation of the original Atari home computer version from 1982, so we’re going with that, even if it is still one of my favourite games on the 2600! An expensive one at the time either way though, with the 2600’s six levels originally spread over two carts, and the computer one needing a whopping 16K of memory versus the regular 8K! You play as Bounty Bob, who finds himself in a uranium mine he needs to survey by walking over (and changing the colour of) every single piece of floor on each level while avoiding various mutated meanies (unless he’s grabbed a tool from somewhere that acts like something suspiciously similar from Donkey Kong) and negotiating ladders, gaps, slides down to lower floors, teleporters, vats of radioactive waste and all sorts of other hazards. Change the colour of the floor everywhere and it’s onto the next level. And good luck with doing that on one level, let alone all ten of them here, because it’s absolutely brutal, not least thanks to the elongated jump that takes quite a bit of getting used to! You’ll need to get used to it though because Bob’s a fragile type for a burly old miner, with pretty much any drop meaning death, and there’s no time for patience either because a just about fair timer also demands you learn how to clear each level efficiently on top of doing it precisely. And it’s wonderful! Okay, its sounds and visuals are of the time but there’s California Gold Rush atmosphere galore and loads character, which is further enhanced by some great use of bold colours across each element of its devious level layouts, which are what Miner 2049er is really all about – as we’ve seen several times already, great gameplay stands on its own, and it doesn’t get much better than this, and while the 2600 version is simplified again, it’s equally addictive wherever you prefer to play.

5. Rod Land (Arcade)

When I first came up with the idea for this countdown, and the kind of games I was thinking about, it always came back to “stuff like Bubble Bobble,” which we might also come back to here, but I reckon we’ve done pretty well reaching halfway before we got to anything particularly cut from the the same cloth… In Rod Land, from Jaleco in 1990, it’s fairies with magic wands or rods or whatever trying to rescue their mother who’s been “kidnapped by a monster and taken atop the Maboots tower! Using the Rods of Sheesanomo left to them by their father and the Rainbow Shoes gifted by the village elder, a super-cute adventure is about to begin.” That means defeat all the enemies on each stage to progress to the next by grabbing them with your rod then swinging them from side to side, smashing them into the floor until they’re dead. Super-cute indeed! You’ve also got a magical ladder at your disposal if you need to get to somewhere the standard ones won’t take you, or you just need to climb somewhere in a hurry, but you can only use one at a time so it will disappear when you place the next one. There’s bosses every few screens and a nice variety of enemies, and while it doesn’t quite have the insane hidden depth of Bubble Bobble, there’s still a load tucked away if you want to properly chase high scores, especially if you’re willing to risk grabbing all those flowers you’ll see scattered around every level before you finish off the increasingly dangerous meanies. It’s also up there with Rainbow Islands when it comes to some of the happiest visuals ever created, topped off with a literal fairytale of a soundtrack! It plays like a fairytale too, with those magic rods and ladders instantly becoming second nature, and the movement is forgiving enough to to easily lock you onto ladders and be able to get off them quick-smart when you need to without a second thought. If you’re just out to reach the next level, the difficulty is pretty forgiving too, at least until the first boss, a multi-platform, multi-crocodile attack, but even so, when you die it’s generally down to your lack of patience or planning over any lack of fairness. A truly wonderful time!

4. Donkey Kong (Arcade)

I actually didn’t come across the last game for a very long time but back in 1981 there was no escaping Nintendo’s pioneering, influential and downright iconic Donkey Kong, which also pretty much prevented them from going under when Shigeru Miyamoto was told to come up with something to repurpose a load of unsold Radar Scope cabinets in the absence of that Popeye license from earlier! While my memories of the orange clamshell Game & Watch and its literally dozens of home computer clones from the next few years are probably stronger nowadays (mainly down to Crazy Kong on the VIC-20, the second game I ever bought), I’ll never forget the magic of seeing that invincibility hammer in action at the time! It’s weird to think that given pretty much everything was new back then, that was what stuck, but it really was magical! Since then, there haven’t been many times over the past forty-plus years when I haven’t had some version of Donkey Kong or the other on the go, but since 2018 it’s been the original and best, care of the Arcade Archives release, as indicated by their typically boring “wallpaper” in the image above, which includes “early” (maybe slightly easier) and “later” (bug-fixed) versions as well as the international one, with its possibly better-balanced stage order. Whichever you go for though (which is generally random for me), while it wasn’t quite the first platform game, it was the first to let you jump, which you do a lot over the game’s four stages as you guide pre-Mario Mario up a construction site of girders and ladders and rolling barrels, then (in whatever order) around a danger-filled, multi-level conveyor belt, up and down elevators and over tricky gaps avoiding bouncing springs, and finally dodging dancing flames to remove eight rivets holding the structure Donkey Kong is perched on top of to bring it crashing down so you can be reunited with your girlfriend Pauline before doing it all over again. It’s simple, it’s fiendish and it’s perfectly balanced, with timeless presentation to match its timelessly addictive scoring mechanics. And whacking a barrel with your wildly swinging hammer for the brief time it lasts will never get old!

