10 Worst Jumps In Video Games
Lists! We all love em, I love to make em; everyone wins. I have a new one in mind, which I will contextualize right now: I've been diversifying my playtime on the Nintendo Classic Mini lately, after breaking my face on Final Fantasy enough times. That volcano might be the worst dungeon I've ever seen. So, I've dipped into what else seems like a reasonable completion on the limited gadget. You can see every game on there and how they rank in my previous list.
I've played a bit of Contra and, with some effort, made it to the second stage, where they pull an Ikari Warriors. The thought of playing more Ikari Warriors makes me barf, so moving on. I played more Dr. Mario and don't really understand how the pill turning works. Tecmo Bowl: I still don't know what the hell is happening, but maybe one day. I then turned to Mega Man and was able to cross a barrier I've never crossed before: I killed a Mega Man boss and finished a stage. In all my years; I guess there's a first time for everything, still.
With a few of these games, your success rate really depends on how well you navigate the controls. Sure, Mega Man is hard, but a lot of it comes from being able to parse everything on screen and pressing the buttons at the exact right moment. The other half comes from what happens after that button press, as you do. It's playing the hand you're dealt. In this case, a big part of that hand is the jump button.
That got me thinking, which is a dangerous occurrence. When going back, what are some games that present you with an obstacle and expect you to jump? From that pile, what are the games that failed the most to give you the tools to success? Bunch of faff made short: What are the worst jumping systems in video games?
I'm going to keep the list unnumbered this time, mostly because Giant Bomb doesn't have an option to order it in reverse. Consider these, mentally, as going from least to most egregious, but don't fixate on that fact. I spent little time weighing the entries against each other.
There are some loose guidelines to the list. For one, these will only mention games that at least have the expectation of quality. I'm sure you can find barely functional shovelware on Steam, but this isn't a race to the bottom. Secondly, that also means that a game like Clayfighter is ineligible. Yes, the jump sucks, but so does the entire rest of every part of that game. It's just a bad game; the jump follows the trend. If the game has no redeeming quality, then there's nothing egregious about the jump itself. Finally, a personal item, these are only the ones I remember as being memorably bad jumps. I've played hundreds of games in my life, but I wouldn't be able to tell you just how bad Mickey's Magical Quest's jump was. I remember it being poor, but I wouldn't be able to quantify it from memory. That's the cutoff line. I did a bunch of research, to look at gameplay from both stuff I remember and things I heard about, but at the end of the day, I haven't played every game in the world.
Feel free to sound off in the comments about your jump nemesis.
Here's the list!