There’s something fishy going on here. Imagine you’re me for a moment (sorry, I’m sorry, it’ll be over soon). I’m having a browse on Steam, looking for anything a bit different, when you see a vibrant, CRT-interlacing ridden Atari-esque looking game called Bounce 2. I click on, and discover it’s a sequel to a 1983 Atari 2600 game called Bounce that was designed to be a PONG killer, only to release during the infamous video game crash. Except I think none of this is true! Well, apart from the bit about Bounce 2 existing.
When you see that a game is a sequel to one that came out over four decades ago that you’ve never heard of, the first thing you do is of course browse your search engine of choice. That’s just what I did, coming across an entry on the BBC Micro Games Archive for a game that did actually come out in 1983 called Bounce that is apparently lost, not to mention the fact that the BBC Micro is an entirely different console that I’ve never even heard of made by yes, that BBC, the Bri’ish one.
Which leads me to believe that this is just a clever bit of marketing! A bamboozle! A hoodwink, a swindle, a con. It worked on me though, as I now know about Bounce 2, which I’ll finally actually tell you about. Bounce 2 is most certainly a derivative of PONG, with some notable differences. For one, you don’t move a single line approximating a ping pong paddle, but an approximation of a human figure that can jump, kick, and dash.
The goal is to score goals against your opponents, which are your friends, of which up to four of you can play together. Simple enough! Made complicated by the fact that you can swing your arms to whack the ball even harder, or to attack your opponent. Everyone does have their own health, and taking it down to zero turns you into just a head, keeping you in the game and able to continue defending your goal, just with a lot less limbs at your disposal.
It is a very neat looking little game that even allows you to scale the image to fit your desire on your very own CRT, or even adjust the games phase and chroma settings that you’d normally find on old TVs like that. Very much appeals to my CRT-loving heart.
Bounce 2 is available to pick up on Steam now.