3. Chuckie Egg (Amstrad CPC)

I can’t believe I’m sticking an Amstrad game at the business end of any countdown but if we’re talking Chuckie Egg then I’m afraid I’ve got no choice, although the Spectrum and BBC versions will also be perfectly adequate should I become too outraged to continue before I’m done here! The BBC version was actually the first I came across, on the school’s only computer, shoved in a repurposed storage cupboard around 1984, a year after its original release. I had an, er, copy of the Spectrum one a few years later too, but as much as I loved both, it was my first experience of a CPC in a friend’s dorm room when I got to university in 1990 that I had my Goldilocks moment with it… Just right! It’s all in the jump, you see, which was a bit quicker here, meaning the game played a bit more freely and dangerously, or at least as much as a game about a little guy called Hen-House Harry collecting eggs can be! You need to negotiate screen after screen of fiendishly situated platforms, ladders and lifts to get at them against the clock, which you can slow down a bit by also grabbing the corn lying around, if you can get to it before it gets eaten by the ducklings (that look like ostriches) who are otherwise hellbent on seeing you and your five lives off! This all happens under the gaze of mother duck, thankfully trapped in a golden cage at the top, but clear the eight different levels and she’s out, and unlike her little fixed-path duck-ostriches who’ve now disappeared, she can chase you anywhere on the screen. Go round all the screens again and she’s back, the duck-ostriches are back, and you’ve got no chance, although I think there are forty screens altogether before it starts looping back to some of the higher-level ones again. It all plays out fast-paced, especially once you’ve got a fix on where the ducklings are heading next, which is reflected in a reasonably forgiving jump and attach or fall mechanic, although once you’ve got lifts and stuff on the go your timing had better be spot on! Once again, there’s plenty of character in the very home computer circa 1983 looks, less so in the sound, but it’s a masterclass in challenging, addictive and maximum fun gameplay from a time when that’s all that really mattered!

2. Bomb Jack (Arcade)

As well as the recurring question of which platform to go for here (because the Spectrum version is one of the best ports on there and probably still where I’ve played this the most), I did also question Bomb Jack’s inclusion at all… Your jump is pretty much rocket-powered, and a press of a button will slow your descent to a glide – which is effectively flying – but what the hell, it’s all self-propelled, and my rules are all self-imposed, and it’s fantastic, so here we are! It came from Tehkan (later Tecmo) in 1984, and has your little superhero, Jack, travelling to well-known locations all over the world, where he needs to frantically jump (not fly!) about and try to defuse all the very juicy-looking bombs all over the screen, ideally in the order their fuses are sparking away for the serious bonus points! Obviously, there’s also all manner of meanies out to stop you but who or what or why or anything else isn’t really further explained anywhere – it’s just how it is, and I wouldn’t change it for anything! You start out in front of the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, and if you clear that of bombs you’ll head to the Parthenon in Athens, a Bavarian-type castle, a modern city skyline then what might be a hill above some vast city at night (although it could equally be a power plant or something), and then it will loop again but harder. Along the way you’ve got various pickups to help you out, the most useful of which is the P icon, which briefly turns all the birds and UFOs and giant footballs and other deceptively nasty stuff out to kill you into bonus coins, then there’s points bonuses, extra lives and an extra credit to look out for too. It’s a simple concept done brilliantly, and that exaggerated jump and tap-to-glide mechanic makes all the difference, providing hidden depth and precision to your movement but also encouraging risk as you become more skilled and decide you can just above squeeze through that gap between enemies and get at the lit bomb! Beyond what I think are a couple of gaming’s most iconic sights on the pyramid and castle levels, the rest are pretty basic but appealing enough, and the platforms, the pickups and a lot of the enemies are simple but very polished (and literally so when the they become coins). Jack himself, with his flapping cape and heroic leap, is full of character though, and the sound is something else – a jolly enough tune playing tinkling away in the background with some nice effects tinkling over the top, and then a power-up appears and it turns everything into this shrill, hypnotic, psychedelic space-rave siren thing that’s just so cool! What a game, and not for the first time with one of these, I’m wishing I could allow myself joint first place…

