Sometimes, 8 bits is just too much. When my friends were gawking at San Andreas, I whipped out my plug'n'play Atari 2600 for some Circus Atari. And it ROCKED.
So, of course, I love Jumpman, a freeware desktop game by Andrew McClure fashioned as a modern love letter to the 4 bit platformers of old. Yes, the name "Jumpman" is somewhat sacred amongst retro gamers as the original name of Mario, but trust me when I say Jumpman is flippin' sweet. Literally, the sweetness is flippin', as the major brain-bending game mechanic here is rotating the pixelated world around Jumpman to help him evade enemies and get to the exit. There's a certain slickness to the way Jumpman moves, a reduced friction not often found in such games, and though it takes some getting used to, it works wonderfully for allowing Jumpman to glide across platforms as the world rotates around him.
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