JUMP RAVEN

Save Earth's Biodiversity. Save A Few Bucks.

An auctioned-off America calls for help...

A dark hero responds...

Global Warming. Urban chaos. Economic collapse. Welcome to the future, a neo-feudal landscape where all are armed and no one is safe. When Skin Head gangs hijack the only surviving genetic samples of Earth's wildlife, it's up to the renegade pilot known as Jump Raven to get them back.

Unfolding at lightning speed, this award-winning CD-ROM title from CyberFlix, is a pulse-pounding arcade experience full of action and interactivity. As Raven, fly your hovercraft down deadly New York streets while engaging enemies in sizzling, real-time dog fights. Customize your adventure by selecting from 24 weapon systems, 6 copilots and 12 musical scores. Explore a brooding, bankrupt world where compassion is extinct, raw power the only currency and Jump Raven the planet's last hope.

 

Features:

• Break-neck speed; full-screen movies
• A digital cast of 14 characters
• Intelligent copilots who can fly or fight for you
• High-intensity arcade play in 3D environments
• No click-and-wait - Just real-time action
• Talk to the cast and they'll talk back to you
• A full-throttle journey to a dark future, Jump Raven's unlike anything else on CD-ROM

~ from the back of the box

It's the post-apocalyptic future, an ecological disaster has wiped out all wildlife. Anarchy rules the run down streets of New York City and, of course, the Nazis are back - because when isn't it time for a dystopian Nazi comeback? This time, they're after humanity's last hope; DNA pods storing the genetic code of every extinct creature on Earth. And naturally, the only way to stop them is to fly a heavily armed hovercraft through the crumbling remains of Manhattan and blast everything in sight. Welcome to the techno-grunge shoot-'em-up of Jump Raven.

That fantastic moniker - Jump Raven - is given to you, the player character, though it's unclear whether it's a name, a rank, or a really unfortunate nickname. Your mission is to recover those precious gene pods while fending off hordes of enemy hovercraft, drones, and assorted cyberpunk baddies. To do this, you team up with one of six possible copilots. Each copilot has distinct personality quirks, ranging from the sarcastic to the flamboyantly fabulous. Even the game's online manual is narrated by a hilariously snarky gay-coded robot. Your copilot does more than just sit pretty and spout cutting barbs. Depending on your choices, they'll help navigate, fire weapons, or serve as comic relief when the monotony sets in. And when it does, you can have them control everything so you can sit back and sip on a Mai Tai.

Choose your weapons loadout. Out of stock items are randomly chosen each time you enter (left).

Your music choices; hip-hop, industrial, grunge and heavy metal. All are good to cruise to (right).

If cocktails aren't readily available, monotony will set in. For all its bombastic style, Jump Raven suffers from what we'll politely call arcade fatigue. The action, while brisk, is incredibly repetitive. Fly, shoot, collect, repeat. The 3D scrolling streets are impressive for the time, but the gameplay boils down to navigating narrow alleys and dodging pixelated lasers like it's Groundhog Day in hover-hell. Any attempt at differing stages boil down to palatte swaps and nothing else. The arrow keys (or, surprisingly given its age, WASD) moves your ship either around the city streets or, with a tap of the 'T' key, up, down and sideways to dodge incoming fire. To shoot, frantically click the left mouse button until you've run out of ammo for all of the weapon you purchased earlier, then aimlessly meander for a while baffled as to why you can't pick up any more.

It's a little more than you'd expect for an early '90s shoot-'em-up, but each of these elements can be taken out of your control. Should you choose, you can hand over your navigation, hover dodge or arms control over to a highly personable copilot. That's right, in Jump Raven you don't just jump in and shoot stuff. Well, you do, but before that you interview copilots in a lengthy dialogue tree that ultimately does nothing to the core gameplay, but is way more entertaining anyway. Beyond this, you also get a detailed rundown on the villains of the piece before heading out to the weapons depot to outfit your ship with all types of gadgets that go boom. 

Two randomly selected copilots will be out to lunch when it comes to interview them (left).

No matter what, I always feel like I'm interviewing them from between a stripper's legs (right).

The arms dealer offers 24 types of sci-fi explosives though some are randomly chosen to be out of stock. Only six can be equipped at a time so it gives a layer of strategy to your decision making, encouraging you to think more about damage and ammo retention than you probably need to. There's also a choose-your-own-soundtrack feature. You can pair your high-stakes DNA rescue mission with a healthy dose of early '90s grunge, metal, industrial or hip hop. No matter what you pick, these original tunes fit the game remarkably well.

Visually, Jump Raven was surprisingly ambitious for a Windows 3.1 game. Digitized backgrounds, slick hovercraft animations, and a cool cyber-noir vibe crammed onto a single futuristic (for its time) compact disc. The sound design holds its own too, blending synth-heavy music and explosive effects into a techno fever dream that somehow works. It's part shoot-'em-up, part interactive comic book, and part late-night B-movie in the best possible way. You can tell the folks at CyberFlix would head down the adventure-game path for their forthcoming releases, gracing us with Dust: A Tale of the Wired West, Titanic: Adventures Out Of Time and RedJack: Revenge of the Brethren. Those better suit the company's sensibilities.

Your copilot can take the reins of one or all of the game's controls. It hit and miss whether they'll hit or miss though (left).

Collecting a DNA capsule dropped from a destroyed craft. These ones are green on the map (right).

Alas, while its presentation soars, the game's core mechanics remain stuck in the arcade mud. Despite all the window dressing - character interviews, strategic choices, funky weapon names - you're still just blowing up endless waves of baddies and hoping your reflexes (or your copilot's aim) won't fail you. There's charm, there's humour, but there's not much gameplay. After a while, it's hard not to wonder if Jump Raven should've been an arcade sequence in adventure game instead of its own thing.

In the end, Jump Raven is less a revolution in gameplay and more a time capsule of '90s multimedia ambition. It's loud and quirky but often frustrating and repetitive to the point of boredom. I still got a brief kick looking into this curio, but now that I'm done I doubt I will ever pick it up again. The opposite of CyberFlix's more adventurous output. 

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox running Microsoft Windows 3.1 to get the game working on modern systems. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 490 Mb.  Install Size: 687 Mb.  Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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Jump Raven is © CyberFlix, Inc
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me

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