Game Journal: Funky Jet (1 Credit Clear)

I cleared Funky Jet, a 1992 single-screen beat 'em up platformer by Mitchell / Data East.

This is a game about flying around with a jetpack and using your giant boxing gloves to punch enemies into other enemies. At first glance it looks like a Bubble Bobble-style single screen elimination platformer, but you can freely fly around in the air and the platforms are only used by the enemies.

You have a regular punch that ends enemies flying backwards, upwards and downwards punches that send enemies flying upwards and downwards (unless you're playing the US version of the game, which removed them) and a spinning lariat that throws enemies behind you. There's no dedicated button for bombing; instead, picking up five bomb fragments instantly spawns a bomb pickup that will make you bomb when you pick it up.

Most of the games' enemies are easy to deal with and you have a very lenient healthbar (and multiple lives), but taking a single hit will cause you to lose all of your powerups. So the real challenge of the game comes from trying not to get hit in the first place, and trying to carefully power yourself back up ASAP after taking a hit instead of chaining multiple hits/deaths in a row. This all comes to a head in the final boss rush, which instantly gets much harder if you take a single hit.

Extends are rewarded by picking up 1UP items, which spawn after you take out a large group of enemies once you reach certain score thresholds (I think it's 400,000 and 1,000,000 pts?).

Most of the game's playtime is spent cleaning up the last few enemies in a wave or playing through easy stages, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to everyone. But the character's base moveset is great, setting up a big combo is satisfying, and some of the bosses are great too. There's nothing else quite like this out there!