Bomb Jack is a game about tidying up. A small caped hero drops into the middle of a screen scattered with 24 bombs and has to collect every one while robots, birds and flying saucers close in. The bombs never go off. CRASH noted that “the bombs he has to collect never seem to explode, no matter how long he takes to get to them”. The tension comes from the score instead: take the bomb whose fuse is burning, and the next one lights; follow that trail round the screen and the bonus climbs into tens of thousands. Tehkan, the company later renamed Tecmo, put it in the arcades in 1984, and in 1986 Elite Systems made it a chart hit in Britain.
Fast facts
- Arcade: Tehkan, 1984. CRASH dated its arrival “around Easter 1984”.
- Home versions: Elite Systems, 1986, for the Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 16; Atari ST in 1988.
- Spectrum programmers: Paul Holmes and Andy Williams, with graphics by Karen Trueman; the pair also wrote the Amstrad version.
- Screens: five backdrops of famous places, each with 24 bombs.
- Sequels: Tecmo’s Mighty Bomb Jack (1986); Elite’s own Bombjack II (1987).
Jumping, gliding and lit fuses
The arcade game had one button, and it did a lot. CRASH’s preview of the coin-op in March 1986 explained that a press of fire sent Jack leaping to the top of the screen, while pressing it rapidly kept him “suspended in mid air”. Retro Gamer described the fine control this gave: holding up let Jack soar, holding down brought him down faster, and tapping fire let him “delicately float to the ground”. Its writer thought the collision detection so precise that a death always felt like the player’s own fault.
The five backdrops were famous places drawn in detail behind a few platforms. Amstrad Action listed them for the CPC version: the Sphinx and a pyramid, then the Parthenon, a chateau, a cityscape and a city at night. Elite’s advertisement promised a trip “from Greece to Egypt, sunsoaked beaches to the skies of New York City”. After the fifth screen the game started again with the platforms rearranged and faster enemies.
The enemies build up the longer Jack stays on a screen. CRASH described birds that home in on him and speed up the longer they are left, and little figures that appear on the top platforms and fall on him if he walks underneath. ZZAP!64 explained the change that makes the lower screen dangerous: the robots walk off their platforms, and when they hit the ground they turn into flying creatures that are “all the more deadly”.
Three kinds of coin fight back:
| Coin | What it does |
|---|---|
| P (power) | Turns the enemies into smiling faces for a short time, so Jack can collect them for points. Retro Gamer likened it to Pac-Man’s power pill. |
| B (bonus) | Raises the multiplier for the points scored on that screen. CRASH counted up to four per screen, for a maximum of five times the points. |
| E (extra) | Gives an extra life. It appears only rarely. |
Then there are the fuses. Collecting the first bomb sets another one fizzing, and taking the lit bomb lights the next. Lit bombs are worth more, and a screen finished with 20 or more of them taken while lit earns a large bonus: CRASH and Sinclair User both gave it as 10,000 points for 20, rising to 50,000 for 23. Chasing that bonus means following one exact route round the screen while it fills with enemies. Edge later called Bomb Jack “the quintessential game of high scores” and put it in its hundred best games of all time in January 2000.
Elite’s home versions
Steve Wilcox of Elite Systems came back from a Tokyo game show in September 1985 with the home computer rights to Bomb Jack, among other games; the Steve Wilcox entry tells that story. Computer and Video Games reported in March 1986 that the arcade machine had been around for “approaching two years”. Elite released the conversions in spring 1986, and they sold well. By June, Computer and Video Games said Bomb Jack was “heading up the charts”; it went straight in at number three in Sinclair User’s Top 30 that month, and was fifth in the Gallup Top 20 that Your Computer printed in July. In the same issue Wilcox’s Elite was credited with “chart success with Bomb Jack”, with all four versions, “on Spectrum, Commodore, Amstrad and C16”, doing well.
The Spectrum version was the most admired. Paul Holmes had shown Wilcox a way of moving sprites quickly without tearing, and he and Andy Williams wrote the game from Holmes’s flat, with graphics by Karen Trueman, visiting Elite every couple of weeks to check it against the arcade machine. CRASH made it a Smash with 92% in April 1986, and Elite marked the occasion by giving a Bomb Jack arcade machine to a CRASH reader as a competition prize. Sinclair User’s Chris Bourne found it “virtually identical to the original arcade hit” and “totally addictive within its limitations — a sort of unpredictable Chuckie Egg with shades of Pacman in free-fall”. He gave it four stars rather than five because of its simplicity. The Spectrum’s black sprites against coloured backdrops avoided colour clash, and Bourne soon “realised how necessary it was to make Bombjack playable”. Holmes told the CRASH Annual in 2026 that the whole game ran in the Spectrum’s 50Hz interrupt, updating every time the display refreshed, “ensuring perfect smoothness”; the Amstrad version kept the same game routines with a new graphics engine.
| Magazine | Version | Verdict | Issue |
|---|---|---|---|
| CRASH | Spectrum | 92%, CRASH Smash | April 1986 |
| Computer and Video Games | Spectrum, Amstrad, C64 | C+VG Hit: graphics 9, sound 7, value 9, playability 9 | May 1986 |
| Sinclair User | Spectrum | four stars out of five | May 1986 |
| Your Sinclair | Spectrum | graphics 8, playability 9, value 9, addictiveness 10 (out of 10) | May 1986 |
| ZZAP!64 | Commodore 64 | 47% | June 1986 |
| Amstrad Action | Amstrad CPC | 84%, AA Rave | July 1986 |
Computer and Video Games opened its review: “Elite maintains their crown as kings of the arcade conversions.” Amstrad Action praised the “five beautifully drawn backgrounds” and “great control over Bombjack”, and its second reviewer called it “a really addictive game”, though he expected players to tire of it in the end. On a green-screen monitor, it warned, “the scenic backgrounds lose a lot of their attraction”.
