Jump Raven

Jump Raven was the second game released by Cyberflix, in 1994. The game's technology is similar to that of Lunicus, released by Cyberflix one year prior, but this time employs a more detailed storyline and environment. In an opening sequence of the game, we see future New York City, which has fallen into horrible disrepair in the aftermath of global warming and rising sea levels and a bankrupt federal government. The premise of the story is that gangsters, neo-nazis, and various other thugs have acquired large stores of weapons (from the government) and have ransacked New York's store of cryogenically-frozen DNA of endangered species. The player's job as a bounty hunter is to retrieve them.

Jump Raven
Cover art by Mark Maxwell
Developer(s)Cyberflix
Publisher(s)Paramount Interactive
Programmer(s)Bill Appleton
Artist(s)Jamie Wicks
Debbie Hughes
Writer(s)Andrew Nelson
Platform(s)Windows, Mac OS
Release1994
Genre(s)Shooter
Mode(s)Single-player

Gameplay

Before taking off in a fancy hovercraft, the player chooses a co-pilot who can navigate or fire weapons. selecting Nikki, Chablis, "Cheesestick" Limbaugh (supposedly descended from Rush, though he is black), Thrash, Lark or Dogstar. Each co-pilot is unique and may not be available for every level.

The game's three difficult and lengthy levels are played in the player's hovercraft flying around the streets of New York. The opponents drive tanks or fly planes and insult the player frequently. The user can choose between one of several bands for theme music in each level. each band has a unique song per level. the bands include: x-static, deathkiller, pink flaand (a reference to Pink Floyd), and smoove da groove. The name "deathkiller" was coined at a trade show - two Japanese girls watched the demo and described it as "deathkiller". evidently there is no accurate translation from Japanese to English for that type of video game...

Game control is rather complicated as the player can move up, down, left, right, and forward and backward. The player must also control weapons. Fortunately, the copilot can take care of one or more of these functions.

Development

Following the successful launch of its CD-ROM game Lunicus in April 1993,[1][2] developer CyberFlix began to create Jump Raven with the DreamFactory development environment from the first title.[2] At the time, CD-ROM games tended to run slowly, but DreamFactory was designed to allow an unusually high level of speed for the era. However, CyberFlix considered its projects to be "interactive movies" rather than games, according to Jack Neely of Metro Pulse,[1] and DreamFactory placed an emphasis on storytelling.[2] As with Lunicus, production of Jump Raven began in the basement of a log cabin owned by CyberFlix founder William Appleton.[1][2] The game's development team was composed of four members: Appleton, creator of DreamFactory, who handled the game's programming; audio lead Scott Scheinbaum; artist Jamie Wicks; and screenwriter Andrew Nelson. The four had originally founded CyberFlix to create Lunicus, and the company was incorporated a month after its release, with the help of manager Erik Quist. Science Fiction and Fantasy Illustrator: Debbie Hughes was hired as a freelancer to create the "puppet characters" for the game. Hughes Illustrated over 14 characters that players interacted with in the game.[1]

CyberFlix demonstrated Jump Raven at the Macworld Expo later in 1993, to public acclaim, and impressed Paramount Interactive employees who were in attendance. As a result, CyberFlix received a "multi-million-dollar deal for it" from Paramount, Neely later wrote.[1] The agreement, which the two companies closed by November 1993, contracted CyberFlix for three games.[2]

Reception

Jump Raven's initial Macintosh release was a commercial success.[2][8] Discussing the multimedia development scene in 1994, a writer for The New York Times called the game one of "the best-selling and most critically praised [multimedia] titles on the market", alongside Myst.[8] Market research firm PC Data named it the fourth-best-selling Macintosh game of July 1994,[9] and the platform's seventh-highest seller in September.[10] By August, Jump Raven had reached sales of 50,000 units. Around the 28th of that month, another 50,000 units were shipped for Microsoft Windows. Erik Quist of CyberFlix expected the game to sell 100,000 units overall "by Christmas", Barbara Kantrowitz of Newsweek reported at the time.[2] Sales of Jump Raven had reached close to the 100,000 mark by January 3.[11]

Christopher Breen of Computer Gaming World enjoyed Jump Raven's combat and "often very amusing" writing, and noted that "the game is darned fast for a CD-ROM". However, he criticized the "incredibly annoying" copilot voices and "inane dialogue", and considered its interface clumsy. He concluded, "Adequately addressing these issues might have made Jump Raven a great strategy/action adventure rather than just a good arcade game."[12] The game was reviewed in June 1995 in Dragon #218 by Paul Murphy in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Murphy's review was negative, concluding "I don't care how good a game looks or sounds, how cool the animation and special-effects are, how easy it is to load or save: if it isn't any fun to play, it's a failure."[13]

References
  1. Neely, Jack (October 21, 1999). "Game Over". Metro Pulse. Vol. 9, no. 42. pp. 9–12, 22, 23, 40.
  2. Kantrowitz, Barbara (August 28, 1994). "Garage-Band Programmers". Newsweek. Archived from the original on September 13, 2017.
  3. Clarke, Art (May 1994). "JumpRaven". Hyper. No. 6. pp. 58–59. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
  4. Staff (September 1994). "Jump Raven". PC Gamer US. Archived from the original on December 22, 1999. Retrieved September 15, 2020.
  5. Loyola, Roman Victor (June 1994). "Quick Clicks; Jump Raven / Futuristic CD-ROM adventure". MacUser. 10 (6): 77.
  6. Poole, Stephen (April–May 1994). "Jump Raven". CD-ROM Today (5): 101.
  7. LeVitus, Bob (May 1994). "Jump Raven". Electronic Entertainment. 1 (5): 86.
  8. Gabriel, Trip (1994). "Gurus of Multimedia Gulch". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 27, 2018.
  9. Staff (December 1994). "Leaderboard". Electronic Entertainment. 1 (12): 26.
  10. Staff (February 1995). "NewsNet; Shelf-Burners for February '95". Computer Player. 1 (9): 18.
  11. "Knoxville Journal; Company's Fall Is Dash of Cold Water but Not a Dashing of Hope". The New York Times. January 3, 1995. Archived from the original on April 19, 2018.
  12. Breen, Christopher (April 1994). "Puppet Punks And Cyber-Skinheads". Computer Gaming World. No. 117. pp. 50, 52.
  13. Rolston, Ken; Murphy, Paul; Cook, David (June 1995). "Eye of the Monitor". Dragon (218): 59–64.
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