Amoeba Jump - Atari 2600

Amoebas To The Rescue!

Amoebas have a bad reputation, which is totally unfair. Almost all of these single-celled creatures just like to eat bacteria, not brains! Did you know that amoebas don’t have a fixed body-shape and move around by changing the shape of their pseudopods, which they also use to gather food?

In this game you play as Mr. Amoeba, a friendly microbe who enjoys eating bacteria pretty much indiscriminately. However, you first have to jump up the platforms and earn 1,000 points before those delicious bacteria start appearing.

Mr. Amoeba has two pseudopods on his head, which he uses both for jumping and eating bacteria.

How to Play

Amoeba Jump is a vertical jumping game where your objective is to guide the amoeba up a never-ending series of platforms without falling. The higher you get, the higher your score will be.

There are three different platform types:

• Yellow - these are the basic, stable platforms
• White - these are unstable platforms that disappear after you bounce off them once
• Blue - these platforms are harder to hit because they move back and forth

Jumping on red or green mushroom push-buttons will give you a short boost and some bonus points, but best of all: it makes the little amoeba rejoice! When your score gets beyond 1,000 points, little white oval-shaped bacteria start appearing on the platforms, which can be eaten by the amoeba. Each bacteria holds one of the six letters of the word A-M-O-E-B-A. Collect all six and the single next time you jump on a spring, you will get a super boost.

The screen wraps around, which means that the amoeba can leave one side of the screen and immediately reappear on the opposite side. You’re going to need this to reach some platforms!

Gameplay Video

Screenshots

About

Amoeba Jump is the first Atari game developed by Dion Olsthoorn. He initially planned to build this game for the Commodore 64, but after reading the book ‘Racing the Beam’ he decided to buy an old Atari VCS and challenge himself to write a game for this strange, limited, but wonderful machine.

Get an Amoeba Jump Box!

If you'd like a boxed copy of Amoeba Jump, please select "Box Upgrade: Yes" at the top of the page before adding Amoeba Jump to your cart. Our boxes are professionally printed and include a box insert to hold your Amoeba Jump cartridge in place. We want you to play our games, so we have not sealed or shrink wrapped the boxes in any way, allowing you easy access to the game cartridge and manual.

These boxes are the same size as boxes Atari produced for their games "back in the day". They look great sitting on a shelf with your other boxed homebrew games, or alongside games from the classic Atari 2600 library. We only have a limited number of boxes for each game, and there is no guarantee they will become available again once our supplies are exhausted. Click on the images to the right to see larger photos of the box.

Additional Information

Amoeba Jump supports the AtariVox or SaveKey for saving your high score. Amoeba Jump includes game cartridge and full-color, 4-page manual. You can optionally purchase a professionally printed box (see above). Amoeba Jump is available in NTSC and PAL television formats. Please specify above when ordering or you will receive an NTSC cartridge by default.