The Commodore 64 version was the exception. ZZAP!64 scored it 47% and wrote that it “could have been better, but as it stands it is rather annoying and not very interesting to play”; its reviewers disliked the “porky sprites” and thought a player could have nearly a hundred goes on the real arcade machine for the price. Three months later, reviewing Elite’s Ghosts ’n Goblins, the magazine was relieved that “after the disappointing Bomb Jack, the people at Elite seem to have got the right Commodore mixture”.
The game kept selling. Elite reissued it for £1.99 on its budget label, Encore, in 1988. CRASH reviewed that release in September 1988 and gave it 84%, finding it “still very simple and still fiendishly addictive”, though it wished the bombs actually exploded. Your Sinclair called it “classic stuff”. Elite also brought Bomb Jack to the Atari ST in 1988, at £19.95; ST Action’s reviewer remembered that the Commodore 64 version had “sold like hot cakes” in the shop where he worked.
Sequels and later life
Tecmo’s own sequel, Mighty Bomb Jack (1986), appeared in the arcades and as its first game for the Famicom. It added scrolling stages, and Retro Gamer thought it a lesser game than the original. Elite made a sequel of its own for home computers. Holmes recalled that it began as a Thundercats licence game built on the same engine, until Wilcox saw it and said, “let’s make it into Bomb Jack 2”. CRASH reviewed Bombjack II in April 1987 and called it “a poor follow-up, which loses its predecessor’s sparkle”; Elite put the original game on the other side of the tape.
Emulation gave the arcade game a second life. Edge’s Retroview of Bomb Jack in July 1997 ran alongside its report on MAME, which could play the original arcade program on a home PC, and a year later Edge noted that MAME let players change the operator settings, such as how fiercely the bird chased Jack. Elite, for its part, re-acquired the rights to Bomb Jack in the early 2000s and released it for mobile phones. New versions keep appearing: Manuel Fernández Higueras released a free conversion for the ZX Spectrum Next in 2022, which Next magazine reviewed in October 2025 and gave 87%.
Sources
- CRASH issue 26, March 1986, pp. 104–105: Arcade Action preview of the Bomb Jack coin-op (Easter 1984, the cult following, the five backdrops, 24 bombs, the jump and hover, the enemies, the power, B and E coins, the bonus of 10,000 to 50,000 points for 20 to 23 lit bombs; Wilcox on the Spectrum version).
- CRASH issue 27, April 1986: Bombjack review, p. 20 (Elite, £7.95, Andy Williams and Paul Holmes, 92%); Bombjack arcade machine competition, p. 68 (“the bombs he has to collect never seem to explode”); Elite advertisement (“from Greece to Egypt, sunsoaked beaches to the skies of New York City”).
- Computer and Video Games issue 53, March 1986, pp. 14–15: preview of Elite’s Bomb Jack (“approaching two years” in the arcades).
- Computer and Video Games issue 55, May 1986, p. 33: Bomb Jack review (C+VG Hit; graphics 9, sound 7, value 9, playability 9; “Elite maintains their crown as kings of the arcade conversions”).
- Computer and Video Games issue 56, June 1986: “Heading up the charts right now is BombJack”.
- Sinclair User issue 50, May 1986: Bombjack review by Chris Bourne (£7.95, four stars; “virtually identical to the original arcade hit”; black sprites; the lit-bomb bonus). Issue 51, June 1986: Top 30, Bomb Jack new at number three.
- Your Sinclair issue 5, May 1986: Bomb Jack review (Elite, £7.95; graphics 8, playability 9, value for money 9, addictiveness 10).
- ZZAP!64 issue 14, June 1986, p. 28: Bombjack review (Elite, £9.95 cassette; 47%). Issue 17, September 1986, p. 18: Ghosts ’n Goblins review (“After the disappointing Bomb Jack”).
- Amstrad Action issue 10, July 1986, pp. 62–63: Bombjack review (AA Rave, 84%; the five backgrounds; the green-screen view).
- Your Computer, July 1986, p. 17: Gallup Top 20 (Bomb Jack at number five); p. 23, company profile of Elite (“chart success with Bomb Jack”; Spectrum, Commodore, Amstrad and C16 versions).
- CRASH issue 39, April 1987, p. 27: Bombjack II review (“a poor follow-up”).
- CRASH issue 56, September 1988, p. 87: Bombjack budget review (84%). Your Sinclair issue 34, October 1988, p. 94: Bomb Jack, Encore, £1.99 (“Classic stuff”).
- ST Action issue 5, September 1988, p. 11: Elite’s Bombjack for the ST due in July. Issue 6, October 1988, p. 45: Bomb Jack review (Elite, £19.95).
- CRASH Annual 2026, pp. 110–114: interview with Paul Holmes (the sprite technique, Andy Williams and Karen Trueman, the 50Hz interrupt, the Amstrad version, Bombjack II and Thundercats).
- Retro Gamer issue 13, 2005: Elite Systems profile (re-acquiring Bomb Jack for mobile phones).
- Retro Gamer issue 43, 2007, pp. 50–51: “The Classic Game: Bomb Jack” (the controls, the collision detection, the power token).
- Retro Gamer issue 107, October 2012, p. 94: Mighty Bomb Jack (Tecmo, arcade, 1986).
- Edge issue 47, July 1997: Retroview, Bomb Jack, and MAME. Issue 61, August 1998: MAME feature (operator settings). Issue 80, January 2000: 100 Best Games (“the quintessential game of high scores”).
- Next issue 10, October 2025, pp. 32–34: review of Manuel Fernández Higueras’s Bomb Jack for the Spectrum Next (2022, free, 87%).