1. Bubble Bobble (Arcade)

I’m even less sure this time than I was the last time I said I’m not sure there’s much more I can say about this legendary piece of 1986 that I haven’t many times before (but see my deep-dive here for the final word)! However, it is worth repeating that a while back as I write, someone asked me about what I thought was a perfect game, and after I initially gave my standard response of Tetris, I thought about it again and actually, I reckon this game is something else to consider because there really ain’t a lot wrong with it! Whatever, Bub and Bob have been transformed into dinosaurs by the evil wizard who’s also kidnapped their girlfriends, and they’re imprisoned over one hundred fiendish platform-based levels away! To get to them them, you (and a friend if you have one) need to blow bubbles to catch all his monsters on each screen then burst them with your spiky spine before being moved to the next, and that’s seemingly all there is to achieving near-enough arcade perfection! However, its wonderfully unbearable cuteness, what’s possibly gaming’s most unforgettable soundtrack, and this general simplicity also hide insane depth if you want to go there, where you’ll be counting your steps and how many bubbles you’ve blown while the game is tracking your every move as well, right down to how many times it’s ever been played, and then power-ups and bonuses start triggering, and those triggers start stacking into more triggers, and before you know it, you’re after exactly one-hundred and fifty bubbles to get three pink candies to appear to create a pink ring to get you five hundred points for every subsequent jump… And that’s just scratching the surface! That said, you can also just stick with the pure, undiluted fun version instead, where you’ll effortlessly jump and float between platforms, chasing down monsters before they do the same to you, looking out for regular power-ups and bonuses and special elemental bubbles to help you out, just trying to go one screen further than the last time. However you play though, it’s one of the all-time greats, with personality simply oozing from every gorgeously detailed, meticulously animated and vibrantly coloured tiny little sprite, not to mention every glistening sound coming from your speakers. I had some great times with some great ports on the Atari ST and Commodore 64 in particular, although results definitely vary elsewhere, but in reality you want to be playing the arcade original to get the most out of it, even if there is so much to it you’ll also only ever really scratch the surface. And there’s another reality – that can also be all you ever need from Bubble Bobble!

I hope that didn’t get too predictable at the end but I’m pretty happy that the rest wasn’t quite as predictable as I first anticipated it might be, although as I quickly run through a few honourable mentions to close, that loose definition of “stuff like Bubble Bobble” I alluded to earlier for this countdown will come into play… Taito’s own Don Doko Don came very close to being included here, and one of its more “direct” sequels, Bubble Symphony, wasn’t far off either, and likewise Parasol Stars. Then there’s stuff like Snow Bros, Nightmare in the Dark, Fairyland Story and Tumblepop, all in a similar vein and all games I’ve enjoyed all over the place over the years! We’ve seen quite a lot from before Bubble Bobble here too, and there’s more I could easily have included, like Booty on the ZX Spectrum (pictured above), which did come close, as well as fun nostalgia trips like Mr Wong’s Loopy Laundry on there, and Mickey the Brickie on the VIC-20. Fast-forwarding back the other way again, there’s also Super Crate Box on iOS, which I really played to death on my iPad when it first came out in 2010, then came back to more recently on Nintendo Switch. Finally, while I think they’re very much single-screen platformers in spirit, there’s a few I want to mention that either scroll a bit or their levels span consecutive screens, namely Ninja JaJaMaru-kun on the NES, then arcade and Mega Drive or Genesis Flicky, and arcade Bagman, which all pain me because they’d be riding high in this list otherwise! Right, I could go on all day with these but I’m sure you’ve got better things to do, so I hope you’ve enjoyed having a look at this lot, and if I’m missing anything I’d love to hear about it!

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